Language Awareness: From Paragraph to Academic Essay

Kursbeschreibung / -kommentar

Language Awareness: From Paragraph to Academic Essay

This course aims to provide students with a variety of basic skills regarding academic writing, including audience awareness, text structure, and how to effectively use secondary internet sources. Another important aim of the course is to make visible the often implicit and opaque rules and expectations of academia and culture, including academic integrity and critical thinking. The course will develop participants' awareness of essential features of composition and essay writing through analysis and practice. Online practice of selected language aspects and effective use of mono- and bilingual dictionaries and thesauri, etc. will help course members to avoid the pitfalls of mother-tongue interference and to improve the lexical and stylistic accuracy in their essays.
In addition to writing essays, students will also practice other aspects of writing such as summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, comparing and contrasting. The course will also focus on conventions of academic writing including topic development, political correctness, tone and register. Current topics and articles from scholarly journals, internet media and diverse online resources will provide ample material for students to engage with in practicing and improving their writing skills.