Academic Writing

Data is displayed for the academic year: 2024./2025.

Lectures

Course Description

Purpose and strategy of academic writing. Organization, style, and flow. Discourse-level cohesion; hedging. Text organization patterns: general-specific, problem-solution, compare-contrast, cause-effect. Constructing a research paper. Data commentary. Summarizing. Reviewing and replying to a review. Typesetting tools (LaTeX and BibTeX). Typography guidelines and common mistakes.

Prerequisites

Considering the instruction language is English, students are expected to have a good command of the language.

Study Programmes

University graduate
[FER3-EN] Control Systems and Robotics - profile
Transversal Courses (1. semester) (3. semester)
[FER3-EN] Data Science - profile
Transversal Courses (1. semester) (3. semester)
[FER3-EN] Electrical Power Engineering - profile
Transversal Courses (1. semester) (3. semester)

Learning Outcomes

  1. Recognize the purpose and style of academic writing
  2. Apply common text organization patterns
  3. Differentiate between the types of academic documents (report, scholarly article, commentary, summary, review)
  4. Design an outline for a research paper or a MSc thesis
  5. Construct and sketch the content of a research paper
  6. Use the typesetting tools (LaTeX and BibTex)

Forms of Teaching

Lectures

Lectures according to the schedule.

Independent assignments

Individual writing assignments.

Other

Discussing examples and own texts.

Grading Method

Continuous Assessment Exam
Type Threshold Percent of Grade Threshold Percent of Grade
Homeworks 0 % 40 % 0 % 40 %
Class participation 0 % 20 % 0 % 20 %
Mid Term Exam: Written 0 % 20 % 0 %
Final Exam: Written 0 % 20 %
Exam: Written 50 % 40 %
Comment:

All homework assignments are obligatory. All homework assignments must be submitted before the last week of lectures in order to be admitted to the (final) exam.

Week by Week Schedule

  1. Introduction to academic writing
  2. Academic style
  3. Text organization: writing notes and paragraphs (coherence and cohesion)
  4. Text organization: writing summaries
  5. Text organization: report writing
  6. Introduction to writing a research paper
  7. Introduction to writing a research paper (cont'd). Midterm revision
  8. Midterm exam
  9. Typesetting tools (LaTeX and BibTeX). Typography guidelines and common mistakes
  10. Writing a research paper (1/3): title and abstract, introduction, methods, results
  11. (January 6, national holiday, no class )
  12. Writing a research paper (2/3): discussion, conclusions; graphs, figures and tables
  13. Writing a research paper (3/3): referencing and plagiarism. Guidelines for writing a (MSc) thesis
  14. Discussion on mock research papers written by students. Final revision.
  15. Final exam

Literature

Kate L. Turabian (2009.), A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition, University of Chicago Press
John M. Swales, Christine B. Feak (2004.), Academic Writing for Graduate Students, Essential Tasks and Skills, 3rd Ed., University of Michigan Press/ELT (Michigan Series in English for Academic & Professional Purposes)
Robert E. Berger (2014.), A Scientific Approach to Writing for Engineers and Scientists, John Wiley & Sons
Justin Zobel (2014.), Writing for Computer Science, 3rd ed., Springer
Martin Hewings, Craig Thaine, Michael McCarthy (2012.), Cambridge Academic English, Cambridge University Press

General

ID 222907
  Winter semester
2 ECTS
L2 e-Learning
30 Lectures
0 Seminar
0 Exercises
0 Laboratory exercises
0 Project laboratory
0 Physical education excercises

Grading System

90 Excellent
80 Very Good
70 Good
60 Sufficient