ACADEMIC WRITING WORKSHOP – WRITING AN ARTICLE

Course Aim
The aim of this workshop is to introduce participants to aspects of academic writing of scientific articles in English in terms of grammar and structure as related to genre and function, while providing time for participants to work on their own articles. The course focuses on the language features and structures of academic articles in particular, though can also be useful for participants working on other kinds of academic writing as well, such as monographs, literature reviews etc.
The course takes its point of departure in a functional grammar and genre-based approach and will include examples of generically appropriate sample texts with related exercises, as well as structured writing time for participants to work with their own texts.
The course will be taught in English; however, participants are welcome to ask questions and do group work in Danish. The course incorporates a distribution of instructional activity types including instructor presentations, structured pair and group work as well as time for individual writing on participants’ own drafts.

Prerequisites
In order to participate in the workshop, participants must bring a rough draft or sketch of the article they wish to work on, or at least have started the writing process on an article (or if need be, a chapter in their monograph). In other words, participants should have an idea about the article’s main idea/contribution as well as an outline for the article as well as several paragraphs of text to work with during the three days of the course.
The course works best if you have an idea of what you want to write and have a few pages of text that you can work with, as these will be the basis for your revision/writing exercises. Time will be made available each day to revise, write and edit your article draft during the workshop with sparring from the other participants and from the instructor.
Participants are expected to have a working level of written English language skills at the tertiary level. This workshop focuses on genre-specific language patterns and conventions in academic writing and is not a language/grammar course.

Contributions
Participants should find and bring an example of what they would consider a good article relevant to their field of research. Please send this article in PDF format to annavera@sigsgaard.com a couple of days before the course starts. We will use these articles for analysis and comparison during some of the exercises.

• Participants must bring a computer / tablet for working on their own and other’s drafts (remember a power cable if necessary).

Readings

• Relevant literature and readings will be made available prior to and during the workshop

Course Content

Course content will cover the following topics, prioritized depending on participant needs:

• Genre add text style in articles and papers
• Moving from more spoken-like to more written-like, academic language
• Text structure at the whole-text, paragraph and clause levels
• Text density and clarity
• Punctuation and citation

Suggested Program
The following is a preliminary program; content may be adjusted prior to and during the workshop based on participant levels. Adjustments may also be made underway, depending on participant requests.

The course runs over 3 days.

Day 1: Wednesday November 1st, 10:30 – 15:30

• Introduction
• Your Academic Writing Profile
• The Structure of an academic article (at the whole-text level)
• Thematic structures at the whole-text level
• What is a paragraph (and paragraph structures)

Day 2: Thursday November 2nd, 9:00-15

• Stages in the introduction
• Referring to other people’s work
• Structure at the clause-level (Theme-Rheme)
• Transitions and transitional devices

Day 3: Friday November 3th, 9:00-15

• Coherence and cohesion (making sure your sentences fit together)
• Constructing findings: connecting your data (what we see) with theory (what we know) in your analysis
• Making your language more written like looking at noun- groups and nominalizations

ECTS: Full participation earns 3 ECTS points.

Location: Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Exners plads 7, 8000 Aarhus.

Max number of participants: 14

The seats are distributed between PhD students from Aarhus School of Architecture, The Royal Danish Academy, and Design School Kolding with 5, 5 and 4 seats per institution. Interested PhD students from other institutions will be placed on a waiting list until the deadline for enrolment has exceeded.

Registration deadline: October 9th 2023

Registration via e-mail to PhD coordinator Mia Mimi Flodager, mmf@aarch.dk.