Lesson 1 Course information; Academic English style and grammar conventions

Course overview, requirements and policies

What is academic English?

Writing in an academic style: qualifying and hedging, use of passive voice, nominalisation

Use of articles

Lesson 2 Thesis structure; Supporting arguments with evidence

Thesis structure and signposting language

Critical thinking: writing logical arguments

Structuring paragraphs: topic and supporting sentences; developing and

supporting claims with evidence

Writing homework: the thesis proposal

Lesson 3 Summarizing; Paraphrasing; Referencing

Writing: the thesis proposal (recognizing academic style, editing)

Conjunctions and sentence connectors, e.g. to express cause and effect

Summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting

Avoiding plagiarism

Referencing overview (covered in the course on qualitative methods)

Lesson 4 The literature review

The literature review: structure, content and language

Synthesizing from source material

Reporting words

WRITING ASSIGNMENT 1: the literature review (one page)

Lesson 5 The methodology section

Writing: the literature review (text analysis; error correction; editing practice)

Explaining methodology and rationale

Midterm test review

Lesson 6 Midterm test; The results section (the findings)

Midterm test on lessons 1-5: academic style, use of articles, qualifying and hedging, passive voice,

nominalisation, conjunctions and sentence connectors, paraphrasing, reporting words

The results section: structure, content and language

Discussing and interpreting data in figures, graphs and tables

Optional writing homework: a description of a figure, graph or table

Lesson 7 The discussion section (evaluation and discussion)

Discussing and interpreting research and data

WRITING ASSIGNMENT 2: the conclusion of the results section (2-3 paragraphs)

Lesson 8 The thesis conclusion

Writing assignment 2: the conclusion of the results section (text analysis; error correction;

editing practice)

The thesis conclusion: structure, content and language

WRITING ASSIGNMENT 3: the thesis conclusion

Lesson 9 The thesis introduction

Writing assignment 3: the thesis conclusion (text analysis; error correction; editing practice)

The thesis introduction: structure, content and language

WRITING ASSIGNMENT 4: the thesis introduction

Lesson 10 Academic presentation skills; Punctuation

Writing assignment 4: the thesis introduction (text analysis; error correction; editing practice)

Punctuation (colons, semicolons and commas)

Academic presentation skills: presenting a thesis in 5 minutes – “a spoken abstract”

Signpost language

Bullet points: effective use (spoken versus written English) and correct format

Lesson 11 The abstract

Abstracts: purpose, structure, content and language

Student thesis or research presentations and defence (5 minute “spoken abstracts”)

Lesson 12 Presentations; Review

Student thesis or research presentations and defence (5 minute “spoken abstracts”)

Review of key points