Course: Academic Writing: The Research Article / 2016-17 / quadrimesters 1 & 2

The Academic Writing—The Research Article course (24 hours) is held twice a year: once in the first semester and once in the second semester. The course is intended for PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers who have already written, or are in the process of writing an article or a chapter of a thesis. There is a limited number of places reserved for post-doctoral researchers. Groups will ideally comprise up to 12 participants actively involved in writing during the semester they are taking the course.
The aim of the course is to enable researchers to take more confident control of their own writing. The course provides writing resources and a good introduction to strategies to improve productivity when writing in an additional language. To improve readability for an international audience and accuracy of written expression, the course focuses on organisational principles in writing and on frequent language editing difficulties, based partially on examples and exercises, and partially on participants’ own work (sections of an article or of a thesis chapter). Participants are also encouraged to develop sufficient awareness of accuracy and readability issues in English to be able to give relevant feedback on writing to other writers.

Instructor:
Gill LUCY, Gillian.Lucy@ulb.ac.be

Schedule:
Students may follow one course, either in the first or in the second quadrimester; individual group timetables to be announced. You can find the academic calendar week timetable on the ULB website.
First quadrimester: One 2-hour session per week for 12 weeks, in academic calendar weeks 1-6 and 8-13.
Second quadrimester: One 2-hour session per week for 12 weeks, from academic calendar week 21 (week beginning 06/02/2017) to academic calendar week 34, excluding the spring break.
Place: Campus Solbosch, (timetables and rooms to be announced).

Prerequisites:
i) The course is given entirely in English; before starting the course, participants must be sufficiently fluent in English (Intermediate Level B1+ minimum) to be able to contribute with confidence to group discussion about writing.
ii) Participants must be actively writing in English; experience shows that the course is most useful when doctoral students have already made considerable progress in clarifying the purpose of their research and in articulating their ideas in a first article or thesis chapter. For this reason, the course is not normally recommended for students in the first year of their doctoral programme.

Application:
Candidates should:
i) contact, using their ULB email address, the course instructor (Gillian.Lucy@ulb.ac.be) for an application form
ii) complete the application form as indicated
iii) send the completed application form back to the instructor (Gillian.Lucy@ulb.ac.be), [subject line: Academic Writing Course 2016-2017, Family name].
iv) respect the application deadlines:
for the first quadrimester course: Thursday 15th September, 2016;
for the second quadrimester course: Thursday 19th January, 2017.
Applicants meeting the entry requirements will be accepted on a first-come, first-served basis. For doctoral students, priority is given to students from year 2 onwards.
To obtain credits for the course, a certificate of attendance will be issued during the final class on condition the student attends 75% of their group's classes. There is no final examination.