scholarly journals Academic writing support

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Lönn-Stensrud ◽  
Martina Marcellova ◽  
Ingerid Straume ◽  
Rigmor Soberg ◽  
Anne Gerd Granås

Higher education across Europe is in transition due to professionalization of the traditional academic education. One response to these changes is to focus on transferable skills (1,2). At the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, the vision for the education strategy is that the students shall succeed both scientifically and professionally (3,4). Communication is mentioned as one of the transferable skills important to succeed professionally (4).  Clear and comprehensible communication is a crucial transferable skill for pharmacists. Therefore, pharmacy students are evaluated on written communication throughout a 5-year curriculum, including evaluation of e.g. laboratory reports, essays, exams and a master thesis.   Over the last decade, the proportion of pharmacy students with Norwegian as native language has decreased. A general impression is also that students in general struggle to express themselves in writing. In 2019, the Department of Pharmacy, the Academic Writing Centre and the Science Library initiated a pilot project aiming to strengthen the academic writing of pharmacy students during the first year of study. 8 seminars about assignment interpretation, text evaluation, and structure and compositions of different assignments, were planned. Further, students were to be mentored in small groups by student mentors. The aim was to provide the pharmacy students with the right tools and skills in writing various academic texts.   This presentation will illuminate how University libraries can collaborate with faculties and departments by developing innovative education with the aim for students to gain generic writing knowledge and hands-on skills. We will describe and discuss the series of seminars regarding content, assignments, outcome and progress, from the Science library perspective. The seminars will be evaluated by the students and staff, and the findings will be presented and discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nur Afifi

Grammatical metaphor is considered to be the key linguistic resource in the creation of academic discourse. In a pedagogical context, identification of grammatical metaphor in students’ writing can be used as a measurement of students’ academic literacy level to determine actions to improve the existing situation. In Indonesian EFL context, students’ grammatical metaphor deployment and development has not been much studied, despite its strategic role in improving students’ academic literacy. This paper presents a first step towards understanding Indonesian tertiary students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses in academic literacy through the identification of ideational grammatical metaphor deployment and development. Using cross-sectional data from first year and third year students in a State Islamic College in a rural area of Indonesia, the students’ academic writing were analyzed for the deployment of experiential grammatical metaphor. The findings show that the two groups of different levels of participants deployed similar types of reconstrual of experiential grammatical metaphor. Process to Thing transcategorisation was the most frequent type of experiential grammatical metaphor reconstrual across the two groups, while Relator to Process was the most frequent logical grammatical metaphor reconstrual in both groups.  Third-year students surpassed the first-year group in the frequency and proportion of instances of grammatical metaphor deployment. This study has shown that the development of learners’ academic writing was limited. Thus, it was suggested that a more explicit pedagogy to expose students to grammatical metaphor and more basic lexicogrammar teaching to enable the students to write academic texts is warranted.



Author(s):  
Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

A main challenge for academic writing for students at master thesis level is to find the right perspective from which to launch the argument of the thesis. In the context of international business (IB) studies, the eclectic theoretical paradigm of the field offers students myriad frameworks from which to frame their research questions. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how perspective in academic writing can be taught and learnt in a systematic manner. Taking the example of the teaching of culture theory in international business (IB) studies, this chapter illustrates how the deictic or “pointer” function of the pronoun system in language can be used to help perspective research position and research design.



2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hege Charlotte Lysholm Faber ◽  
Michael Grote ◽  
Eli Heldaas Seland

Courses in “generic” or “transferable” skills have during the last decade become an established part of the PhD-education in Norway, and they are today an important part of the academic libraries’ research support. At the same time academic writing centers and other writing support initiatives have spread widely in university libraries. “Writing” as a “transferable skill” has also advanced into the courses for PhD-candidates, accompanied by courses on search techniques, workflow issues and the publishing process. This paper will try to define actual PhD-candidate needs regarding the writing process and discuss how these can be addressed in courses in transferable skills at Norwegian university libraries. How dissertations may be structured, how research literature is reviewed or how literature searches are conducted varies strongly between different fields of research and depends a lot on subject-related factors like methodological requirements, genre conventions and research workflow. How can the libraries’ courses and internet resources meet the researchers’ demands for customized, relevant, project-related writing guidance, whilst the researchers’ projects are so totally different from each other in regard to genre, topic, method, theory and the role of writing in the research process? In the light of recent research on writing support we want to discuss current practices in courses, workshops and guidance for PhD-candidates in Norwegian university libraries and make some practical suggestions for writing education on PhD level.



2012 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Sarah Marcoux ◽  
Liv Catherine Marken ◽  
Stan Yu

This paper describes the results of a pilot project designed to improve students’ academic writing in a large (200-student) first-year Agriculture class at the University of Saskatchewan. In collaboration with the course’s professor, the Writing Centre coordinator and a summer student designed curriculum for four two-hour Writing Group sessions carved out of weekly scheduled lab times, and trained peer mentors to lead students through the writing process.  Writing Groups fostered a sense of community in the otherwise-isolated process of writing a challenging term paper, and provided opportunities for rich and frequent feedback. Ultimately, Writing Groups were shown to demystify the process of academic writing, making it more manageable and accessible to students.



1998 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 95-100
Author(s):  
Irene Visser

The general writing competence of students entering university in the Netherlands is seen as barely sufficient. Writing programmes in secondary education in the Netherlands are seen as deficient in many respects. Also, since teachers at secondary schools have so far been free to set their own writing standards, students in the first year of university courses generally display a wide range of proficiency in writing. The present situation is, therefore, far from satisfactory. This article presents the findings of interviews held at the University' of Groningen during September and October 1997 on this subject, comparing these with relevant data from research papers and conference reports. It concludes with suggesting a solution to these problems of transition between secondary and academic education: a faculty-wide, systematic academic writing programme.



2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sena Crutchley

This article describes how a telepractice pilot project was used as a vehicle to train first-year graduate clinicians in speech-language pathology. To date, six graduate clinicians have been trained in the delivery of telepractice at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Components of telepractice training are described and the benefits and limitations of telepractice as part of clinical practicum are discussed. In addition, aspects of training support personnel involved in telepractice are outlined.



2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-43
Author(s):  
Nadja Reinhard

Abstract According to Jürgen Habermas, equality amongst those of unequal social standing in 18th-century society was limited to the private sphere. Though Gottsched shows how to use this sphere strategically for private policy and cooperation, he knows how to modify his publication strategies wisely in order to achieve the greatest and best possible effectiveness in his attempt to popularise Enlightenment. By his Moralische Wochenschriften as well as by his more popular way of academic writing for students he spreads controversial ideas such as theoretical and practical reason’s primacy over theologic argumentations, the academic education of women, or female authorship. Yet, he does so prudently and expertly uses the opportunities offered by publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym to support scientific integration of women. Gottsched relied upon a variety of rhetorical strategies to introduce controversial ideas to the broader public without embracing them openly. Employing different strategies of publication, he pursued his agenda as a moral educator, promoted emancipation from religious authorities, and advanced his own brand of cultural nationalism in order to unfold and popularise the German literary tradition. He thus significantly contributed to the structural transformation of the public sphere as described by Heinrich Bosse.



Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter focuses on the role of the dominant player in conservative media, Fox News, during the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. It looks at three case studies to illustrate how Fox News used its position at the core of the right-wing media ecosystem repeatedly to mount propaganda attacks in support of Trump: the Michael Flynn firing in March 2017, when Fox adopted the “deep state” framing of the entire controversy; the James Comey firing and Robert Mueller appointment in May 2017; when Fox propagated the Seth Rich murder conspiracy; and in October and November, when the arrests of Paul Manafort and guilty plea of Flynn seemed to mark a new level of threat to the president, Fox reframed the Uranium One story as an attack on the integrity of the FBI and Justice Department officials in charge of the investigation.



Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts

This chapter presents the book’s macrolevel findings about the architecture of political communication and the news media ecosystem in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Two million stories published during the 2016 presidential election campaign are analyzed, along with another 1.9 million stories about Donald Trump’s presidency during his first year. The chapter examines patterns of interlinking between online media sources to understand the relations of authority and credibility among publishers, as well as the media sharing practices of Twitter and Facebook users to elucidate social media attention patterns. The data and mapping reveal not only a profoundly polarized media landscape but stark asymmetry: the right is more insular, skewed towards the extreme, and set apart from the more integrated media ecosystem of the center, center-left, and left.



Author(s):  
Ly Tayseng

This chapter gives an overview of the law on contract formation and third party beneficiaries in Cambodia. Much of the discussion is tentative since the new Cambodian Civil Code only entered into force from 21 December 2011 and there is little case law and academic writing fleshing out its provisions. The Code owes much to the Japanese Civil Code of 1898 and, like the latter, does not have a requirement of consideration and seldom imposes formal requirements but there are a few statutory exceptions from the principle of freedom from form. For a binding contract, the agreement of the parties is required and the offer must be made with the intention to create a legally binding obligation and becomes effective once it reaches the offeree. The new Code explicitly provides that the parties to the contract may agree to confer a right arising under the contract upon a third party. This right accrues directly from their agreement; it is not required that the third party declare its intention to accept the right.



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