Recognizing and Meeting Norms for Structure and Language
Recommendation:
Within the first half of your doctorate!
Intensive 2 day Workshop
+ 1 day Post online learning
15.11.2018 - 16.11.2018
9.30 am - 5.30 pm
MAINZ seminar room: Staudingerweg 9, room 03-122
Exercise based learning
This workshop concentrates on developing writing skills and strategies to improve one’s professional writing. In order to obtain this, the writer needs to be aware that there are expected norms for various structure and language found within a text. Mastering and utilizing these norms produce a text that the reader is capable of understanding the intended message of the author.
What you will learn
- Structural and language norms for research papers published in English
- Various strategies that will provide assistance to draft texts more efficiently
- Strategies to foster writing strengths in order to minimize writing weaknesses
- Revision techniques
- Feedback strategies
How you will improve after the workshop
- Writing more effectively
- Managing the writing process more professionally
- An awareness of what and for whom you are writing
- Writing more efficiently
- Knowledge of the structural and linguistic expected norms for research papers published in English
What makes it important?
Why is writing named a professional competence?
Excellent scientists need excellent data, but they also need to be able to effectively communicate the results and significance of their research to their peers in the community. Writing good papers is hard work, even for many experienced researchers. Being aware of the criteria that papers must meet and using the writing process efficiently can make the task easier. If the writing is not directed towards a targeted audience and written so that the expected norms for structure and language is not achieved, the reader may misunderstand and/or not fully comprehend the author’s message. Hence, it is vital for this competence to be evaluated and practiced, in order for the audience to understand the message that the author intends it to be.
Major topics of the workshop include
- Managing the writing process professionally
- Understanding the drafting and revision processes
- Finding a focus by identifying an appropriate research question
- Understanding structural and language norms for English research papers
- Giving and receiving feedback
- Recognizing stylistically adequate and inadequate language
How you will be working during the Workshop - Workshop Framework
Throughout the workshop, professional input from the trainer will alternate with practical written exercises and group discussions of relevant issues. There will be plenty of room for your questions and you will concentrate on your own publishing projects.
Because the workshop uses material from participants, there is a call for papers two weeks prior to the workshop. Guidelines, a deadline and where to send the paper will be sent to participants once their enrolment in the workshop is confirmed. During the feedback sessions, participants will examine a draft of this text as well as text drafts submitted by the other participants.
There is an additional writing component with feedback that will take place after the initial two-day workshop and will be performed online.
Who should attend - Workshop Participants
This workshop is most useful for students who already have some writing/publication experience (in any language). This experience may cover abstracts for conferences, single-author or co-authored papers, progress reports for examination committees, proposals for theses/projects/grants, etc.
Students who have not yet published but will in the upcoming future will also benefit from this course.
Your trainer – Profile + Experiences
The workshop will be conducted by Marcy Scholz. After completing a liberal arts degree in the United States (Bachelor of Arts, Davidson College), several writing courses (Duke University and University of North Carolina), Marcy obtained a degree for social work in Darmstadt. In addition to this, she holds a Cambridge University’s (UK) Certificate in Teaching English to Adults (CELTA) and has trained as a writing consultant at the Writing Center in the Pädagogische Hochschule in Freiburg and in International Literacy Management through the University of Zürich. She has assisted various PhD. candidates with their written English, has helped edit textbooks, and has been teaching English since 1993.