Academic Writing Seminar

with Dr. Michael Holohan

Duration:      2 sessions, 6 hours per session, plus optional 1-on-1 consultations

Seminar Description:  

Participants will carefully study the stylistic principles of effective and clear academic writing in English while learning from the successes and difficulties of their fellow writers. 

This seminar is aimed at young researchers and doctoral students. The sessions emphasize stylistic guidelines for effective and clear English writing on a high academic level, and are appropriate for participants from any language background.

After completing this seminar, participants will be able to express themselves with greater clarity and precision in written English and will be familiar with strategies for effective academic writing. Participants will develop techniques to implement compelling and clear sentence constructions, create cohesion within and between sentences, and render paragraphs concise through specific semantic and syntactic choices. The seminar will prepare them for publishing in international peer-reviewed journals or for effectively working on their dissertation projects.

Specific topics covered include: 

  • Crafting sentences that sound clear and fluent in written English

  • Specific conventions of academic language in English

  • Writing effective abstracts for conference submissions and articles

  • Important structural elements of

    academic texts such as: 

    • Paragraphs as a key unit of argumentative writing

    • Introductions as the way to efficiently set the stage for an article/chapter

    • Conclusions as a means to effectively summarize an argument

Seminar Structure:

Seminar sessions adopt a communicative and skills-oriented approach to teaching academic writing. The sessions combine lectures, discussions, case studies, group work, and peer workshopping.  

The goal of the seminar is for participants to learn and practice strategies for effective academic writing. Participants are required to bring in an excerpt from their ongoing work to the first session and will continue to work on this text throughout the seminar. 

For more information about scheduling and costs, please contact me.