Effective scientific writing for PhD students
Course Tutor: Craig Riddell M.Sc., PGCE
Effective Scientific Writing is available to postgraduate students.
This course follows the structure of a typical research paper. Using real-life examples, it presents a philosophy of scientific writing, covers the key areas of grammar related to scientific English, and provides techniques for generating and sustaining reader attention.
The course units are as follows:
| 0 | Preliminaries |
| 1 | Style Matters |
| 2 | Word Choice |
| 3 | First Impressions – Your Title |
| 4 | Articles in your Article |
| 5 | Word Order |
| 6a | Making the Abstract Solid |
| 6b | Grammar for the Abstract |
| 7a | Sentence Flow |
| 7b | Paragraph Structure |
| 8 | The Introduction |
| 9 | Materials and Methods |
| 10a | Expressing Results |
| 10b | Discussing Results |
| 10c | Grammar for the Results & Discussion |
| 11 | The Right Conclusion |
| 12 | Our Full Stop: Punctuation |
The course has been revised and updated to give participants even more opportunities to practise writing and editing their own (and other) scientific texts.
During the course students will present and receive constructive feedback on abstracts, introductions and conclusions they have written. They will be expected to “defend” these pieces of work from a scientific, philosophical and grammatical perspective.
To join this course you must:
- have an intermediate level of English
- be prepared to actively participate
- be willing to do the homework and self-study required
- commit to the course for two successive semesters
The course will be announced by email close to the start of the semester. Application is made directly to the course tutor in response to the email announcement.
Numbers are limited to 8 students per course.