230188 Advanced Academic Writing (S) (WiSe 2023/2024)

This class is intended to hone students’ critical thinking and academic writing skills and prepare them for their own module papers and theses with a focus on linguistic topics. It combines a theoretical “how-to” approach with a practical “hands-on” approach to academic writing. This means that while seminal literature and writing guides form the theoretical and methodological basis for our investigations, we will be exploring and developing academic writing hands-on. We will train and develop macro-level skills related to the structure of the paper, e.g., how to formulate thesis statements, write paragraphs and develop an argument, and micro-level skills revolving around the academic register, e.g. sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, style. In addition to that, this course provides students with a set of methods and skills, focusing on the research cycle, e.g. how to choose a good topic, find and reference the literature and how to collect and analyse the data. The class enables students to conceive of authentic academic writing and further develop their own writing skills in diverse in-class writing exercises which will be analysed and peer-reviewed by fellow students and the instructor.