230728 Englisch: Englisch Academic Writing II: Reading & Writing for Research (S) (SoSe 2026)

Students must complete several text-analysis mini-projects and one major abstract writing project to receive LPs. Completion of the major abstract project will entail several rewrites and edits, as per notes given by the instructor.

1) SHORT TEXT-ANALYSIS PROJECTS: In class and in the homework students will do close-readings and analyses of short academic articles and texts. Once the text has been analyzed for structure, organization and syntactical clarity, students will extract the most important information from the text, organize it, paraphrase it and then write it into a short academic-style summary.

II) ABSTRACT WRITING PROJECT: In preparation for writing an abstract for an academic publication, students will read, analyze and rewrite multiple abstracts taken from published academic papers. Students will then close-read a 2500 word academic publication, extract the key information and write an abstract of 275 words that accurately describes the research.

A weekly homework script will be used which contains the reading and writing assignments as well as problem exercise sets on paraphrasing, revision, editing and rewriting techniques as used in English academic writing.

Please note that weekly participation in the (weekly) Friday class sessions is required. Students who will miss more than 3 classes should consider waiting to take this course in a future semester. Individual Zoom conferences will take place during the semester to discuss the writing and revisions of the writing assignments.

-- Please note that this course will be online only. All lessons will be given using Zoom and the online Moodle platform.

Requirements for participation, required level

"Academic Writing II. READING & WRITING FOR RESEARCH" is an advanced native-speaker university level English course.

The course will emphasize the skills necessary for reading and parsing research articles and publications, as well as the writing techniques necessary for writing academic papers and theses in English.

I) Close-Reading Skills
We will "close-read" several academic articles and texts each week
- we will analyze each text for writing quality, including organization and structure, subject-verb focus and coherence, topic-supporting paragraph structure and progression, etc.
- After analyzing each text, students will identify and extract the most relevant information, organize it, paraphrase it and then write a short and concise academic-style summary

II) The Abstract Writing Project
Students write a 275-word abstract for the publication "Academic Writing and Culture: An Overview of Differences in English, French and German."

III) Weekly Advanced Writing Exercises, including:
- strict use of parallel construction, both at the sentence and paragraph level
- the proper use of relative, participle and prepositional clauses to vary sentence structure
- the use of active voice
- rewriting nominatives, expletives and passive voice structures for better precision and focus

Suggested: an English reading comprehension level of B2 - C1
- completion of Academic Writing I
- OR experience writing Bachelors, Masters or PhD Theses or research for professional journals

NOTE: Students writing theses in English for advanced degrees (and don't need the LPs) are welcome to attend the course as their schedule permits.

** The course requires 1-2 hours of highly-focused weekly writing homework each week.** To adjust the course to students' needs, a short questionnaire is asked (not required):

- https://robertcthomas.com/uni-writing-i-ii-questionnaire/
- send to robert.thomas@uni-bielefeld.de

This course will take place entirely online.