This course is designed for academic writers (PhD candidates and beyond) who already have experience with writing for publication and who want to further refine their writing skills.
Academic writing has a bad reputation: it’s often described as stuffy, boring, and formulaic. At the same time, as an academic writer, you may not feel you have the space to experiment with a more creative or engaging style. You may worry about not sounding academic enough. And while the many writing tools available out there, including generative AI tools, may make it easier to write an error-free text, you may be looking to move beyond the standard academic phrases and develop an attractive and personal style.
In this course, we’ll explore aspects of style by unpacking academic conventions, disciplinary practices and personal preferences. The goal of the course is to expand your repertoire in terms of word choice, sentence structures, and stylistic options. This will allow you to work on developing your own style.
Course setup
In the course, we'll work with the participants' own texts, using them as the basis for various writing exercises. The course consists of three group sessions and an individual tutorial and offers plenty of opportunities for peer and teacher feedback. Assessment is on the basis of two rewritten texts. You’ll receive feedback on your texts through ELS-Online, the ALP feedback system.
Dates
Upon request
Practical information
This course is open to all PhD candidates and other researchers affiliated with the VU. We apply a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 participants. One way to sign up for this course is as a small group from the same broad scientific discipline. This course is designed for experienced writers and is a follow-up course to Advanced Academic Writing for PhD Researchers.
Credits
3EC
Fee
€ 475
Location
The meetings take place on the VU campus.
Teacher
Dr. Gea Dreschler
Registration
If you’re interested in this course, please send an email to the ALP's course administration: alp.sgw@vu.nl. Please include a short explanation about your motivation, writing experience, and previous writing courses that you’ve taken, and include a recent writing sample of about 1000 words. For questions, you can also e-mail the teacher, g.a.dreschler@vu.nl.