Academic Writing in English: Ethics, Structure, and Style

elective courses

The course is intended for advanced students – at minimum students of the Second Degree (II stopnia). To be accepted into the course, a student must present a previously written short paper written in English for revision and editing during the course. It is acceptable for the paper to have been written for another class or some other purpose

Students must possess fluent skills in all aspects of the English language: reading, writing, understanding speech, and engaging in conversation. The course will be taught in English, all readings will be in English, and all student writing will be in English. This course is not for beginners

This course is for advanced students who are already able to write papers in English and who wish to learn how to improve their texts by revising and editing them according to standards of international scholarship and publishing.

We will examine three aspects of academic writing in English. 1) Ethics – how to engage critically yet collegially with the writings of others and how to assure that one’s writing is truly one’s own, especially in light of available artificial-intelligence programs for generating prose. 2) Structure – how to articulate a clear, central argument in the paper’s title, abstract, and introduction, and how to support the argument with evidence in the body of the text. 3) English style – how to craft coherent paragraphs with lean, compelling sentences.

Each student should submit to the instructor a short paper before the first class meeting, one that has been written prior to the course and on which the student will focus in the semester.

It is by now indispensable for students at European universities to write in English. After acquiring basic writing skills, however, students still need to learn to revise their papers for publication. Both steps in the process are crucial for success – the creation of a text and the clarification of its meaning through revision. Editors of international journals seek to publish articles that are ethically prepared, well-structured, and stylistically effective.

In this course, students will gain a working familiarity with international standards for the writing, revision, and editing of scholarly manuscripts for publication. The course is designed for the advanced student (at a minimum, a student of II stopnia) who has already written a paper for another purpose (a previous course, a conference, etc.), which the student would like to improve, potentially for publication.

The course will be conducted as a workshop. Students will read materials relevant to the three aspects of academic writing named in the course title in order to extract practical guidelines.

The section on ethics will examine benefits and pitfalls of cooperating with colleagues on the production of one’s own text. What constitutes useful criticism and what are the limits of a colleague’s “helpful” re-writing? How should an author engage scholarship which contradicts one’s own analyses? Beyond that, what is the proper use of Artificial Intelligence programs: Spellcheck, Grammarly for editing? GoogleTranslate? Most controversially, is there a proper use of ChatGPT for generating prose? Another ethical concern arises from the dominance of English as a lingua franca in worldwide scholarly discourse. The universalist claims of the norms and practices of this discourse, visible most saliently in academic communities in North America, Britain, and Australia, and to an extent also in Europe, have attained hegemonic status. Ethics requires that the universalist claims of “academic writing in English” be submitted to a decolonizing critique. This will be part of the course’s discussion of the ethics of writing.

As a practical matter, however, this majority of the course will concentrate on identifying, and learning to craft, the structure of a text expected by editors of English-language international journals. The principal structural element editors look for is a clearly articulated central argument, in which the author identifies the work’s contribution to scholarship, and which serves as the organizing principle for presenting evidence to support the author’s claims.

Finally, the course will address effective English style. Students will become familiar with scholarship on the productive use of the specificities of English-language syntax for constructing an academic text’s narrative flow. The construction of the text will be accomplished primarily by means of coherent paragraphs and lucid, compelling sentences.

In addition to attending class meetings, students should expect to devote twice the amount of time of a class period to reading and writing outside of class. There will be three principal writing assignments, which will consist of successive revisions of the text that had been presented on the first day of the course. The revisions should be annotated by references to readings and class

discussion. (For this 30-hour course, 60 hours is the additional time required outside of class to achieve the desired effects of learning.)

Terminy zajęć i konsultacji:

22.II - zajęcia

28.II konsultacje indywidualne (9:45-11:15 s. 4 lub 13:15-14:45 s. przy Dziekanacie)

29.II - zajęcia

14.III (jedyne spotkanie przeprowadzone zdalnie)

11.IV - zajęcia

17.IV konsultacje indywidualne (9:45-11:15 s. 4 lub 13:15-14:45 s. przy Dziekanacie)

18.IV - zajęcia

16.V - zajęcia

22.V konsultacje indywidualne (9:45-11:15 s. 4 lub 13:15-14:45 s. przy Dziekanacie)

23.V - zajęcia

Wendy Belcher, “Main reason articles are rejected: No argument,” in Writing your Journal Article,” Sage Publications, 2009.

Wayne Booth, et. al., “Titles and Abstracts” in The Craft of Research, University of Chicago Press, fourth edition, first published, 1995.

George Gopen and Judith Swan, “The Science of Scientific Writing, in the American Scientist (Nov-Dec 1990).

Richard Lanham, “Noun styles and verb styles” in Analyzing Prose, Bloomsbury, first published, 1983.

Joseph Williams, Elements of Style

Joseph Williams, “Problems into PROBLEMS: A Rhetoric of Motivation,” paper, University of Chicago, 1995

Po zakończeniu zajęć student: K_W04, K_U03, K_U06, K_U07, K_U08, K_U09, K_U11, K_K03, K_K05

- knows how to use methods of analysis and interpretation of scholarly texts

- knows how to conduct research (in accordance with the principles of protection of intellectual property rights) and demonstrate the results of their research work

- knows how to participate in academic conferences, symposiums, and debates

- knows how to complete an academic writing assignment using digital solutions and respecting the principles of protection of intellectual property

- knows how to analyse scholarly publications in the area of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences in Polish and a foreign language

- has a good command of a foreign language at the upper-intermediate level

- understands and knows how to implement the principles of teamwork

- is competent to carry out a self-appointed task using appropriate solutions and methods

- is empathetic and respects the cultural diversity of a community

Criteria of assessment

Active participation in class demonstrating a knowledge of the readings. Engagement with comments made by others.

Consistent attendance and timely submission of assignments.

Quality of written assignments with special emphasis on the quality of revising and editing according to guidelines proposed in class.

Accurate and informative annotation of revisions.

The method of assessment will be formative, that is, its intent will be to track student progress and encourage improvement.

and encourage improvement