Сourse "Basics of Writing an Empirical Research Article in English"

The purpose of this online course is to teach the basics of research writing. The course program covers the main aspects of successful intercultural academic communication: the usage of academic English by Russian-speaking researchers in their articles, language and speech culture of academic English, argumentative language techniques, academic grammar, and punctuation rules. The aim is to develop skills for writing an empirical research article in regards to culturally and professionally conditioned rhetorical traditions.

During the course, you will work on your own research paper which will be finalized by the end of the course. 

Participants are expected to write drafts of their articles, therefore a prerequisite for participation in the course is a research project in progress.

Trainer: Natalia Smirnova, Ph.D. in teaching English as a foreign language, Associate Professor, Head of the Foreign Languages Department at the HSE University in St. Petersburg.  She has designed and taught courses in Research Writing, Writing for Publication, Rhetoric, Argumentation and Writing both for students and researchers. Natalia has a strong research interest in the social perspectives on writing, ESOL pedagogies, and writing assessment. 

Dates: April 13 - May 23 (40 a/h)
Format:  online

English level requirement: B2+

How do I get accepted? You should be a full-time employee from teaching or research staff at the HSE.

The course is offered on a competitive basis. Please, fill out an online registration form and write a motivation letter in English (about 300 words). It should specify your research field and theme and include your experience of writing research papers in English. Please describe the difficulties you have faced when writing a research article and explain how new skills are relevant to your teaching and/or scientific career.

For more information on how to write a strong motivation letter, please read the AWC blog.

Partipants' Feedback:

• "This course is amazing: it's focused and intensive, everything in it works towards the final goal. It is what I was hoping it to be. The support made it easier to move forward. Many thanks to Natalia and AWC!"
• "It was inspiring! I think this course is one of the most important and useful I had so far."
• "I would like to thank Natalia for a great course rich with useful information, and for her support and help with writing the draft! I enjoyed the course and found many ideas which I will definitely use when writing papers."
• "I've met my target draft objective - I've got complete understanding of my article structure. I've managed to write some principal parts of the article during the course period."