Course "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 draft which will be finalized by the end of the course.

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: March 29 - May 5
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.

Participants' Feedback:

• “I am glad to have signed up for the course. It made me stay motivated, try to meet deadlines, look at my project from a new perspective, narrow down the topic, have some points regarding academic writing cleared up. Thank you very much for such an opportunity to develop and advance my academic writing skills!”
• “I want to thank Natalia for her involvement and guidance. She gave good recommendations about the whole process of writing and about my actual text. She was very delicate and polite in communication, and the course itself was well-organized and full of new information for me.”
• “First, I found out what the IMRAD structure is. Second, I acquired a lot of useful information about choosing the target journal, working with the selected article. Third, I got to know about the method of steps, when you check the logic of the text, moving step by step, from one idea to another, analyzing if there are any gaps between your ideas. I think I will use all of this new information in my future work.”