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Regular version of the site

Criticism: how to balance effectiveness and politeness

The Academic Writing Center ran a face-to-face workshop on constructive criticism in the academic context with our speaker Heather Belgorodtseva.

Criticism: how to balance effectiveness and politeness

Cross-cultural communication is abundant with challenges and pitfalls. Criticizing someone in a foreign language is an especially delicate task: it requires a language proficiency beyond the knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

The Academic Writing Center ran a face-to-face workshop on constructive criticism in the academic context with our speaker Heather Belgorodtseva. What are the differences between positive and negative politeness strategies? How to get your message across without offending the recipient? Where does the thin line between excessive politeness and rudeness lie? How to reply politely to a reviewer’s criticism? Participants discussed these questions and practiced rewriting critical comments using the strategies offered by the speaker.

We are proud to say that the participants gave the workshop the highest mark – 10 out of 10!

  • “It was extremely informative and very useful for my job.”
  • “I really like the speaker's view of criticism; it was very exciting. I was only expecting to learn the phrases how to criticize politely, but the speaker showed us how to correct phrases indirectly and explained that too polite phrases express rudeness; that is why it is very important to keep a balance in an academic criticism.”

This workshop was the last face-to-face event in this semester. Join our online workshops and courses.