How to improve your own text

The text is ready. What’s next? Before sending it to the journal, it is worth looking at it critically one more time and brushing it up with the help of self-editing strategies. But what if you are not sure you know how to use these strategies? 

The AWC HSE ran a new course "Self-Editing: How to Become Happy with What You Write" with the trainer Natalia Ivanova-Slavianskaia. Natalia helped the participants get acquainted with the most typical mistakes in academic texts written in English and shared helpful self-editing strategies. Under Natalia’s supervision, the participants critically looked at their own texts several times evaluating it on different levels and finally coming up with an improved version.

The group’s feedback was highly favorable:

- “I learnt to assess the paper critically, from another person's view. The main takeaways are: structuring paragraphs and sentences logically, introducing strong points first, rewriting sentences according to the logic of the English language, not Russian. I am really grateful to the trainer and the AWC.”

- “I would like to thank Natalia for this practice-oriented course. It was not some theory, but a real hands-on experience.”

- “I am so grateful to Natalia for the course, the opportunity to be part of the team. Natalia has encouraged me not to quit but keep writing and view mistakes as valuable tools.”

What about you? Do you know how to make your text better? We will repeat the course, so follow our newsletter and join the group next time.