Academic Skills I: Academic Writing

Comprising of six sessions held bi-weekly, this course invites Ph.D. students to rethink their approaches to academic outputs through the early adoption of professional standards of development and execution. Students will focus on six fundamentals of their craft: 1) process-driven writing, 2) writing style, 3) organization, 4) argumentation and positioning, 5) editing, and 6) introductions and conclusions. Their introduction to the rigors of international academic publishing standards, will equip students with the thinking and skills needed maximize the impact and quality of their theses, and furnish them with transferable skills that will facilitate their production of world-leading outputs across their careers.

TARGETED LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this course, students are expected to show growing competencies in:

• Process-driven approaches to academic outputs.
• The production of precise, economical, elegant prose
• The production of expertly structured scholarship
• The production of expertly structured paragraphs
• The adoption of practical editorial techniques
• The production of argument-driven scholarship
• The production of strategically positioned scholarship
• The production of introductions and conclusions showcasing key functions
• The production of professional quality abstracts likely to attract publishers
• Self-critique and peer-to-peer critique of academic outputs