The purpose of this online session is to explore useful strategies for producing clear, coherent and concise academic texts such as doctoral theses and journal papers. We will consider the importance of writing to prompts in order to 1. clarify one’s aims, as author, of a piece of writing; and 2. Identify the needs and expectations of the target readership.

The session will consist of presentation, discussion of key points raised and short individual work tasks followed by a writing exercise, which will be conducted offline for 30 minutes.  The group will then return online for discussion of the exercise, summary of the session and questions.  Participants will benefit most from the session if they have a piece of academic writing that they are currently working on which they can focus on in the exercise.

Dr Alison Yeung is an independent academic writing consultant who delivers writing training to a number of research institutions in the South of England.  Prior to that she was Academic Writing Teaching Fellow at the University of Surrey for seven years, where she designed and delivered writing training programmes and one-to-one support for doctoral researchers, early career researchers and academics. She is co-author of Mentoring to Empower Researchers and Inspiring Collaboration and Engagement, two new titles added to the Success in Research series published by Sage Publications.

Programme

•        11.00-11.25 Online input: Writing to prompts 1 - Writing for self

•        11.25-11.40 Offline individual task

•        11.40-12.00 Online input: Writing to prompts 2 – Writing for others

•        12.00-12.10 Online break-out groups

•        12.10-12.20 Online reporting back from break-out groups

•        12.20-12.35 Online input: Using prompts to structure paragraphs

•        12.35-12.50 Offline individual task

•        12.50-13.15 Online discussion of individual task, summary & Q/A

•        13.15            End