English Academic Writing
Subject:

M0008 Introductory Writing Course in English/ 英文ライティング

Instructor:

Arina Brylko (Fukuoka Women’s University)
Email: brylko@yahoo.com

Organizer:

Andrew Spring (MMS)
Email: Spring@cm.kyushu-u.ac.jp

Place:

Zoom Class

Credit:2

Schedule:

Wednesday, 3rd period (13:00-14:30) and Wednesday, 4th period (14.50-16.20)

Levels:Students will be separated into beginner and advanced groups by English scores.

Course Description:
This course intends to improve writing skills of students who will write their own research articles tosubmit to academic journals and conferences.
In this course, students will develop the technical writing skills they need to construct research
articles in engineering. They will learn about considerations in academic / technical writing andconsider two basic types of texts used in academic / technical writing. Students will also look at
software tools and corpora (collections of language samples) that can assist them in the writing ofresearch papers. Students will create their own corpus of research papers in their respective fields
and will use it throughout the course.
Students will write some parts of a research paper in their field of specialization (introduction,methodology and a part of result/discussion section). For each part of the research paper, students
will first analyze the sample texts in their corpus. This will help students to understand whichelements are unique to individual disciplines. They will apply what they have learned in their own
writing.

Course objectives:
In this course, students will learn to:•Use text analysis tools to identify differences in the audience, purpose, structure, style, andpresentation of technical texts in different fields;•

Identify the structure of technical research papers in specialist fields;•

Write general-specific and problem-solution texts;•

Write the title, abstract, introduction, materials/methods, results, discussion/conclusion
sections of a research paper in a specialist field;•

Write simple and extended definitions;•

Explain methods and processes;•

Explain information in figures and tables;•

Know how to strengthen or weaken the interpretation of research findings through hedging;•

Understand the importance of references, citations, and avoidance of plagiarism;•

Follow common conventions for citing and referencing information in a research article.

Course Policies:
Attendance and Student Participation
Students are expected to attend each class, and actively participate in group and class discussions.
Students will also be required to complete all homework exercises and writing assignments in atimely manner.
•Please mute or deactivate mobile phones before class and keep them silent for the duration.

•Use of mobile devices during class is acceptable if a task or activity requiring them isplanned. Otherwise, let’s keep our phones muted or off during class.

Assignments:
Improving writing skills requires a lot of writing practice. The course is designed to give students
opportunities to complete various writing tasks, such as exercises from the textbook, short writing
assignments and three main writing tasks (introduction, methods and a part of a result anddiscussion section).

Evaluation:
Exercises: 10%
Short writing assignments: 30%
3 main writing tasks: 60% (20% each)

Required Course Text:
Swales, J.M & Feak, C. B. (2012). Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills(3rd ed.). USA, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan.

Application to this course:
We will accept up to 15 students for this class to keep the teaching quality. If you want to participate
in this class, please send e-mail to Spring@cm.kyushu-u.ac.jp until October 10 with the below
information.
••••

Your name, student ID, department, grade (M1, M2, D1, D2, D3)Your experience/ future possibility to write academic papers in English
Your English score (TOIEC, TOEFL, IELTS, etc)
Your motivation

Course Schedule:
Week 1 – October 14
Week 2 - October 21
Week 3 - October 28
Week 4 – November 4
Week 5 – November 11
Week 6 - November 25
Week 7 – December 2
Week 8 - December 9
Week 9 - December 16
Week 10 - December 23
Week 11 – January 6
Week 12 - January 20
Week 13 - January 27
Week 14 – February 3
Week 15 – February 10