English Academic Writing Courses

Training in writing helps students express lucidly their ideas by cultivating high analytical, integrative, and evaluative skills. The training also enables them to clearly and coherently present their research outcomes so as to enhance their communication and collaboration with fellow researchers and increase the likelihood of having their research published in academic journals.

Training in writing cannot solely rely on giving consultation services where to provide students with feedback on how to revise articles or on offering short-term courses. Advanced writing involves high exercise of analytical and critical thinking abilities and deep understanding of rhetoric and structure. Such skills can only be achieved through establishing a long-term program where to give students formal writing instruction and train their inquiring and analytical abilities via interactive teaching with a view to enhancing their learning of academic subjects and their professional writing abilities.

Therefore, AWEC has developed a series of courses and teaching materials for students whose mother tongue is Chinese. This series systematically builds students’ academic writing abilities in terms of vocabulary, collocations, grammar, article structures, and moves and steps in research papers. After students have established a solid foundation in academic writing, they can further take writing in the discipline courses. In these courses, students not only develop their critical thinking abilities through analyzing discipline-specific articles but also work on discipline-specific topics via guided writing. The ultimate goal of these reading and writing exercises is to equip students with critical thinking and writing skills that they can apply to the learning and writing in their specific fields of study.