Academic Writing in English (BA/MA/Dipl.)

English has become the dominant language of science in many disciplines. Not only students of English and American Studies but students from various fields across the faculties and programs are encouraged to write their term papers, bachelor’s and master’s theses in English. However, while more and more students are expected to write in English, many of them are still unsure about what makes a paper in English successful and how academic English differs from academic style in German.

In order to answer these questions and make students better equipped for such tasks, this workshop will address the peculiarities of academic writing in English focusing on academic style, paper organization as well as the academic writing process.

The central aims of the workshop are:

◾to deal with the characteristics of academic style in English,

◾to offer techniques on how to critically engage with secondary sources and how to integrate them into your paper,

◾to provide tools to move from a broad topic to a more focused research question,

◾to give you the opportunity to draft a structure for your paper, and…

◾…to give you the chance to test all of this on your own writing project.

This workshop is designed for BA- and MA-students of all disciplines who are at the beginning of an English writing project and have a good command of English. Grammar and vocabulary will only be dealt with in direct relation to academic style (e.g. register, reporting verbs, tense use in different chapters). In order to make most of this workshop, I recommend coming with a particular writing project in mind which can then be used for the activities.