Writing to Be Published ONLINE

Aims

The course deals with a broad range of writing conventions, from the presentation of abbreviations, names, and numbers to the use of capitalization and italicization, to the quotation of sources and their documentation; and it addresses selected stylistic issues, such as paragraph structure, pronoun reference, sexist language, and personal vs. impersonal style.

Content

This course is for PhD students only and lays the foundation for the courses "Writing to Be Published for the Natural Sciences" and "Writing to Be Published for the Social Sciences and Humanities."

Nothing counts more in the academic world than being published. The reviewing process, however, and science as a whole are basically conservative: Some of the best written work is often rejected because it departs substantially from a comprehensive set of universally accepted writing conventions, or does not conform to a style that publishers consider a prerequisite for publishing (or both). While in many Anglophone countries university students receive a thorough mandatory training in academic writing skills, in non-English-speaking countries such training is frequently lacking or felt to be inadequate. Coupled with the fact that they do not usually write in their mother tongue, this puts authors from non-English-speaking countries at a serious disadvantage in global academic competition.

This intensive course teaches you how to turn your papers into publishable articles. It is aimed at researchers and academics who publish in English, or want to publish in English, but feel insecure about their command of the subtleties of convention and style (and may have already submitted a paper or two that were rejected solely on conventional or stylistic grounds).

Methods

Systematic introduction to numerous rules of academic writing with intensive discussion.

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates

About the Trainer

Dr. Paul Skandera is a regular visiting lecturer at the University of Basel, the University of St. Gallen, the Schule für Angewandte Linguistik in Zurich, the Management Center Innsbruck, and the Steinbeis Center of Management and Technology in Berlin. He formerly was Professor of Business English at the Management Center Innsbruck and taught at the Universities of Freiburg i. Br., Neuchatel, Zurich, and Luxembourg, and at the SAP Business School Vienna. He has published widely in the fields of English language teaching and linguistics. Apart from his academic activities, he runs an English language service with customers in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.

Workload

Course attendance: 3 x 5h

Feature

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.