Academic English (CIP)

As an academic communicator, you want to share your research with international peers in an effective and persuasive manner. Learn presentation skills that can assist you in speaking before academic audiences. Practise writing to think through your research and communicate your thoughts by means of informative and appealing texts.

This intensive course, designed as a series of interactive workshops, offers you an opportunity to present and write in English within your own discipline. It also invites you to reflect on your use of academic sources, AI literacy, presentation skills, writing habits and writer identity.

• Choose a research problem to investigate (for example, a subject in your major courses). As the semester unfolds, follow the stages of researching and writing as two interlinked processes: focus your research question, conduct the literature review, collect the best evidence to argue for the importance of your research project.

• Read like a writer. Analyze model texts and sample texts written by your peers to better understand rhetorical strategies and stylistic conventions of selected academic text types.

• Practise presenting. Prepare three 3-minute presentations based on secondary sources about your research question – you will deliver them for a small group of peers. Present for 7 minutes in front of the whole class to share your views, engage in a question-and-answer session and hear feedback on your performance.

• Write and give feedback. Draft three sections of your research paper: extended definition of a key concept, literature review, introduction or discussion/conclusion. Cite primary as well as secondary sources and acknowledge your collaboration with AI. You will exchange feedback on drafts with your peers and receive comments from your tutor in order to rewrite your texts for greater persuasiveness and clarity.

The semester of reading, writing, presenting and exchanging ideas with international peers from various disciplines will help you to become a better academic communicator. This course will assist you in your future writing and presenting, not only in English but also in your other languages.

Testimonials

This course has helped me to understand how to write a structured and clear text. It has also taught me that the characteristics distinctive of an efficient article should be shared by our academic presentations – the ‘7-minute presentation’ was one of the most stimulating and complicated exercises that I had ever faced.

Francesca (BA, Italy)

This course is really great together with writing the BA project, because you can use the assignments, journal entries and presentations for this course to investigate elements of your other assignment: elements which you are not sure of or elements which you know are not suitable for the BA project, but very interesting.   

Camilla (BA, Denmark)

I think that especially my introductions, definitions of key concepts, literature reviews and conclusions are going to be more structured than they were before, not only in English but also in German. Also this course took a lot of my fear out of writing in English. Now I feel more prepared to start a Master’s study program in English.

Filip (BA, Germany)

Questions regarding the course content can be emailed to academicenglish@hum.ku.dk.