VV043 Academic Writing in English

Faculty of Informatics
Spring 2012
Extent and Intensity
0/2. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: z (credit).
Teacher(s)
James Edward Thomas, M.A. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
prof. RNDr. Antonín Kučera, Ph.D.
Faculty of Informatics
Contact Person: prof. RNDr. Antonín Kučera, Ph.D.
Supplier department: Faculty of Informatics
Timetable
Fri 9:00–11:50 G101
Prerequisites (in Czech)
SOUHLAS
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 11 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
The overriding aim of this course is to guide novice writers in aspects of discovery learning. It is important to understand the conventions of the academic writing genre at all levels: from the minutiae of language such as the use of prepositions, through clause and sentence structure, paragraph structure and up to full text. With the conventions being systematic, the task for novice writers is to discover the regular, standard features of usage and then employ them in their own writing. Searching large databases of relevant texts allows conclusions to be drawn from the findings.
Syllabus
  • The course deals with the following language topics.
  • Aspects of syntax
  • end weight, subjunctive, fronting, to-infinitive and -ing clauses
  • Aspects of discourse and pragmatics
  • Topic sentences and paragraph hooks, hedging, roles of first person, sexist language, linking clauses and sentences meaningfully.
  • Academic writing per se
  • Structure of different types of documents, choosing vocabulary appropriate to various sections of papers
Literature
    recommended literature
  • ZOBEL, Justin. Writing for computer science :the art of effective communication. Singapore: Springer. xiii, 176. ISBN 981-3083-22-0. 1997. info
    not specified
  • HAMP-LYONS, Liz and Ben HEASLEY. Study writing : a course in writing skills for academic purposes. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 213 s. ISBN 9780521534963. 2006. info
Teaching methods
The course is run as a seminar in which students are involved in analysing documents on macro and micro levels, analysing language phenomena in the British National Corpus and our very own Informatics Corpus, and of course, writing.
Assessment methods
Corpus study test, terminology test, various pieces of writing demonstrating the language concepts taught.
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught annually.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2006, Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2013, Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016, Spring 2017, Spring 2018, Spring 2019, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2012, recent)
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