Prologue
“Dr Smith, we are happy to accept your superbly written paper for publication in the Journal. Tell me, who wrote it for you?”
“Dr Smith answered: ‘I am so happy that you found my paper acceptable. Tell me, who read it to you?’”
“Honest advice are unpleasant to the ears; good medicine tastes bitter to the mouth.”
— Chinese proverb.
Academic writing development: why?
“From note taking to publishing to teaching, language is the tool that gives sense to scientific activity. Whatever scientists do or observe, everything they come to know or to hypothesize, is mediated through language.”
— Robert Goldbort. Writing for Science. Yale University Press, 2006, page 3.
“Writing helps you to learn. Writing is not simply a task to be done once research or other preparation is completed - it can be an integral part of the work progress.”
— Nicholas Highman, Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences. Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1998, Second Edition, page 3.
Book reviews of “English for Writing Research Papers”
Adrian Wallwork. English for Writing Research Papers. 2011 Springer.
“The 308 pages are divided into 20 parts and each part is then further divided into sub chapters each of which is titled with a question or simple statement . . . . Most chapters therefore are short and to the point and effectively deal with an extremely finite aspect of writing . . . This would be a useful book for those starting out on the research trail and for those struggling to get their work published.”
— ICS News, Vol. 7 (2), July, 2011.
“This book is that it focuses not just on how to write each section of a paper … but also on how to write clear, concise, unambiguous English . . . . It tells the students all kind of things that I have not found in other books on this topic . . . . I really recommend this book not just to students but also to EAP teachers . . . . written in a way that can be understood by students with an upper intermediate level of English.”
— Louise Sutherland, Amazon, May, 2011.
The first academic phrase-bank listed below comes from “English for Writing Research Papers”.
Academic phrase bank
A remedial course in English grammar for PhD students
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of West Bohemia, the Czech Republic had designed a course called “A Remedial Course in English Grammar”. The introduction says:
“The course is intended for PhD students and academic staff who wish to brush up and improve their English. It is based on real mistakes made by PhD students in their presentations and writing. The course will be useful for all those who need good English for presentations at international conferences and for writing scientific papers.”
The course materials and exercises are available at the university’s websites:
Academic writing laboratories
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Writer’s Handbook.
Purdue University. Online Writing Laboratory.
Capital Community College Foundation, Harford, Connecticut. Guide to grammar and writing.
RMIT University. Writing skills.
A book from the University of Helsinki
- Carolyn Brimley Norris. Academic Writing in English. Language Services, University of Helsinki, 2018.