Writing and the PHD Short Course
A collaboration between the HealthQWest Graduate School & Glasgow Caledonian University Graduate Centre
The course will be a 6 part workshop series for PHD 20 students, covering academic writing from the perspectives of planning, writing and critical thinking. Workshops will work on an interactive format, using seminar materials, writing tasks and discussion. Participants will be encouraged to engage critical with the concepts and practices presented to them, while also working supportively with their peers in a collegiate environment. Workshops are for PHD researchers of all stages, though 1st and 2nd year students might benefit the most. Sessions will be two hours long, held once a week.
The course will be delivered by Daniel Soule, HealthQWest Publication Coordinator. Daniel completed a PhD in English Language at the University of Glasgow; he currently researches and writes in the area of critical discourse analysis.
By the end of the course participants should be able to:
- think more critically about their own writing and the writing of others
- develop a writing project plan for their PHD thesis
- employ a number of different strategies for planning and producing writing for their thesis and other writing projects
- appreciate the stylistic and scholarly demands of a PHD as a piece of written research
- and use critical feedback of their work as a means of developing their writing.
Attendees will be expected to produce short pieces of writing between workshops as a means of developing their skills and fuelling group discussion about writing.
Venue: CLIC building
- Session 1 Thursday 22nd March – 9.30-12.30pm – Seminar Room 13
- Session 2 Thursday 29th March – 9.30-12.30pm – Seminar Room 12
- Session 3 Thursday 5th April – 9.30-12.30pm – Seminar Room 12
- Session 4 Thursday 19th April – 9.30-12.30pm – Seminar Room 12
- Session 5 Tuesday 24th April – 1.00-4pm – Seminar Room 12
- Session 6 Thursday 3rd May – 9.30-12.30pm – Seminar Room 12
By the end of the course participants should be able to:
- think more critically about their own writing and the writing of others
- develop a writing project plan for their PHD thesis
- employ a number of different strategies for planning and producing writing for their thesis and other writing projects
- appreciate the stylistic and scholarly demands of a PHD as a piece of written research
- and use critical feedback of their work as a means of developing their writing.
To sign up for the course please email Diane Dickie and reserve a place, on D.Dickie@gcal.ac.uk . Please include the following details:
- Member of HealthQWest Yes/No
- Division
- School
- Subject
- Supervisor(s)
- Email address
Workshop Programme:
1. What is academic writing?In the first part of this session we will consider: the nature of the academic writing style; what the purpose and audience of academic writing is and how these affect academic style and composition; how writing relates to research; and what constitutes good and bad academic writing. In the second part we will cover some different strategies for producing writing and practise using some of them.
2. Planning and managing a writing project. In this workshop participants will explore strategies for drawing up a plan for writing their thesis, and discuss ways of integrating this with their research activities. They will consider the obstacles in the way of completing their thesis and how writing might be an obstacle and a possible solution to these problems.
3. Literature reviews.We will chew over the rhetorical purpose of literature reviews in a PHD thesis and explore the problems students often face with them. In so doing, participants will discuss how to use their literature review as a strategically in the composition of their written argument.
4. Writing about evidence and data. In this workshop students will consider how best to present and discuss their data in written form. They will explore the demands of writing about different types of data, be it statistical tables, graphical representations or textual extracts. Participants will, therefore, be encouraged to think critically about how to write about their evidence in ways that support their argument.
5. Introductions and conclusions.We will consider the rhetorical purposes of introductions and conclusions. The seminar will present methods of developing and using models for introductions and conclusions. The group will discuss using these models to plan and produce text and as a means of ‘signposting’ their argument to readers.
6. Using critical feedback.The final workshop will engage with the central concept of scholarly research: critical peer review. Whether this is from a supportive PHD supervisor, the examiners report from a viva voce or peer review at a conference or writing seminar. We will discuss productive using this feedback as a means of developing writing.