The members of the academic writing team are engaged with language for academic and specific purposes. Drawing upon the latest research, including our own, we develop and teach courses focused on English for academic purposes (EAP) and broadly in English for specific purposes (ESP). Our current pedagogical work includes tailor-made courses for participants across university faculties and constituents. We welcome the opportunity to develop courses in partnership with other units that have specific English needs.
The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Writing English at University, offered in partnership with the online learning provider Coursera, has been available since 2016 and so far, more than 233,000 learners have enrolled (November, 2023). The course is offered free of charge and available to everyone with an internet connection. Although the MOOC provides guidance to all student writers, it targets specifically those who are writing in a second language learner context and whose native language is not English. The MOOC was updated with new materials and exercises in 2023. More details are available here: Writing in English at University
Below is a list of specialized English courses that we have developed and are currently providing.
In this course, participants practise their ability to express themselves in academic English within various genres. The main focus of the course is on the academic essay or paper, but participants will also be discussing academic writing in general and other academic genres more specifically.
This course, offered in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering (LTH), focuses on professional communication for engineers across fields. The hands-on course provides an opportunity to strengthen oral presentation skills, deepen English abilities in written genres that engineers are expected to write in their work, and enhance technical vocabulary in English.
This course is offered as one of the faculty-wide courses for PhD students at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) and aims to give participants an opportunity to develop their communicative strategies and academic writing skills to meet disciplinary demands. The course is organized around the writing of a research article, and participants work through the stages of planning, writing, and revising a research article that is later published. In this process, participants also practice providing constructive criticism on each other’s work. An explicit aim of the course is to increase participants’ awareness of the prevailing publication conventions in their specific field of study, with a primary focus on research articles.
This short hands-on course on English academic writing is aimed at students of physics who plan to write or are in the process of writing their degree project. The main objectives of the course are to help students improve their academic writing skills in English, raise awareness of the common issues and pitfalls of formal writing and help students communicate their ideas more efficiently. After students learn about these issues, they set out to write a short paper about quantum mechanics or the motivation for their degree project. They will then receive detailed feedback, both in writing and in an interactive feedback session.
This offering consists of two workshops which form an obligatory component for undergraduate students writing literature reports on the Terrestrial Ecology course. In addition, formative feedback on linguistic and structural elements is provided on students’ reports. The first of the two workshops explores various aspects of academic writing with a particular focus on both structure and positioning in relation to secondary literature. Students participate in a practical activity developing their in-progress drafts. The aim of the second workshop is to develop oral proficiency ahead of presentations of the reports.
In this component of the course Scientific Communication for PhD students at the Faculty of Medicine, participants write and give response to each other’s popular science texts about their own research area. The course as a whole focuses on developing participants' communicative strategies for presenting their research to different audiences and includes components on the scientific abstract, the grant proposal and the popular science text. By comparing these genres, participants are given the opportunity to reflect on how the language and structure of a text are related to audience concerns and to improve their English abilities across written genres.
We offer a series of courses that allow university staff from across the entire university to develop their English proficiency. The series includes foundations courses that focus on general English proficiency as well as specialized courses that focus on the use of English for professional purposes. Current offerings include:
- General Proficiency Course in English for University Staff 1
- General Proficiency Course in English for University Staff 2
- Oral Proficiency and Presentation skills for University Staff
- Punctuation and Conventions
- Terminology for Administrators
- Written Correspondence for University Staff
More information about these courses and how to register is available on Kompetensportalen.
