Advanced Technical Reading and Writing 2

Course Overview

Course description

In this course, students will develop the scientific and technical reading and writing skills they need to understand and construct research articles in their specialist field. Students will first study about the characteristic features of quality research studies, and how science and engineering research articles are constructed in terms of intended audience, purpose, organization, flow, style, and presentation. Using text analysis tools, students will also learn to identify the unique features of technical texts in their particular field. Students will next find a suitable “Call for Papers” from a journal in their field, and then, following the journal’s “Instructions for Authors,” write a research paper. At each stage in the writing process, students will learn about important aspects of writing, such as how to paraphrase, cite, and reference previous work, how to explain figures and tables, and how to summarize the research in the form of an abstract.

Course goals

• Understand the importance of English in the fields of science and engineering.
• Understand common problems associated with using technical vocabulary in specialist fields.
• Use effective strategies to learn academic vocabulary.
• Use text analysis tools to identify differences in texts published in different fields.
• Identify the structure of technical research papers in specialist fields.
• Write the sections of a research paper in a specialist field.
• Write simple and extended definitions.
• Explain methods and processes.
• Explain information in figures and tables.
• Know how to use hedging in showing research findings.
• Understand the importance of references, citations, and avoidance of plagiarism.

Download a generic course syllabus here.

Specific details related to each teacher are available on the Waseda Moodle course page.

Information

Materials

• Course materials will be announced in the first lesson.
• Bringing an advanced English/Japanese dictionary to class is recommended.

Grading and assessment

• Components
  • Final written paper (80%)
  • In-class and homework assignments (20%)
• Test Absence Policy

Further Information

• Statement on academic honesty

Supplemental resources

• Students are encouraged to visit the Nishi-Waseda Campus writing center (Bldg. 60, 2nd floor, Room 201). More information can be found here.