Doctoral Student Technical Writing

Course Overview

Course description

In this course, students will develop the scientific and technical writing skills they need to construct research papers in their specialist field. The course will be divided into two parts. In the first part of the course, students will study about the characteristic features of high-quality international research journal papers in terms of intended audience, purpose, organization, flow, style, and presentation. Students will also learn to identify useful features and patterns of writing in their specialist field using powerful text analysis and visualization tools. In the second part of the course, students will plan and complete a short research paper describing their current work following the “Instructions for Authors” guideline of a target journal. As part of the writing process, students will learn how to paraphrase, cite, and reference previous work, write simple and extended definitions, explain methods and processes, introduce, explain, and hedge interpretations of data in figures and tables, and summarize their research in the form of a title, abstract, or list of keywords.

Course goals

• Understand the characteristic features of research papers in terms of audience, purpose, organization, flow, style, and presentation.
• Understand the importance of references, citations, and avoidance of plagiarism.
• Learn how to read and interpret research journal “call for papers” and “instructions for authors”.
• Write the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion sections of a research paper in a specialist field.
• Use text analysis tools to identify characteristic features and patterns of writing in a specialist field.
• Paraphrase, cite, and reference previous work.
• Write simple and extended definitions.
• Explain methods and processes.
• Introduce, explain, and hedge interpretations of results including those in figures and tables.

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

Information

Materials

• Course materials will be distributed 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.