ACADEMIC WRITING 1

Academic Writing 1 is an interactive lab that provides basic methodological guidance for writing and reviewing an early stage academic paper from any disciplinary area. The knowledge and the skills developed through this lab will constitute the indispensable ground to Academic Writing 2.
For its multidisciplinary, applied, and interactive nature, Academic Writing 1 contributes to the College goals of integrating students’ degree programs and disciplinary knowledge with a range of interactive labs and other activities of the cultural program.

At the end of the lab, students are expected to:

1) Have learnt how academic writing differs from other types of writing (e.g. creative writing, journalistic writing). In particular, students are expected to know:
• What type of information is expected to be contained in an academic text;
• How an academic text is expected to be structured;
• What tone and style are adequate to an academic text.

2) Have experimented the writing of a short academic text (abstract and/or introduction) that is as much as possible complete in terms of expected information, well organized in terms of expected structure, and adequate in terms of expected style.

3) Have developed abilities to assess other authors’ academic texts from any discipline, in terms of completeness of information, structure, and style.

4) Have developed abilities of self-assessment and critical judgement of one’s own academic writing.

5) Have developed abilities to present and discuss each other’s papers in public, in critical and constructive ways.

None.

The lab will be articulated into two interactive seminars (spanning 5 academic hours overall) and into two individual home assignments, as follows:

Seminar 1 (1h30’): INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC WRITING
How to craft an argumentative text? Through concrete examples of successful and less successful texts, we will reflect together and discuss:
- What information should be included in an academic text (abstract and introduction especially) and why;
- How to structure that information and what is the role of each part of the text (how a text should be organized to build a coherent argument);
- What writing style is more suitable for academic texts and what is less so, and why.

First home assignment: WRITING
Based on the knowledge developed through Seminar 1, students will be asked to write and submit to the instructors a short academic text (a long abstract or a short abstract followed by an introduction) on a topic of their choice.

Second home assignment: REVIEWING
After the submissions, the instructors will create groups and will circulate that group’s papers among the group members. Each student will therefore receive a set of peers’ papers to review critically and constructively, according to the criteria and the knowledge developed through Seminar 1. The reviews will have to be submitted to the instructors.

Seminar 2 (3h30’): INTERACTIVE PEER REVIEW AND FINAL DISCUSSION
First part of the seminar (1h30’): students will group up and share each other’s reviews within the group (interactive peer review by groups).
Second part of the seminar (2hh): all groups will briefly present their set of papers to the rest of the class, sharing the main issues encountered, the main criticisms taken, and the main improvements decided. The instructors will share their own assessment of the papers and will lead a final discussion.

Exemplars shared during Seminar 1, slides.

The final grade will be expressed in 30/30 and will be constructed as follows:
30% on home assignment 1 (writing)
30% on home assignment 2 (reviewing)
40% on students’active and contructive reviews during Seminar 2 (group performance)
A “+” may be given to students in case of proven ability of critical self-assessment during Seminar 2.

This is an interactive lab, organized through two interactive seminars and two individual assignments. The lab has been conceived as a process accompanying the first steps of writing and reviewing academic papers. Students’ active participation and contribution in all phases of the process is fundamental.
In case of total or partial online teaching: both seminars will be held online synchronically (in streaming), with webcams mandatorily on to enable as much interaction as possible. Students will have to secure a stable internet connection, in that case.

written and oral