ACADEMIC WRITING 2

Academic Writing 2 is an interactive lab that provides basic methodological guidance for writing and reviewing an academic paper from any disciplinary area.
For its multidisciplinary, applied, and interactive nature, Academic Writing 2 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 experimented the writing of an academic paper, that is as much as possible complete in terms of information, well organized in terms of structure, and adequate in terms of style.

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

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

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

Having attended AW1, having a research idea to develop during the lab.

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

Part 1 (1h30’): INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC WRITING 2
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 (full paper) and why;
- How to structure the text and what is the role of each part of the text (how a full paper should be organized to build a coherent argument);
- What writing style is more suitable for academic texts and what is less so, and why.
- How to use notes, references etc.
- How to evaluate originality, methodology, impact.
Assignments

First take-home assignment: WRITING
Based on the knowledge developed through Part 1, students will be asked to write and submit to the instructors an academic text (up to 10 pages) on a topic of their choice articulated in abstract, keywords, introduction, central treatment, conclusions.

Second take-home assignment: REVIEWING
Each student will receive a peer’s paper to review critically and constructively, according to the criteria and the knowledge developed through Part 1.

Part 2 (3h30’): INTERACTIVE PEER REVIEW AND FINAL DISCUSSION

All reviews will be socialized and discussed in group.

None

Assessment methods
The final grade will be expressed in 30/30 and will be constructed as follows:
30% on assignment 1 (writing)
50% on assignment 2 (reviewing)
20% on students’active and contructive reviews and proven ability of critical self-assessment during Part 2.

This is an interactive lab, organized through 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.

written and oral