Academic Writing (BETA)
Academic writing skills for AI students: formal English style, structuring arguments, citing sources properly, and writing a literature-review essay.
Weekly 1-hour lectures (whole cohort) and 2-hour seminars (small groups of ~10) are both mandatory — you must maintain at least 80% attendance overall. Missing more than three sessions disqualifies you from the final assignment. Seminars are where you practise writing and get individual feedback, so showing up matters.
Learning objectives
Gain insight into the specific characteristics of formal written English. Learn the conventions of using sources through quoting, referring, and paraphrasing. Develop academic skills regarding text structure, linguistic accuracy, and clarity of expression. Apply this knowledge by writing an academic text that uses sources appropriately, has no major grammatical errors, uses a clear text structure, and has a style suitable for academic texts.
Academic Writing (BETA) is a 7-week course offered by the Faculty of Humanities that teaches first-year AI students how to write clearly and professionally in English. The course is structured around building one essay from scratch — you start with a 3-sentence "elevator pitch" introduction in Week 2, expand it into a full introduction and body paragraph by Week 4, draft a conclusion in Week 6, and submit a polished 1000-word literature-review essay as your final paper in Week 8.
Each week has a 1-hour lecture for the whole cohort and a 2-hour seminar in small groups (around 10 students), where you get hands-on practice and individual feedback on your writing. Attendance is mandatory (minimum 80%). The lectures follow a logical progression: first you learn why academic English matters and what makes it different from everyday writing, then you dive into structuring introductions (the "inverted pyramid"), using sources through quoting and paraphrasing, building coherent paragraphs (the "hamburger" model with topic sentences), writing conclusions, and finally polishing your academic style and formality.
The final essay requires you to pick an AI-related topic, find 2–5 academic articles, and write a 5-paragraph literature review with a clear thesis statement, three body paragraphs each with a topic sentence, and a concluding paragraph. The course places heavy emphasis on proper referencing (no plagiarism), linguistic accuracy, and maintaining a formal academic tone throughout. AI tools are not allowed to generate content, though you may use them as editorial aids for sentences you have already written yourself.
This is generally considered one of the lighter courses in the programme — the workload is manageable and the assignments build on each other incrementally. The seminars are especially valuable for getting personalized feedback on grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary, helping you identify your own strengths and weaknesses as a writer.
Assessment
Assignment 1: 3-sentence introduction (pass/fail, required). Assignment 2: introduction + first body paragraph, ~400 words (25% of final grade). Assignment 3: 3-sentence conclusion (pass/fail, required). Assignment 4: final 1000-word literature-review essay (75% of final grade). The unrounded final grade must be at least 5.5 to pass. Assignments 1 and 3 must be passed but do not count toward the grade.
Teaching methods
Weekly 1-hour lectures (full cohort) and 2-hour seminars (small groups of ~10 students). Attendance is mandatory (minimum 80%). Missing more than 3 sessions leads to exclusion from the final assignment.
Literature
Recommended: M. Hannay & J.L. Mackenzie, Effective Writing in English (3rd ed., 2017); Hilary Glasman-Deal, Science Research Writing for Non-Native Speakers of English (2010). Online: Academic Phrasebank (University of Manchester) and the VU feedback website for Academic English.