WRITING LABORATORY

The Academic Writing Workshop aims to equip students with the theoretical knowledge and practical competence necessary to produce formal academic writing in a clear, well-organized, concise, grammatically and orthographically accurate form. This competence is developed by engaging students in activities which enable them to produce the kind of writing which is indispensable for their academic career.

The Workshop is held during the second semester of the second year and has a total duration of 24 hours.

Knowledge and understanding: Students will be introduced to the issues related to writing effectively in academic and professional contexts. Through critical analyses of written discourse, they will gain awareness of the tools and strategies available to improve their academic writing skills. Focus will be given to how to structure clear and concise argumentation. Applying knowledge and understanding: Students will apply the acquired writing strategies to academic situations such as professional and academic emails, essays, summaries, personal statement, etc. They will use the methods acquired to demonstrate their ability to develop and sustain clear, coherent argumentation. Making judgements: The course materials are designed in such a way as to encourage comparison and evaluation of stances and text organization, and to express resultant conclusions in a language and form appropriate to the specific context. Feedback from the course instructor along with self-evaluation will allow students to independently fine-tune and adapt their skills to deal with future tasks. Communication skills: At the end of the course, students will acquire the appropriate lexical range, accuracy and appropriacy to operate effectively in contexts linked to their degree course and future career. They will learn how to structure their ideas coherently and adapt their discourse depending on the purpose and context. They will be able to communicate effectively with the broader academic community, conveying their conclusions clearly and unambiguously, and providing relevant supporting arguments. Learning skills: By putting into practice the methodologies learned during the interactive workshops, students will learn to assess their own performance in view of fine-tuning the acquired strategies when faced with tasks related to their academic and professional careers.

The Workshop is organized as follows: Module one: Laboratorio di scrittura in Italian. Module two: Academic Writing Skills in English. The following Skills will be focused on: Identify register and text genre Produce texts within an academic context such as emails and personal statements. Analyze syntax of academic texts. Organizational skills. Editing and proof-reading. Paragraphing.

Bespoke handouts are provided on-line. They have been designed using in a variety of materials put together by the teaching team for the particular purposes of this Writing Lab.

The workshop approach is highly interactive and involves participation in activities such as critical reading and analysis of texts, discussions, group discussions, written work, revision and editing, and group work. At every class meeting the teacher will provide input on specific language and text features and engage students in carrying out related tasks.

To obtain the required academic credits, students must attend regularly (at least 70% of the total hours taught) and submit the required number of assignments. Students are evaluated on their participation and performance on a variety of in-class and out-of-class assignments (75%), and final in-class paper (25%) The final in-class paper will be based on a writing task similar to those covered during the course. At the end of the course, students will receive a pass marks if they have successfully completed all the course requirements. A certificate of attendance will be awarded with mention (pass, good, very good, excellent).

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