Writing is both an art and a craft
Upper secondary students often have to write book reviews, research papers, and essays, which is not an easy task. Why? Because writing well takes mastery, which is difficult to achieve. Still, one can perfect their craft by reading many good texts and writing even more.
Academic writing differs from daily writing in that it is complex, formal, and objective. It takes precision, accuracy, and good planning.
Now, why bother? Well, how else could we discuss, analyze, and persuade? How else could people write their dissertations, research reports, or literature reviews? Besides, an elegant style also comes in handy when writing exam essays or motivational letters for university admission.
- Introduction
- A sample lesson plan
- Types of writing
“Academic writing” is the first of three elective English courses offered to upper secondary students at Tamme Gymnasium. Under the umbrella of “English Writing”, these courses provide an opportunity to learn to write good texts in different style and format, be it academic, plain English or web texts.
“Academic writing” is a pilot course in a sense it tests blended learning – combining face-to-face lessons with e-learning. In this way, the learning process will be more flexible, students’ learning skills will be honed, and language learner autonomy will be increased. In other words, this course is an innovation-oriented one.
“Academic writing” consists of five modules: developing the complete sentences, mastering the paragraph, structuring the essay, writing laboratory and reflection. There will be approximately 12 hours of independent asynchronous learning activities in Moodle (a free and open-source learning management system (LMS)) and six face to face learning sessions. The course opens here. A visitor’s password is “Academic”.