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A new course will be available for lecturers from Czech universities

A new course will be available for lecturers from Czech universities
Academic writing does not exist as a separate didactic or scientific field in which future instructors of academic writing courses can be trained within the Czech Republic. Experts from VSB-Technical University of Ostrava and the Institute of the Czech Language at the Czech Academy of Sciences will be offering a helping hand in this respect.

They have created a new course for tutors of academic writing, within the framework of the TA CR project (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic), which they are currently pilot-testing and will be offering to interested parties from other institutions from February 2022. Dana Lynn Driscoll, Professor of English and Director of the Jones White Writing Center at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has also been involved in the preparation of this course, and is also helping to develop the concept of the PhD Academy at VSB-TUO.

Academic writing courses, which are taught at VSB-TUO and at the Centre for Academic Writing at the Institute of the Czech Language at the Czech Academy of Sciences, are outputs of the TA CR project "Publish and Flourish: Publication Activity Support for PhD Students and Their Supervisors". The aim of these courses is to support PhD students and young researchers in developing their writing skills in English. It is generally believed that the most important thing for writing scientific articles in English is a good grasp of the English language. However, in reality, more attention needs to be given to the structure of the text, persuasive argument, the correct choice of title and abstract layout.

In addition to supporting PhD students, it is also important to focus on training the lecturers who will lead the courses on academic writing. “We have already started to offer our methodology to other Czech universities to train their lecturers. While studying how to teach academic writing, lecturers will learn to create or adapt courses for their own environment,” said Alena Kašpárková, the Principal Investigator of the grant from the Department of Environmental Engineering at VSB-TUO.

This lecturer training course is quite unique. It is a two-semester course that includes theoretical preparation and practice. It is taught by the aforementioned Prof. Dana Lynn Driscoll. “We are very happy to be working with Prof. Driscoll. She is very experienced in this field; she runs a prestigious academic writing center in the US and teaches on the Composition and Applied Linguistics doctoral programme. One of her research areas is understanding expert writing processes and how graduate students become professional writers in their disciplines. Academic writing has a much longer tradition in the US than in Europe, and their experience is invaluable to us,” added Kašpárková. Teachers from VSB-TUO and the Institute of the Czech Language at the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as from Brno University of Technology and the Czech Technical University in Prague, have joined the pilot run of the course. The new course will start in February 2022.

A PhD Academy was launched in September 2021 at VSB - Technical University of Ostrava as part of an endeavour to support PhD students. The development of academic writing is one of the activities of the PhD Academy, but not the only one. Doctoral students can expect a comprehensive range of courses focused on acquiring or improving the key skills necessary for presenting the results of scientific work in English, producing quality publications, preparing project proposals, and undertaking projects, etc. “We want to regularly evaluate the courses being offered and improve them. That is why we are very pleased that Prof. Driscoll will be evaluating the pilot phase of the PhD Academy. This will provide very important feedback for us,” said Jana Kukutschová, the Vice-Rector for Science and Research at VSB-TUO.

Created: 3. 12. 2021
Category:  News
Department: 9320 - Science and Research Management and the PhD Academy
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