Academic writing in Biochemistry & Biotechnology in English
Theory: 2 hours/week | Tutorials: 1 hour/week | ECTS Units: 3
Content – Aim of the course
The aim of this course is twofold: a. to present the main structure of the research paper, with the purpose of familiarizing students with its main linguistic and conceptual characteristics and b. to develop the students’ skills, in relation to the organization and management of sources as well as to promote their academic writing skills, through relevant tasks and examples.
The teaching material is based on topics that closely relate to the content of studies in the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. It is designed upon the intention to prepare students to effectively deal with the writing of scientific texts relating to the wider research areas of their discipline.
Upon successful completion of this course, the students will be able to:
- Be aware of the main structure of a scientific paper
- Recognize and use basic syntactic and vocabulary structures, which are characteristic of the academic writing discourse in English
- Describe research methods and results
- Search for and select valid and suitable sources
- Synthesize information from the available literature, by thinking critically and avoiding plagiarism
- Recognize the various reference systems and report the references at the end of the paper
Analytical Description of the Course
The course content is based on the following thematic units:
- Introduction to the research process (research purpose, critical reading strategies, note-taking and paraphrasing techniques, critical thinking)
- Searching for and organizing sources (critical evaluation and synthesis of sources, scientific abstract analysis)
- Referring to sources (in-text citations, plagiarism prevention, bibliography, reference systems)
- Research paper structure (Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion)
- Argument structure
- Text writing and editing (paragraph structure, coherence, cohesion, syntactic structures, long-sentence discourse, special vocabulary, punctuation)
- Academic and technical writing genres (thesis, research paper, report, proposal, CV, cover letter, formal email)
- Oral presentation (thesis, assignment)
Assessment
Portfolio assessment: The students are assessed throughout the whole semester by taking part in individual written assignments and progress tests.
Reading Suggestions
- Ευδωρίδου, Ε. & Καρακασίδης, Θ. 2017. Ακαδημαϊκή Γραφή. Αθήνα: Τζιόλας και Υιοί Α.Ε.
- Lester, J.D. 2013. Writing Research Papers: A complete guide. Essex: Pearson Ltd.
- Morley, J., Doyle, P. & Pople, I. (2007). University Writing Course. Berkshire: Express Publishing.
- Turabian, K. & Booth, W.C. 2013. A Manual for Writers of research papers, theses and dissertations. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
- Wallwork, A. 2011. English for writing research papers. London: Springer.
- Zeiger, M. 2000. Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. US: McGraw Hills
Teaching Material / E-class
Lecturer
