SoSe 2017 AcademicWriting

"What makes a good article? The fifth version."  The art of academic writing is not only dependent on one's talent but also, and perhaps more importantly, on training and diligence as well as awareness of established scholarly standards and willingness to take account of peers' criticism.

The aim of this course is to familiarize students with basic academic writing skills. Students will be introduced to the standards of scholarly writing in general and to the criteria applied to article submissions by refereed journals in particular. We will open the black box of "double-blind peer review" by looking at concrete examples of various journals' review processes. In order to train their practical writing skills, besides preparing smaller exercises such as abstracts, critical reviews, research exposés etc., students will write a term paper in the ”focus analysis” style (~ 4000 words) of their own from a social science perspective, focusing on a topic selected from the field of current Chinese politics (domestic or foreign politics) or Chinese society. To allow for repeated peer vetting in student tandems, term papers will have to be drafted during the semester.