UCL - Scientific writing II

[LING2982]

[] 5 credits

Teacher(s):

Language: French

Level: Second

Aims
Main themes
Content and teaching methods
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Aims

The aim of this seminary is to acquire competences in the area of scientific writing. By the end of the course, the student should be able to write:
- an abstract;
- a scientific article (of around twelve pages) fit for submission to a scientific journal;
To this effect, the student will learn to master the rhetoric principles typical of these types of writing, to synthetise the state of the art and to make a critical analysis of it.

Main themes

This seminary will be composed of approximately five work sessions in small groups, spread over the academic year and interrupted by pauses allowing the students to carry out their assignments. The course will deal with the epistemological, methodological and editorial requirements expected in the context of scientific writing. During the collective sessions, the lecturer will offer theoretical and practical instructions for the writing of an abstract, a summary of an existing scientific article, and an innovative scientific article. The latter will ideally be based on work done in the context of the Master thesis.

Content and teaching methods

During the collective sessions, students of the research focus will present to each other the various steps of their work as well as assimilate constructive suggestions made by their peers and the lecturer. An active participation will be required, based on the principle of "peer reviewing", i.e. an accepted method in the academic world by which researchers evaluate the quality of their colleagues' written productions (abstracts or articles). In concrete terms, the students will be asked to evaluate the work of their peers, in order to determine its chances of publication or acceptance.
The course will have the following structure for all topics:
- a theoretical introduction to epistemological, methodological and editorial concepts and procedures (collective session);
- personal assignments in order to concretise theoretical achievements;
- evaluation and discussion of the assignments (collective session).

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Prerequisite
This seminary is meant primarily for students of the research focus in Master 2. It presupposes general writing skills. It is required for students to have taken the course Rédaction de textes scientifiques I (LING 2981).

Evaluation
The scientific article written at the end of the seminary will be evaluated by the lecturer of the seminary as well as by the teacher who will have supervised the research work on which the article is based, in function of demands that will have been previously announced.

Support
The student will dispose of a methodological vade mecum useful for the preparation and writing of a scientific article, as well as of a set of exemplary articles.

Guidance
Every assignment will be supervised by the lecturers and researchers who are implied in the Master in linguistics.