NEW updates! We now have an option for academic writing coaching consultation based on 4 block hours. During the initial 2 hours discussion, we will inquire you thoroughly to understand your issues. Then, we will provide you suggestions on how to overcome the issues you’re facing, and you’d implement that in your paper and discuss with us during the last 2-hour discussion. For every 4 block hour, the charge would be RM 250.
Outline of The Academic Writing Coaching Class
Open to undergraduate and postgraduates throughout the world
It is a sixteen-week module with 15 hours of instruction each month. This course is designed for university students (preferably those in the first and second years of study, as this, would enable us to coach you from the beginning), both undergraduate and postgraduate, to identify their writing strengths and weaknesses, expose them to various academic writing requirements, improve their academic writing skills, and assisting them to qualify for high impact journal publication and write an effective thesis.
Course Objective of academic writing coaching:
- To assist students in writing concise sentences.
- To introduce the applicable knowledge of journal paper and thesis writing.
- To expose students to the academic writing nuances, including the use of academic vocabulary and methods to synthesize literature review.
- To equip students with macro-level composition skills.
- To expose students to the requirements of high-impact journals.
- To assist students in writing a concise thesis.
- To equip students with life-long critical thinking and writing skills.
What we will try to do differently through this course?
- This course will be highly personalized and tailored to cater to your needs and your current research area so that you do not have to do ‘extra work’ for this course purpose.
- We’d only take 6 students per session and the group class would only be conducted for general subjects covered. For instance, we’ll run through the best practices on how to write an academic paper in a group session.
- It is our aim to provide you with the best experience in academic coaching and to assist you in publishing quality journal papers and thesis. Therefore, we’d offer you a discount on all papers and theses that you send over to us for proofreading.
- We aim to provide ongoing support for your academic needs, upon completion of this 4-month course, should you need a one-time consultation, at a minimal fee.
- Lessons would be conducted over Skype calls and we plan to have an arrangement for a monthly face-to-face meeting in the future.
What we cover over the course of 4 months of academic writing coaching:
*These are the general ideas of what we can cover, and the contents may be altered to reflect the needs of students.
First month
- Getting to know your research field and the topics you may want to write on in the upcoming semesters
- A mock paper-writing to evaluate your writing skills; or if you have already written a paper, we will use it for evaluation purposes (you will provide us the papers you use to cite).
- Feedback on your writing and the explanation of best practices on how to write an academic paper.
- Revamp the paper; after which we will review your paper.
- We will also use this period to understand the feedback from your supervisor and the expectations of your Ph.D. course
Second Month
- Complete guidance on paraphrasing
- Tips on how to extract information from journals and summarize it to fit the needs of your research.
- TurnItIn and understanding how it works
Third Month
- The requirements of potential journals from your specific area of study
- The differences between Q1 journals with the rest and how to get your papers qualify for their publication
- A study on different citation styles
Forth Month
- Thesis writing guidance
- Ways to convert parts of your thesis to multiple journal papers
- Formatting tips
Key Learning Outcomes:
Knowledge
Defined as what a student knows and understands, which is evaluated in terms of depth, breadth, types of knowledge, and complexity, as follows:
- Specific depth of knowledge on your research area
- The breadth of knowledge ranging from a single topic to a multi-disciplinary field of knowledge
- Types of knowledge ranging from concrete to abstract, and from segmented to cumulative
- The complexity of knowledge refers to the combination of the three segments of knowledge above.
Skills
Refers to what a student can do, and is defined in terms of the kinds and complexity of skills, as follows:
- Cognitive and creative skills gained by practicing intuitive, logical, and critical thinking.
- Technical skills involve dexterity by employing methods, materials, tools, and instruments.
- Communication skills which include written, oral, literacy, and numeracy skills
- Interpersonal skills.
Application of knowledge and skills
Refers to the context in which a student uses the knowledge and skills:
- Application is defined in terms of autonomy, responsibility and accountability
- The context ranges from the predictable to the unpredictable, and the known to the unknown.
- The tasks range from routine to non-routine.
Some general ideas on what you can learn in depth from the academic writing coaching course:
- Students will use a set of questionnaires with regard to their area of research (students can use the existing research questions and the answers they developed with the help of the supervisor or develop them with us when they attend the course), using startling or unusual facts or figures, defining an important, subject-related term or quoting from a high impact literature.
- Students will learn to state their main idea clearly to provide a clear direction on the research, how the research would be carried out and what the measurable/non-measurable indicators are.
- Students will learn to state the main idea of each paragraph. These are the topic sentences, that are written at the beginning of each sentence. They contain the focus of every paragraph and tell the readers what each paragraph is going to be about. Each paragraph should flow smoothly from one to the next.
- Students will use supporting examples and details to make complicated ideas easier to understand and not assume that the readers will understand what the students are trying to say.
- Students will learn how to use third-person point-of-view (e.g. he, she, it, and they) and not first and second-person points-of-view (e.g. I, you, we) in academic writing.
- Students will also learn to write using a formal voice (no jargon, slang, and colloquialism)
- Students will learn to reinstate the main idea, or summarize the crucial points, and then draw a conclusion for the readers.
- Finally, students will learn some useful tips on how to proofread their work, making any necessary corrections to sentence structure, punctuation, spelling, and grammar; prior to submitting their work to a professional proofreader. This would eliminate or reduce the cost of hiring and editor.
You would be enrolled in this class for a period of four months for a total of 60 hours (this indicates the total direct contact hours with class conductor in the group engagements and individual coaching; and excludes the time taken for both the coach and the students to work on their paper marking activities and paper writing, respectively). Therefore, to eliminate student workload and to keep the course very relevant to every student’s research, we would directly work on your research topic.
Are you heaving a sigh of relief knowing that your life as a student would be made easier with us around to help you through our academic writing coaching course? If what you have read sounds intriguing, please fill up the form below and we will get in touch with you soonest possible.