Science Writing I

 

Professor:  Herbert Chavel                                Office:  1310 Humanities Bldg.

Telephone:  (042) 869-4698                               E-mail:  [email protected]

Office Hours:  Students are encouraged to bring questions on Thursday (10:00-12:15) (or by appointment).  If you would prefer, you may send relevant questions via e-mail.

 

Description:  This course is intended for graduate students that need to use scientific and technical English for preparing manuscripts and reports.  The students will be actively involved in developing writing skills that are required to write reports, theses, and dissertations.  Students will cover the areas of structure, planning, and publication.

 

Evaluation:  The final grade for this course is determined by the following factors:

 

1.  Attendance.   Students should make every effort to attend all the classes.  Daily attendance is essential to successfully completing the peer evaluations and assignments.  Excessive absences will cause decreases in the students overall grade.  Please try to inform the professor if you plan to miss a class.

2.  Participation.  Students should expect to be actively involved in writing English.  Students will be required to evaluate writings. Peer evaluation of assignments will be an important part of the course. Students should try very hard to speak English in class.  It is important that students try hard to speak, write, and think in English.  It may seem awkward or uncomfortable at times but putting your thoughts into English will become easier with practice.

3.  Assignments.  Students will have various writing assignments.  Students will progress from writing simple paragraphs to writing a complete paper.  Students should try to remember that the hardest thing about scientific writing is to explain complicated concepts in a way that someone else can understand.  Students should be prepared to revise their writings many times to achieve clarity.

 

Schedule:  The course schedule will be discussed the first day of class.

 

Textbook:  Jen Tsi Yang  (1995).  An Outline of Scientific Writing: For Researchers with English as a Foreign Language.  Singapore: World Scientific.

 

TEXTBOOK SUMMARY:  This book is aimed at researchers who need to write clear and understandable manuscripts in English.  Today, English is the official language of international conferences and most important publications in science and technology are written in English.  Therefore, learning how to write in English has become part of the researcher's task.  The book begins by discussing constructs of the English language such as sentence structure and word use.  It then proceeds to discuss the style and convention used in scientific publications.  Topics covered in this book include word choice - how to avoid redundancy; sentence and paragraph structure; the planning of a manuscript - format, nomenclature and style; how to present attractive figures and tables; references; how to prepare a manuscript for publication; submission to a journal and checking of proofs; and some standard abbreviations and symbols.