2014

Academic Writing for Graduates from SE Europe 2014

The project was continued from last year AW4SEE and new, related DAAD project started in 2017: News4SEE.

Since the funding had to be reduced, there will be fewer participants in the Summer School and more emphasis on publications, eLearning, e-books for teaching and a REAL volume for international academic discourse.

Workshop in Montenegro, April 29th-May 4th

Two workgroups (with three subgroups each) will work on two volumes on "Creating and Using a Database for Academic Writing".
We produce downloadable ebooks (40 pages):

  • "Creating a Database and Analysing Academic Writing in different cultures" (Trajkova, Albrecht, Toska, Petrovka, & Schmied)
  • "Using Databases to Teach Academic Writing in different cultures" (Oncevska, Pajnakoti/Küchler, Pacarizi, Kostadinovska/Knevic, & Forbes)

We had a very intensive and enjoyable workshop in http://aurorahotel.me/index.html

Study visit plus conference

All project participants contribute to

  • a project meeting on Monday, July 7th in Rh39/233
  • a "Macedonian Evening" on Tuesday, July 8th in Club der Kulturen
  • a project meeting on Wednesday, July 16th in Rh39/233
  • a presentation at the conference Culture in Language - Variation in Research (July 19th)

Summer School in Albania, September 14-21/22

We met our project partners and eleven students from Vlore for some teaching experiments at Primavera Hotel in Vlore. The students were enthusiastic about the interactive teaching component and made wonderful contributions during the classes and in the final evaluation discussion and Summer School dinner. They only regreted that this year the Summer School was relatively short and could not include participants from the other Univeristies in the project.

Work Plan: Programme Summer School Vlore

REAL 8

Academic Writing for South Eastern Europe. Practical and Theoretical Perspectives.

This contribution introduces the key concepts of academic writing, metalanguage and genre. Metalanguage is seen to include all writer-reader interaction, esp. stance and engagement markers. The concept of genres in academic writing is discussed as a core-periphery model with the research article in the centre and the conference presentation, research monograph, handbook article and the chain from BA through MA to PhD thesis as other core genres. All concepts are explained and illustrated by examples from the ChemCorpus, which can serve as a (partial) reference corpus to all the other national mini-corpora in the SE European academic writing project and beyond. A research-based approach means that writers do not learn rules, but discover patterns and conventions themselves, either by testing ideas from textbooks or by exploring their own small corpora, even to test whether their linguistic variables are appropriate for their text/genre or socio-biographical variables. They can also use comparisons with similar corpora to position themselves in the spectrum between individual identity and disciplinary convention. Through this approach graduates gain skills that should be useful for their own writings at university and even for their professional life afterwards.

Contributions:

  • Josef Schmied - Graduate Academic Writing in Europe in Comparison: A Research-based Approach to Metalanguage and Genre

  • Helen Forbes - English for English Studies: Designing Academic Vocabulary Instruction for English Studies Majors

  • Elena Oncevska Ager - Interplay of Teacher and Peer Online Feedback for Academic Writing: Preliminary Insights

  • Irina Petrovska, Bisera Kostadinovska - Teaching Academic Writing to EFL Students: The Process Approach

  • Magdalena Rogozinska - Attaining Academic Literacy: Reforming University Language Instruction for Polish Doctoral Students

  • Sven Albrecht - Connecting Adverbials in Student Writing: Usage in the ChemCorpus and Comparable Corpora

  • Dana Beyer - "It is probably the reason why..." Hedging in BA and MA Theses by German ESL Students

  • Jessica Küchler - Usages of may and will in Chinese and German Student Papers: A Corpus-Based Comparison

  • Jacinta Edusei - Code Glosses in Student Writing: A Comparative Study of Albanian and German BA Theses

  • Jasmina Djordjevic - Introductions by Serbian Native Speakers in Academic Writing

  • Zorica Trajkova - Expressing Commitment and Detachment in Non-Native English BA Graduate Papers

  • Bledar Toska - Structural, Textual and Commentary Linkers in Albanian PhD Dissertations: A Pilot Study

  • Armela Panajoti - Authorial Identity in PhD Theses in Albania(n)

  • Silvana Neshkovska, Jovanka Lazarevska Stanchevska - Language Transfer from L2 to L1 in Academic Writing: The Case of Macedonian ESL Teachers

AW4SEE 2014 in the media

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