The SUSU Academic Writing Office finalizes the project-based learning activities 2021-2023 and rates as “excellent” the defense of the education project Creation of an e-course English for Research Publication Purposes developed by 7 undergraduate students of the Department of Linguistics and Translation under the guidance of the Associate Professor of the Department Olga Tolstykh. They have been working for two years developing a unique product aimed to improve the foreign language communicative competence and academic literacy of students, teachers and staff of SUSU.
The original course is available on the Electronic SUSU platform and consists of 10 modules. It covers important principles of the academic writing theory, the main linguistic and cultural differences between Russian and English academic discourse, the format of an English-language publication, the peculiarities of abstract writing, and a whole range of linguistic and information technologies aimed to help a new researcher (machine translation systems, automated translation, translation with the help of ChatGPT neural network).
The Academic Writing Office has become an industrial partner and requestor of this project, as it is currently developing and updating its own advanced training programs on academic writing Research Paper for an International Journal: Preparation and Publishing and Writing and Publishing a Research Paper: Style, Grammar and Punctuation. The project team’s findings will also be available within these training programs.
In the course of the project, the staff of the Academic Writing Office consulted the project team and shared their experience in the field of academic writing and publication activity. The project team would like to thank Ekaterina Shefer, the co-supervisor of the project and translator of the Academic Writing Office, and Amanda Wegner, the editor-consultant of the Office, for their consultations, useful advice and comments on the content and structure of the course modules. Special acknowledgements to Evgenia Khabirova, Head of the Academic Writing Office, for the opportunity to participate in project activities and valuable recommendations on the development of the online course.