Academic Writing 1 (AW1)

This course is the first part of a 16-week course for first-year doctoral students scoring level 2 on DACR A1. It develops and improves the range and accuracy of the students’ writing by focusing on the main features of STEMM writing at doctoral level (including text organisation, cohesion, sentence structure, grammatical accuracy and academic vocabulary). It is designed primarily to help students with the writing of their ESA, but will also be relevant for aspects of writing research papers and the thesis. Writing tasks focus on text organisation and flow, writing definitions, and planning and structuring introductions. Once students have completed this course, they progress onto Academic Writing 2.

This is an online self-study course which runs over a recommended 8-week period. To make the most of this course, we recommend you allocate an average of 2 hours per week to work on the activities, assignments and other recommended resources. There are no scheduled weekly live classes; instead, you will have a CfAE coach to guide you and answer any questions you might have. You will also receive 1:1 feedback on each of the course writing assignments.

Please note that Academic Writing 1 and Academic Writing 2 have been carefully designed to meet your needs and improve your academic writing during the first 12 months of your doctoral programme. You will not be able to take either of these courses after DACR A2/the ESA.

Course eligibility

Those eligible for Academic Writing 1 (i.e. 1st-year doctoral students scoring level 2 on DACR A1) will receive the recommendation for this course with their DACR A1 result. Students scoring level 1 on DACR A1 will only be able to progress onto this course after having successfully completed Preparation for Academic Writing.