http://www.ceu.hu/writing/wcourses.html

1. Academic Writing for Graduate Students
The aim of this course is to help you develop as a writer within the English speaking academic community by raising awareness of, practicing, and reflecting upon the conventions of written texts. In addition to addressing issues related to academic writing, the course will also focus on the other language skills you will need to complete your graduate level work in English.
During the course, you will:

Acquire an awareness of and ability to use effectively the discourse patterns of academic English
Improve your critical reading skills, enabling you to think and write more clearly and incisively
Become familiar with and practice the genres of the argumentative essay, critique and research paper
Have the opportunity to develop your writing process through generating ideas, drafting, peer evaluation and individual writing consultations
Learn to take into consideration the expectations of your readership with regard to academic English discourse conventions
Reflect on your approach to reading in light of the demands of a graduate program
Learn to incorporate the work of other authors into your own writing within the requirements of English academic practice
Expand and improve your ability to work independently by exploring new strategies for learning
Develop your proof-reading and editing skills so as to be able to polish, edit and refine your own written work without the help of others
Gain confidence in expressing yourself in both spoken and written English, through extensive in-class writing and speaking, homework and consultations.
Most of the materials needed on the course are included in the Course Study Pack. Other program-specific materials will be distributed on a class-by-class basis. Your writing instructor will tell you about assignments and deadlines at the end of each class. In many cases, pre-reading assignments will be given. It is important that you complete the assigned readings before each class because they contain essential information that will be needed in class, and if some students do not have this information, a great deal of time will be wasted. These readings are now also accessible electronically from this webpage in case you have left your Study Pack at home.

Pre-Reading for Lesson 3
Critical Reading - Evaluating Arguments

Pre-Reading for Lesson 5
Macro-level Argumentation - The Argumentative Essay

Pre-Reading for Lesson 8
Micro-level Argumentation - Paragraphing

Pre-Reading for Lesson 9
Making Decisions about Style

Pre-Reading for Lesson 10
The Nature of Research Writing

Pre-Reading for Lessons 11 & 12
Using the Work of other Authors in your Writing

Course Outline
Section A - Critical Reading
Aims:

This section will introduce you to critical reading as a process of evaluating the context and purpose of written texts, and enable you to apply the insights gained from this process to the production of a written critique, as an example of such a text.
Task : The Critique (500-700 words)
A critique is an essay that evaluates a text written by another person. In your department, the terms "position paper", "review" or "critical essay" may be used, but basically, all these types of writing (genres) are similar. We ask you to write a critique not only because it is excellent practice for the kind of writing most of you will have to do in your department but also as a first step on the path to positioning yourself in relation to the ideas of others, one of the most important aspects of academic writing. We will return to this important skill in the third section of the course - research paper writing. Another reason why we start with critical reading and critique writing, is because analysing and criticising the arguments of others will help you to develop strong arguments in your own writing, an aspect we will look at in the second section of the course - essay writing.
1. Introduction to Academic Writing
2. Critical Reading I (Pre-Reading)

3. Critical Reading II

4. Summarizing Ideas from an Academic Text, Writing a Critique

Section B - Argumentation

Aims:

By the end of this section of the course, you will recognize and understand the purposes, conventions, structure, staging and flow of argumentative academic writing. You will also experience, discuss and reflect upon a cooperative, generative writing process.
Task : The Argumentative Essay (600-800 words)
The argumentative essay is used to teach the skills of rhetoric and argumentation. Like the critique, while you will not have to write essays for your department in the same form as you do for the LTC, the skills of argumentation that you learn here will be applicable to much of the writing you do at CEU. Having looked at how others present arguments in section one, you now focus on developing and presenting arguments yourself, supporting them with evidence and refuting the arguments of your opponents. In order to make this simpler, we do not ask you to relate your arguments to the work of other authors at this stage - something that will be essential in writing for your department. The purpose of this section is for you to acquire the skill of written argumentation which you will be able to develop further in section three.
5. The Argumentative Essay: Structure & Argumentation (Pre-Reading)
6 & 7. Workshop on Writing an Argumentative Essay

8. Micro-Level Argumentation - Paragraphing (Pre-Reading)

Section C - Research-based Writing
Aims:

In this part of the course you will develop an awareness of features of the genre of research-based academic writing, notably in the areas of organization of academic papers. You will also become familiar with the conventions of using the work of other authors in English academic discourse, and reflect on how these influence the development of your own voice.
Task: The Research Paper
The research paper is one of the core genres in academic writing, and involves valuable skills that you will also later be able to carry over into thesis writing. What is important here is the combination of the skills of argumentation from the second section of the course with those of positioning yourself in relation to other writers that we looked at in the first section. In writing a research paper we ask you to develop or explore an idea, using as support or criticising the works of other writers in your discipline that you have read in preparation for the task.
9. Making Decisions about Style (Pre-reading)
10. The Nature of Research Writing (Pre-reading)

11. Using Sources I: Voice and Authority (Pre-reading)

12. Using Sources II: Techniques for Incorporating Sources in your Work

13. Introductions: Analysis and Practice in an Academic Environment

14. Looking at the Structure of Academic Texts: Genre Analysis Research

15. Conclusions: Analysis and Practice in an Academic Environment



2. Creative Writing at Central European University
In past years, a number of students at CEU who write poetry or fiction (or who just love literature) have taken part in creative writing workshops held throughout the academic year by a writing center instructor. Members met one evening a week to share and discuss their work in English or their translations of writers from their home countries. At the end of each year, the best of this original student writing, together with contributions from other interested student writers, as well as art and photography has been published in Undercurrents, an independent literary journal established in 2001 with the financial support of the Student Welfare Office. You can view the two annual editions of Undercurrents in PDF format by clicking on the links below.

Undercurrents 2001

Undercurrents 2002

If you are a CEU student and are interested in reviving the group this year, please contact John or Eszter at the Writing Center.

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