English

Every autumn semester

This course aims to help students improve their ability to read, understand and think critically about research articles in science and engineering. The course also intends to help graduate students at LTH improve their efficiency and effectiveness in reading and understanding research articles in science and engineering in general and their own fields of research in particular.

Discourse analysis, techniques in reading, skimming and analysing research articles in science and engineering in general and in specific fields, the discourse of technical communication in general and of the research articles in particular, the moves of the abstract and of the sections of research articles, The Journal Impact Factor and Science Citation Index: its uses and misuses, paragraphing conventions, varieties of discourse traditions/communication channels in academic research communities, communicative context and the discourse of introduction sections, methods descriptions, and of presenting and discussing results.

be able to know where in research articles readers will tend to find the information most relevant to that research.

be able to locate, understand and interpret information in science and engineering research articles
be able to discover which articles are most relevant to their own research
be able to distinguish which articles should be left unread, perused briefly, read completely or studied carefully
be able to analyse the communicative purposes behind the vocabulary choices, sentence formulations and organizational conventions used /not used by published authors.

be able to critically analyse the discourse choices made by authors in published texts in their research areas.

Lectures

Exercises

The course consists of a series of lectures, each followed by an hour-long small-group discussion workshop in which students apply the analytical techniques learned to the different sections of research articles which they have chosen from their own fields.

Written assignments

For a Pass on the course, the participant must have attended at least 80 % of the scheduled activities and completed and passed all assignments in the course.
If there are extenuating circumstances some parts of the assessment can be performed differently.

Failed, pass

To be admitted to the course applicants have to be part of a PhD programme at LTH.

Priority is given to: 1) PhD students who have previously applied to the course and were eligible at the time, 2) PhD students most recently accepted for PhD studies.

 

Reading material will be distributed by the course instructor.

GEM060F

 -05-28

FN1/Anders Gustafsson FN2/Eva Nordberg Karlsson FN3/Per Tunestål