Coordinator: Mr. Simon Scanlon

Overview

This workshop will focus on why we overwrite and how we can avoid wordiness in academic texts. It will equip you with strategies on how to communicate efficiently and effectively while ensuring that your written content remains worthwhile. Long-winded writing can not only bore readers, it can lead to confusion as the point you are attempting to make gets lost in unnecessary words and repetition. Consequently, by learning how to write concisely, you will be successful in conveying exactly what you mean and also get the reader to notice the clarity of your thoughts by presenting your ideas logically and succinctly.

Format

The workshop will take the form of:

• 2 hours of pre-workshop online readings and exercises to get participants familiarized with key elements of concise writing;
• 2 hours of face-to-face time to review learning points and receive feedback; and as needed,
• follow-up support via email and course discussion forums.

Workshop content

The workshop has 3 main sections:

• Concise writing at the word and sentence level
  • Using weak nouns and strong verbs, avoiding unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, tautologies and repetition, and knowing when and how to nominalize.
• Concise writing at the sentence and paragraph level
  • Using more noun phrases and less prepositional phrases, and combining sentences to shorten texts.
• Concise writing at the full-text level
  • Revising your own text by application of strategies learnt to receive comprehensive feedback.

Final written task

You will get a chance to correct a former piece of academic writing and practice with other participants in a group setting. You will bring a piece of your own academic writing sample to work on during the workshop where you will receive feedback from your peers and instructor to help you understand the areas you need to work on. You will take away a revised version of your text with comments that will help you with future writing tasks.