How do I avoid plagiarizing? “Paraphrase,” “cite everything,” “stick to the style guide”… These answers, and perhaps the question itself, neglect the fact that academic writing involves a complicated process of text integration, rather than mechanically following the rules to avoid being accused of plagiarizing. Despite the widespread interest surrounding academic integrity, what constitutes academic […]

In this workshop, we focus on the interrelations between writers (academic and professional), their source materials (cited works), and their readers (intended audience). This pedagogical approach to writing with integrity positions workshop participants as emerging scholars grappling with the intertextual structure (why and how one text relates to others) of academic and professional writing—writing that […]

Writing at the graduate level involves bringing findings into conversation with explanatory and methodological frameworks, and theoretical ideas and concepts. Presenting your specific study requires waves of meaning-making, articulating how your findings can be explained or how ideas are exemplified or illustrated by your evidence. When immersed in your own analysis, it is too easy […]

This workshop is designed for undergraduate and master’s students applying for funding from the Canada Graduate Scholarship-Master’s (CGS-M) Program. Drawing on evidence-based research about successful grant proposals, facilitators discuss particular elements of this written academic genre: audience, purpose, knowledge gap, competence claim, structure, style, and more. The workshop includes examples of successful UBC CGS-M research […]

Writing at the graduate level involves bringing complex and technical ideas together, through description and interpretations of causation, correlation and more. Building this complexity in long texts is itself a complex process, requiring the simultaneous management of individual technical words, phrasing, and whole sentences and paragraphs to layer meanings together. This hybrid workshop draws on […]

The personal statement is written for admission to graduate and professional programs at academic institutions like UBC. But what does personal mean in an academic context? How do writers construct an appropriate professional identity? Research shows that personal statements must reflect the values of the profession, and that the personal self you construct in the […]

Research shows that academic writers of research article Introductions typically establish a research space by pointing out a research gap that the current study addresses. The Introduction offers an opportunity for writers to begin to tell the research story by articulating the gap and, then, taking their own conversational turn. But how do writers persuade […]

Writing in the STEM disciplines can be an especially challenging task for multilingual writers who speak English as an additional language, as it requires a high level of language proficiency to effectively use the English language with the appropriate level of accuracy, precision, and conciseness. Research shows that common academic expressions can greatly improve writing […]

The research article is the most privileged form of publication in which academics present their intellectual contributions. As such, conclusions offer writers several final opportunities to engage with readers in this high-stakes writing situation. With conclusions in mind, the facilitator explores some of the organizational patterns of research articles written in English, while accounting for […]

Did you know that 40% of language production in English is formulaic, that is, made up of common expressions? However, producing effective writing in English can be challenging for many non-native writers of English. The good news is, these formulaic expressions can be learned. This workshop is designed for those who speak English as an […]

One of the major challenges that academic writers encounter is making connections within the text, for example, making comparisons and drawing conclusions. Rather than counting on readers to figure out the meaning of a difficult text, academic writing requires writers to make clear connections between ideas. In this workshop, we introduce a variety of academic […]