Blockseminar April 8-12:

• Slides on Structure of Paper/Thesis
• Text for Abstract Writing
• Slides for Abstract Writing
• Slides for Mathematical Writing
• Slides on use of  Literature

Abschlussarbeit für Blockseminar 8.-12. April 2013

Home Work Exam: Deliver Resutlts by Feb. 23, 2013, 23:59

Part A: Download text here. Read text and perform the following tasks:

1. Write an abstract for the paper.
2. Analyse the text according to the principle "Actions & Heroes" and determine the count for deviations from the principle.

Part B: Write a 3-page Essay on one of the following topics. Deliver essay along with your pre-writing.

1. What shall be more important for a professor - researching or teaching ?
2. What is your idea about study fees ?
3. a free topic of your choice

Thanks for your participation. CU next time. kldi

• Feb.15: based on popular demand you can download the slides on abstract writing. 
• Feb. 01: slides on mathematical writing are here for download
• Jan. 30: slides on use of literature cn be found here.
• Jan.23: Please note that tomorrow's meeting will be taking place in another room. We'll meet in room 2100. 
• Dec. 20: Slides for today's lecture on Cohesion and Coherence.
• Dec. 14: Here comes a link to an article, which I recommend to read over Christmas. We discuss it in class after the Christmas break. There is another link to a website that gives "examples for bad writing", which is also worthwile to have a look at. Finally, I provide a little sample text that I ask you to process as a little home work until next week. Instructions are included in the document. Delivery date is Dec. 20. 
• Nov. 29: Slides for today's meeting on the Actions & Heroes principle. Also I provide a document that contains easy exercises for dealing with nominalizations. Please work the exercises and deliver the results until 13.12. 
• Nov. 22: Slides for today's meeting on the structure of a paper/article. As a home work to deliver by Dies Academicus (6.12.) write a 3-page essay on your thoughts about "online lectures and e-learning". 
• Nov. 6: Seminar on Nov. 8 is CANCELED. Next meeting will take place on Thursday, Nov. 15, at 16:00h. Participants are asked to send or bring along 
  • productivity protocolls of the free writing sessions
  • 2-3pages of a biographical essay, where you describe the situation when you choose your field of study.
•  Sept. 4: Web Site für WS 2012/13 initialized

Target Audience

Elective Course for students in a Bachelor program starting at 5th semester. The course is listed in the "FIQ" list of the B.Sc.EI course program.

Language

Englisch, participants should have a good command of English language

Dates

Thursday 16.00-17.30 Uhr, Z995 (Seminar room@LDV), first meeting 18. October 2012.

Content

The topic of this course is to learn and practice simple principles and techniques, which shall help to improve the participants' writing skills. The emphasis is to achieve clarity for a text of scientific subject matter. The presented form of writing principles and techniques is particularly tailored to the needs of engineers, who prefer a systematic and measurable process of getting things done. Besides prose text we also address how to handle mathematical expressions in a text as well as how to deal with references and citations.
The course is based on team work and joint discussions. That means that all participants shall analyze existing texts, which they discuss and which they subsequently re-write. Bedsides this, the participants will also be asked to write short original texts, which they will then discuss in the group. Beyond writing skills we will also touch upon a few effective techniques to improve the oral communication skills. Home assignments are of course also part of the course.

Literature

If you are interested to read more on the subject of the course, the following books provide additional material. The course presents a subset of the material covered in those books.

• William Strunk, E.B. White. The Elements Of Style. 4th edition, Longman, 2000.
• Joseph M. Williams. Style - Towards Clarity and Grace. The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
• Robert Boice. Advice for the New Faculty Members - Nihil Nimus. Alyn & Bacon. 2000.
• Kate L. Turbian. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and Dissertations. 7th edition, The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Nicholas J. Higham. Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences. SIAM, Philadelphia, 1998.

Grading

I determine the final grades based on graded home assignments and on the active participation in the discussions as well as on a final writing assignment, which serves as an exam.