Welcome to Advanced Writing Skills for Graduate Study in Mathematics, which is, as the name suggests, a writing-focused course with the specific focus of improving your skill in crafting academic essays for publication in the math world.

The aim of this course is continued development of students' English writing skills. In addition to time spent on vocabulary, style, and structure, this course includes learning about and using language corpora. Having written a total of five essays that will constitute his or her writing portfolio, each student should complete this course with both the knowledge and confidence to create various types of high-quality academic essays.

If you would like (for some inane or perhaps insane reason), here is the course syllabus for your reading pleasure. Of course, I reserve the right to amend it, so please treat this as a guideline.

For those of you that have taken courses from me, you will recall that we have had no textbooks, and in the present course we will also have no textbook. Class material will be available on both Dropbox and Google Drive, and feel free to download, save, print, or otherwise use it. I seldom make paper handouts, but if you prefer paper, please take care of printing files yourself.

You will find course requirements near the bottom of this page.

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Hereafter you will find a reasonably detailed synopsis of the various class meetings ("sessions") that we will enjoy this term.

Sure, you were about to ask, right? That, Good People, is a sextant, a very necessary tool for navigation in the days of sailing ships (i.e., in the pre-GPS age). There is, in a most appropriate nod to our faculty, a strong mathematical background to this beautiful tool.

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Session #1 (September 21) — Introduction; Paper Format; Word Advice 

As often happens on the first day of class, we'll be speaking in somewhat general terms about our course and some of the topics therein. First, note that this course includes all four skills that appear in academic work: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. There are, of course, certain requirments for this course, as is true for every course; please scroll down to the specific courrse requirements for your enlightenment.

Having enjoyed that, Good People, we will now devote the remainder of our morning to reviewing our friend, the paragraph. This is, of course, the fundamental unit of any paper you write, and it would behoove you to be as skillful as possible at crafting interesting, effective paragraphs. Let's take a look at the paragraph structure file below.

Class Material & Homework:

Session #2 (October 5) — Paragraph Structure 

In the first half of today's class we will be doing some paragraph writing—details in class, folks.

In the second half of our session this morning (time permitting), I'd like to provide a brief introduction to corpus linguistics. Because this is a large and growing area in our field, I've opted to add a separate page to only begin to scratch the surface. Follow this link to our resource page with some information on corpus linguistics.

Homework:

Session #3 (October 12) — Basics of Description; Common EFL Errors; Punctuation 

One seemingly simple yet often poorly-done area is description, a skill which requires a good command of some commonly used phrases, adjectives, and a few strategies. In the describing objects file below, we'll find some advice and lots of practice.

In my years of teaching in Japan, I've come across errors that occur repeatedly in students' writing, and today we will talk some about those.

Our final goal today is to talk briefly about the proper use of punctuation in English, which is naturally somewhat different than its usage in Japan

Homework:

Session #4 (October 19) — Narrative Flow; Transitions 

Today we will spend most of our time looking at the notion of flow in academic writing. This morning I would like to have you good people consider how your fine paragraphs work together. Recall that we spent some time on topic sentences, with which you should all be quite comfortable. Those will, of course, begin your magnificent series of paragraphs, but those paragraphs must fit together into a coherent entity that will be transparent both to and for your reader.

Let's continue with a look at the language of academic papers. This is an area in which students can sometimes get perilously close to the register used in oral communication, which is generally much more casual. Here we have a useful chapter on (3) academic style, courtesy of Stephen Bailey and his 2018 book titled Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students. Below you will also find two of my articles, which we will glance at to check for my use of academic style.

Class Material:

Session #5 (October 26) — Corpus Analysis: Theory & Basics 

A point for your consideration today: As you're crafting your magnum opus, consider using the strength of corpus data to enhance your work. One source is, of course, your basic dictionary, which will provide you with concise definitions, examples of usage (to an extent), as well as synonyms and antonyms. If you google your search term using "define [term]", you'll find several online dictionaries, among which the Free Online Dictionary and Merriam-Webster are quite useful. For a more extensive set of examples, you would do well to consult some of the corpora available online; I would suggest BYU's corpus resources, the Compleat Lexical Tutor, and finally the myriad tools from Laurence Anthony.

Because corpus linguistics is a large and growing area in our field, I've opted to add a separate page to only begin to scratch the surface. Follow this link to our resource page with some information on corpus linguistics.

Let's begin with a look at the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which comes to use courtesy of Brigham Young University in the US. You will recall that I mentioned a series of very helpful YouTube videos on using this corpus, the first of which is at this link.

Class Material:

Remember that next Thursday, November 2, is a holiday.

Session #6 (November 9) — Corpus Analysis Review; Complex Sentences 

This morning I'd like to begin with a review of last week's class in which we talked about basic corpus analysis. I'm sure you devoted considerable time to completing the corpus worksheet (right?). Please open that worksheet and we'll work through it together.

Second, I would like to offer the first of several admonitions about making your writing more interesting, which often means making it a tad more complex. A singular hint in doing so is to consider how you can use conjunctions (which, you will recall, should not be at the beginning of your written sentences). A second avenue to making your writing more interesting is to look at the variety of sentence patterns in both your own writing and in my writing. An easy way to do so is to use Excel and simply line up sentences, as you'll see ... This is a method that we will call genre analysis, about which we will have more to say later.

Class Material:

Session #7 (November 16) —  Style and More Paragraphs 

Let's continue with a look at the language of academic papers. This is an area in which students can sometimes get perilously close to the register used in oral communication, which is generally much more casual. As you'll recall, on October 27 we talked some about using complex sentences and also varying the types of sentences you use (or at least being aware thereof). We'll begin with some time looking at the two links below, #1 and #2. Thereafter we will peruse a useful chapter on academic style, courtesy of Scott Bailey and his book titled Academic Writing: A Handbook for International Students. You might consider the style in my articles, which we will find slightly higher on this page.

A second point I would like to cover today concerns paragraphs and (a) how they are organized internally, and (b) how the paragraphs in a paper are organized. Let's have a good look at this helpful handout on structuring and organizing paragraphs.

OK, Good People, why did I include an image of a ship's helm at this point?

A small sidelight I'd like to address today is writing polite email (or emails if you prefer the plural form with that distinctive S). These are, of course, of considerable importance, and the skill to craft effective messages is an often overlooked skill.

Class Material:

Remember that next Thursday, November 23, is a national and university holiday.

Session #8 (November 30) —  Revision Practice 

Class Material:

Session #9 (December 7) —  Relative Clauses; Hedging 

Good morning, everyone. Today our class will be devoted to considering relative classes, which are a very common feature that you certainly encountered in your English training. You likely did not enjoy them much, however, which many students have mentioned.

Second, I would like to spend a few minutes talking about hedging. This refers, of course, to the technique of softening what you write.

Class Material:

Your homework is to begin working on your final paper, which will be due by January 31 (during the final exam week).

Technical Paper details:

Session #10 (December 14) —  Visual Elements 

We will also delve some into the world of tables and figures, which is more art than science, I think. Here we have a useful chapter on the use and presentation of visual material.

 Homework: 

Session #11 (December 21) —  Citations 

Good morning, everyone. Today we'll be devoting our class to the very necessary craft of citations. None of your (my, our) work exists in isolation, for we build on those who have come before.

Class Material:

Session #12 (January 11) —  Citing Sources; Genre Analysis 

Welcome back, everyone, to the Year of the Dragon, and I hope you enjoyed a relaxing, reinvigorating vacation. Today we have two tasks, the first of which is to add citations to the following three students papers from some years ago. As you'll see, in the respective papers I have removed the citations, and your job is to add citations in appropriate places in the texts.

 Student papers sans citations: 

Our second task today is to examine a simple yet productive type of analysis called genre analysis. This begins with a sample (dare we say a corpus?) of texts, in which we want to find trends or patterns. We can look at any component of the writing, which can include types of words (e.g., adjectives), grammatical features (e.g., verb tense), moves, rhetorical features such as topic sentences, and so forth.

Next we will walk through two genre analyses. The first is of my work, which includes the three articles below.

 Class Material: 

Finally, allow me to add a small assignment to your final paper. In the spirit of this so-called genre analysis, you will conduct and submit a genre analysis of your own writing. You may choose the particular area that you analyze, but it should help you improve your paper. You might, for example, look at all the paragraph topic sentences. Another idea is to exam the verbs you used (and especially the tenses). Please see the two "geometric pattern" files in the Class Material.

Session #13 (January 18) —  Consultations 

In this final class I will be meeting with individual students if requested to do so (i.e., this is optional). As in our previous consultations, you are only required to be in class for your specific time. Please select a time using this link.

The following two tasks we will not cover in class, but feel free to look over this material in your free (?) time. First, I would like to provide some thoughts and advice on plagiarism, about which all academic writers must remain cognizant. The first two links, courtesy of Dr. Michaela Panter at AJE, are particularly good. Second, we will look at—quite briefly—the three very vexing articles in English: a, an, and the. Finally, allow me to remind you that you need to include a genre analysis in your technical report.

Plagiarism Material:

Material on Articles (a, an, the):

Genre Analysis Material:

In addition ... —  Consultations

Homework:

1. In principle, three absences will be allowed, beyond which the student's overall grade will be reduced.


2. Regular and active participation in class is expected. (10%)


3. Required writing will include the following (70%):
• ✔ Self-introduction (5%; due October 5);
• ✔ Descriptive paper (15%; due October 19)
• ✔ Cause-and-effect paper (30%; due November 30))
• ✔ Technical (math) paper (45%; due January 31)
• ✔ Genre analysis (5%)

Note that you may revise and resubmit any paper for additional credit.