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Enhancing Your Academic Writing: Key Skills and Effective Letter Composition

This guide provides invaluable feedback on crafting impactful CVs and letters, emphasizing proper spelling and personal touches. It advocates avoiding contracted forms and highlights the importance of capitalizing names of institutions and programs. Drawing from sources on world-class universities, it underscores the necessity of academic skills such as critical thinking and time management. Learn the essentials of logical relations and effective summary writing techniques to enhance clarity and coherence in your academic communication.

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Enhancing Your Academic Writing: Key Skills and Effective Letter Composition

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  1. Feedback (CV + letter) • Spelling!!! • Years in English • Sender/recipient in hard-copy letters • Avoid contracted forms (I’d → I would) • Names of institutions, study programmes, positions etc. in capital letters (e.g. Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb) • Make your letters slightly more personal and specific

  2. Academic Skills Introduction

  3. World-Class universities Source: Salmi, J. (2009).The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities. IBRD/The World Bank. THES: subjective inputs (peer review,employer surveys) objective inputs (quant.data: no.of intern. stud/faculty) faculty influence (e.g. no. ofcitations/publications, Nobel prizes, ...) SJTU: objective inputs only *FT Executive Education rankingbased on teachingmethods, new skills, programmedesign, aimsachieved, value for money, ... :

  4. What makes a world-class university? • Highly qualified faculty • Excellence in research • Quality teaching • Enough govt/non-govt funding • International & highly qualified students • Academic freedom • Autonomous governance structures • Well-equiped teaching/research/administration facilities

  5. In other words, 3 things are needed... • High concentration of talent • Abundant resources • Favourable governance

  6. THES, 2011 • California Institute ofTechnology • HarvardUniversity • StanfordUniversity • UniversityofOxford • PrincetonUniversity • UniversityofCambridge • Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology • Imperial College London • Universityof Chicago • UniversityofCalifornia, Berkeley

  7. SJTU 2011 • Cambridge • Harvard • MIT • Yale • Oxford • Imperial College London • University College London • Chicago • Penn • Columbia

  8. MBA FT ranking 2011 • London Business School • Penn: Wharton • Harvard • Insead • Stanford • HK • Columbia

  9. Masters in ManagementFT ranking 2011 • St.Gallen • Cems • ESCP • HEC Paris • EM Lyon Business School • WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management • Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad • Essec Business School • Grenoble Graduate Schoolf of Business • Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University

  10. And all these universities require highly developed academic skills!!!

  11. Academic skills? • ‘academic skills’, ‘study skills’, ‘key skills’, ‘core skills’, ‘transferable skills’ • necessary to achieve successful academic performance • follow-up to basic skills in a higher education context • needed later in professional careers

  12. A vague term covering a lot … • study skills • research skills (incl. gathering & and selecting info) • taking & makingnotes • criticalthinking • discussing, debating • problem-solving • paraphrasing • summarizing • presenting • socialskills (teamwork) • time management …

  13. Apparently,very basic, yet, … Comprehension is a skill to be taught. (Shapiro) How to Write, Speak and Think More Effectively (Flesch) Writing summaries is a good practice here.

  14. SUMMARY WRITING

  15. Suggested procedure • Reading the source text • Giving headings to paragraphs • Grouping pgs. (text segmentation) • Making notes (clear structure: main ideas and logical relations) • Turning notes into full sentences *Technicalities: layout (paragraphing) + spelling/grammar check

  16. EXAMPLES OF LOGICAL RELATIONSand words and expressions that can help • Illustrations (examples) • Listing • Clarifying • Cause-effect relationship • Contrast

  17. Illustrations,examples: For example, for instance, as an example...,To illustrate the point,... Listing: There are three reasons why..., (First)Firstly,..,Secondly,Thirdly,....Further, Furthermore, ..., Moreover, ...,Also, ... CONNECTOR SYMBOL

  18. Illustrations,examples: For example, for instance, as an example...,To illustrate the point,... Listing: There are three reasons why..., (First)Firstly,..,Secondly,Thirdly,....Further, Furthermore, ..., Moreover, ...,Also, ... e.g. 1. 2. 3. CONNECTOR SYMBOL/ABBREVIAT.

  19. clarifying: In other words, ..., namely,.. cause-effect: as, because, because of, consequently, therefore, due to, owing to, thus,since contrast: however, on the contrary, on the other hand, nevertheless, conversely, although, though, even though, yet CONNECTOR SYMBOL/ABBREV.

  20. clarifying: In other words, ..., namely,.. cause-effect: as, because, because of, consequently, therefore, due to, owing to, thus,since contrast: however, on the contrary, on the other hand, nevertheless, conversely, although, though, even though, yet i.e. → vs. CONNECTOR SYMB./ABBREVIAT.

  21. Requirements for a good summary • Introduction • Concision • Clarity • Accuracy • Completeness • Coherence and cohesion • Objectivity • Rephrasing • Language quality

  22. Requirements for a good summary • Introduction: (usually one sentence or one paragraph) covers the main topic+ the source e.g. The Economist of 16 June 2011 reports on the problem of ...... This is further related to … • Concision (as brief as possible, danger: loss of clarity) • Clarity (clear words/sentences/overall structure; topic sentences, paragraphing, connectors) • Objectivity(only the author’s ideas, no personal views) • Accuracy (true and precise information on essential ideas) • Completeness(all key ideas, not necessarily in the same order ) • Coherence and cohesion(the text runs smoothly; sentences and paragraphs are logically linked) • Rephrasing sentences(avoid copying, rewrite in your ownwordsif possible) • Language: spelling and grammar

  23. Summary writing – assessmenttot: 20 points, 0-2 each • Introduction? • Concision? • Clarity? • Accuracy? • Completeness? • Coherence and cohesion? • Objectivity? • Rephrasing? • Language: spelling and grammar? • Overall impression?

  24. Making noteswhile preparing to write a summary • Main ideas? • Logical relations? • How many parts (segments) of the text? (How many groups of paragraphs?) • Logical relations between larger parts of the text? Next slide: see sample notes on a text you may know from your 1st year of study

  25. The pendulum of control Schiller, B.R. (1996).Essentials of Economics. McGraw-Hill. I 2 OPPOSITE VIEWS(pgs.1, 2) Karl Marx vs. Adam Smith II LESS DRAMATIC CHOICES IN RECENT HISTORY (pgs.3-6) 1. Towards government intervention: e.g. New Deal 2. Towards free market in the 1990s: a) countries in transition (CEE) b) privatisations: W. Europe, Latin America, Asia c) Republican election victory

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