Authoring a doctoral thesis is a challenging undertaking for anyone, more particularly so if English is not your first language. Learning to use the language of academic research is an ongoing journey, which is closely bound up with your developing knowledge of your field.  A range of language support and resources are available during the course of your doctorate at no extra cost, including three in-depth writing programmes focussed specifically on doctoral level thesis writing and available exclusively to doctoral researchers.

These programmes are offered by the Graduate School in conjunction with the Academic English Programme, ISLI and are detailed below. Details of other sources of language support can be found in the booklet English Language Support for Doctoral Researchers at Reading.

Programme 1: Writing Language and Practice and Development

This six-week course will give you tools to assess the clarity and effectiveness of the texts that you write. Students will be encouraged to share short extracts from their own writing which will be collectively analysed for discussion of key grammatical and lexical (vocabulary) features of good academic written communication in English. By studying key features of good academic writing and sharing and practising your writing in the classroom, you will learn how to write with more clarity, precision and effectiveness and to achieve a clear academic voice. This course is recommended for students who wish to take a practical workshop approach to improving their academic writing at doctoral level.

Programme 2 - Doctoral Thesis Writing: Structure and Language

This course will look at all key components of a doctoral thesis with focus on the purpose, structure and key language needed for each section. Extracts from successful doctoral and published research writing are analysed to develop understanding of useful organisational patterns and important language features for introducing your work, reviewing the literature, describing methodology, discussing results, concluding and writing your abstract. The programme runs in two parallel subject streams, Science/Life Sciences and AHSSB (arts, humanities, social science and business) and will be useful  both to students who haven't previously studied in an English language context as well as to students who have completed an undergraduate or Master's degree in English.  [NB. this programme is very suitable to students across science and social science subjects using quantitative or qualitative methods within their project, but may be less relevant to some styles of thesis writing used in subjects such as law, literature, and  film and TV.]

Programme 3 - Editing your Thesis with Corpora

This course will help you write, edit and develop your written work, equipping you with tools that have the potential to independently increase the accuracy, fluency and confidence of your research writing. You will build a collection of texts that can be accessed electronically (a corpus) and use it to critically examine the academic language of your field. Your corpus will consist of research articles in your own disciplinary field. You will also make a corpus of your own writing and compare how your writing differs from published work. You will learn how to use software to help you independently answer questions you have about grammar and usage in written discipline/field-specific academic English, and to discover how expert writers in your area of research express themselves. This programme is aimed at doctoral researchers who have some written work already completed, such as a substantial draft chapter or a research article, or at those preparing to submit their thesis.

Dates and Booking

Programme dates for 2020-21 are available below.  Programmes for autumn term 2020 will be delivered online; further updates will follow about delivery method in subsequent terms.

Places can be requested via the RISIS web portal in the same way that you request places on RRDP courses.  Look out for courses starting 'ISLI - ' in the listings.   (Programmes offered after summer 18-19 count as one RRDP if all classes are attended, but cannot count as more than one in any single academic year no matter how many thesis writing programmes are taken.)

Autumn term 2020-19

Spring term 2020-21

Summer term 2019-20

For further information: contact Dr Joanna John.