Teaching Academic Writing in English to Students of Technical Master’s Program

Abstract

State governments and universities’ officials now realize that modern elite universities represent the source of national and cultural pride, the stock of human capital that ensures prosperity of any country. Elitism and prestige of a university are determined by the position it occupies in different ratings. This position depends heavily on science citation indexes for published academic papers. However most high quality, peer-reviewed scientific journals accept articles in English and require standard scientific communication language. The article advances the general principle of the English-language academic writing, analyses existing recommendations and reveals difficulties regarding the problem. The authors develop some techniques for training in academic writing which they introduce in Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University. To estimate proposed techniques, academic writing skills of participants were measured before and after the training. The significant improvement was identified. So the proposed techniques can be applied to broaden professional and academic competences of the students. That will increase the number of publications in high quality scientific journals, provide more opportunities for students to participate in international conferences and seminars, and serve the aim of improving University image.