About the series
This four-part virtual webinar series is designed to bring calm to the brain’s threat response associated with the uncertainty of academic writing by bringing certainty into the process. Writing strategies for improving the clarity, logic, and flow of your writing will be clearly explained from the onset in a step-by-step fashion to allow you to feel in control of your writing. Participants encouraged to bring some of their own writing to the webinar to apply the techniques to their own writing.
Register once and attend as many or as few as you like.
Dates and description
June 1, 2022: Grammar as Choice
In this webinar, you will learn an approach to grammar concerned with what grammar does in your writing (its functions) as opposed to the “rules” of grammar, and learn to make choices between different clause structures and word forms to shape your message clearly.
June 8, 2022: Old-to New Information Flow
In this webinar, you will learn a strategy called Thematic Progression—a powerful resource for organizing a text—to help guide the reader through logical connections in your writing.
June 15, 2022: Paragraph Patterns: Linking
Research has shown that scientific research writers regularly use topic development patterns based on the given/new contract in their published work. Most sentences, therefore, should begin with old, familiar, or "given" information—something the reader can "recover" from context—and move toward information that is unfamiliar, unexpected, or "news" (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004, p. 91). This is because sentences that start with new ideas are difficult to understand because readers only realize how those ideas fit the text at the end of the sentence. In this webinar, you will learn how to gradually develop a topic in a paragraph so that it conforms to the expectations of readers.
June 22, 2022: Controlling the Theme
Writers often have quite a lot of control over which part of the clause is the topic, or theme. Learn to use various grammatical resources to control the theme and move information into the old or new position to make strong connections in your writing.