On February 17, the HSE University Academic Writing Center (AWC) held an open discussion “The place of academic writing in English in the university curricula in Russia.” The discussion took place as part of the international week of writing centers and was organized in collaboration with the School of Foreign Languages of the HSE Campus in Perm and the Department of Foreign Languages of the HSE Campus in St. Petersburg.
More than 60 participants from 28 Russian universities took part in the event. They discussed such burning issues as stages of teaching academic writing, approaches to developing course materials and syllabi, training and motivating writing instructors, and the future of teaching academic writing in Russia. Most of the participants believe that organizing regular meetings and discussions would benefit the professional community.
The participants’ voices:
“I really liked the format of an online discussion! The practical experience of highly-qualified colleagues was truly valuable for me. I’d love to attend such discussions once or twice a year.”
“Thank you for raising relevant issues and creating a friendly atmosphere! I second the suggestion to hold such discussions regularly. Today everyone was genuinely involved and eager to communicate, share experience, and be part of a community of professionals in love with academic writing.”
You can find the details in the Discussion Summary: https://academics.hse.ru/awc/announcements/552113808.html
Lecturer: Dr. Ron Martinez. He specializes in English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in international higher education. He received his Ph.D. in English (Corpus Linguistics) at the University of Nottingham, under the supervision of Norbert Schmitt and Michael McCarthy. He also holds an MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition from the University of Oxford, in addition to a Diploma in English Language Teaching to Adults (DELTA) from Cambridge University ESOL. A native of San Francisco, California, Ron has taught ERPP at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches the course “Writing for Academic Publication” to both native and nonnative speakers of English, but he is especially interested in supporting EAL authors worldwide in their efforts to publish their research in international English-medium journals. It is this interest that motivated him to create the first writing center in Brazil (at the Federal University of Paraná in Curitiba), a unique center that caters especially to professors and postgraduate students. Ron is also Advisor to the President on internationalization policy. Ron has been active in ELT and applied linguistics since 1992 and has published widely in the field, with research articles in such journals as TESOL Quarterly, ELT Journal, Applied Linguistics, and the Journal of English for Academic Purposes, in addition to over twenty published books and chapters.
