Skills: Academic Writing
Full course description
No education will be offered. Students who are enrolled in the European Law School programme as of September 2022 or earlier are entitled to two additional assessment opportunities in 2024/2025 to complete the respective programme components of year 2.
The course Academic Writing has been structured around the principal elements and criteria for writing the Bachelor’s Essay as well as academic research papers in more general. In the conception and production of an academic paper of around 4.000 words (i.e. roughly half the length of the Bachelor’s Essay), students will be guided step-by-step through the advanced academic writing process, working in turn on such aspects as the research question, research methodology, research proposal, structural outline, main body of text, bibliography etc. This is designed to ensure that students master each of these individual steps (while at the same time recognising that ultimately they are inextricably intertwined), and that they reserve sufficient time for each stage in the process. Students will be free to decide on the topic of their papers falling within the general theme of the group for which they registered. (e.g. criminal law, private law, EU law, International law, legal philosophy, public law).
Teaching methods
- PBL
- Knowledge Clips
- Learning by doing
- Peer-to-peer learning
Course objectives
The objective of this course is to develop the skills of academic legal research and writing, with a view to enabling students to become self-sufficient in their academic writing endeavours, including notably (but certainly not only) the Bachelor’s Essay. By the second year of their studies, students have already acquired basic knowledge of the technical aspects of academic research through the course “Skills: Legal Research and Reasoning”. This course seeks to build on this knowledge by further expanding, deepening and practicing students’ writing skills with the introduction of new concepts and insights. This requires an independent work attitude on the part of the students and the ability to gauge the quality of one’s own work, and the work of others, on the basis of the guidance received during the course. For this reason, another important skill that will be developed in this course is the ability to provide critical feedback on written academic work, as well as to address comments and incorporate suggestions as and where appropriate.
In summary, after completing this course, students will be able to:
- Identify relevant (academic) sources
- Analyse written sources and critically reflect on their quality
- Formulate relevant and disciplinary sound research questions
- Compare concepts and doctrines between different legal systems (legal comparison)
- Identify and apply different (legal) research methodologies needed to answer legal research questions
- Understand the importance of integrity and cooperation for academic citizenship
- Apply proper citation practices
- Understand the differences between different text types and audience expectations
- Identify and complete the stages of the writing process
- Construct and support written arguments in accordance with disciplinary expectations
- Reflect on the research and writing process and orally present the outcomes of your research
- Provide and receive feedback
Prerequisites
None
Recommended prior knowledge
The course builds on knowledge obtained in course LAW1003 Skills: Legal Research and Reasoning.