Cultural Aspects of Writing (6.24.16)

Kathy L. Brenner

Writing Consultant, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Instructor at Friedman School of Nutrition/Tufts University

Description: Writing is cultural - so come join a workshop that will focus on the contrastive rhetoric that will provide explanations for why you write the way you do when dealing with a new language, a new culture, and new expectations. Targeting a specific discourse community (postdoctoral fellows) and a particular writing genre (journal publication), we will look at common writing problems for non-native speakers of English. Aspects such as strength of claim and lexical nuance will be discussed in more depth. Using a PLOS ONE research article, we will touch upon the writing processes of content, context, and form, looking more closely at how language and structure are used to produce selected components from the introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections.

NOTE: Though this workshop is designed for non-native speakers of English, it is relevant to everyone and all are welcome to attend.