Natalie offers two sequential courses in academic writing. As Natalie customizes the Academic Writing course, its contents vary according to the needs of the individual client.

No matter how you learned in your first language to organize a paper, construct an argument, use your scholarly vocabulary, or consider your reader's expectations, English does it differently."

(from Getting Published in International Journals)

Academic Writing Course

Target Audience

All scholars, researchers, editors, and Ph.D. and postdoctoral students whose professional goals include publishing articles and books in English, particularly for an international academic readership

Length

Three days—but sometimes four, depending on client preference

Academic Writing is an intensive course that:

  • introduces and explains all the unwritten rules of academic English
  • covers the primary written rules
  • offers individual and group practice in analysis, criticism, and rewriting

Content includes not only structure, grammar, and punctuation—all of which are critical for publication success—but also the theory of contrastive rhetoric and its implications for all native and non-native writers of English.

Participants learn how to say more with fewer words, write with precision, and avoid ambiguity. They also learn to argue according to Anglo-American rhetorical norms, including

  • establishing the purpose clearly
  • organizing and focusing content effectively
  • structuring sentences and paragraphs for greatest impact

"Why would an educated person submit a paper so inappropriate that I know from the start that they have never read our journal?"

—Anonymous editor
(from Getting Published in International Journals)

Journal Analysis Course

Target Audience

All scholars, professionals, graduate students, and editors whose career goals include publishing articles in international journals in their area of expertise

Length

Two days

Prerequisite

Academic Writing course

Journal Analysis is an intensive course showing participants how to maximize their chances of publication in international journals. It gives participants strategies for analyzing articles (and the journals in which they have been published) for both content and style. Participants learn to:

  • analyze prospective journals for content, focus, orientation, and style before the writing begins
  • eliminate all journals that are poor matches for their paper
  • perform both an organization and a linguistic analysis of the selected journal
  • organize and write the paper in the style of that journal

The wide range of topics includes such basic strategies as:

  • analyzing the abstract for specific linguistic devices
  • creating abstract models
  • assessing the ratio of theory to data
  • determining structural composition and content placement
  • analyzing introductions, paragraph by paragraph

Participants learn techniques for studying journals from a linguistic perspective, so that they may avail themselves of cues and linguistic devices not readily apparent to the untutored eye.

© 2010-2025 Natalie Reid / Site by Adam Baney