April Book Display: English & Academic Writing

Redpath Book Display

April may be a busy time while you are completing your term papers and exams. It may also be a great time to reflect and determine what you want to accomplish in the upcoming summer vacation. How about uplifting your academic writing skills? No matter what level of study you are doing or what role you are playing in academia, good writing undoubtedly makes a positive contribution to your work. Not only does it help to make your ideas more precise and persuasive, but also it aids in your reasoning, analyzing, and critical thinking.

With that in mind, the McGill Library created a virtual book display entitled “English & Academic Writing”, consisting of recent print books, ebooks, e-videos and website resources on academic writing and English communication. They are useful for both instructors and students of various disciplines, including those whose mother tongue is not English. Selected print titles are now available for borrowing on the Redpath Book Display on the main floor of the Redpath Library (aka. the northern part of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library) during the entire month of April.

Here are some of the titles that you may want to start with:

100 tips to avoid mistakes in academic writing and presenting

100 tips to avoid mistakes in academic writing and presenting, Adrian Wallwork & Anna Southern, 2020, Springer

This ebook contains one hundred typical mistakes relating to papers, proposals, oral presentations, and correspondence with editors, reviewers, and editing agencies. While it is primarily intended for non-native English speaking researchers, it is also useful for those who are revising their works in order to have them published.

How to fix your academic writing trouble: a practical guide, Inger Mewburn, Katherine Firth, and Shaun Lehmann, 2019, Open University Press

This print book explains common feedback students receive from their instructors of a writing course, such as “Your writing doesn’t sound very academic” and “Your writing doesn’t flow”. It also provides advice on how to fix those issues.

Writing for engineering and science students: staking your claim, Gerald Rau, 2020, Routledge

This ebook is a practical guide for both international students and native speakers of English undertaking either academic or technical writing. It uses writing excerpts from engineering and science journals to explore characteristics of a research paper, including organization, length and naming of sections, and location and purpose of citations and graphics. It covers different types of writing, including lab reports, research proposals, dissertations, poster presentations, industry reports, emails, and job applications.

Academic writing for university students, Stephen Bailey, 2022, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group

This print book is designed to help with writing essays, reports and other papers for coursework and exams. It consists of four parts: The Writing Process: From finding suitable sources, through to editing and proofreading; Writing Types: Practice with common assignments such as reports and cause-effect essays; Writing Tools: Skills such as making comparisons, definitions, punctuation and style; and Lexis: Academic vocabulary, using synonyms, nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.

“They say / I say”: the moves that matter in academic writing: with readings, Gerald Graff, Cathy Birkenstein, Russel K Durst, and Laura J Panning Davies, 2021, W.W. Norton & Company

This text has been used in many writing courses to teach students how to structure a scholarly conversation while building their own arguments. It provides practical rhetoric templates that are useful for citing different views in the literature, for example, “In discussions of………………, a controversial issue is whether……………… . While some argue that………………, others contend that………………. .” It is definitely a helpful guide for writing your literature review.

Becoming an academic writer: 50 exercises for paced, productive, and powerful writing, Patricia Goodson, 2017, SAGE

This print title is a workbook of 50 exercises, covering both linguistic basics (e.g. grammar and vocabulary) and writing specifics in different sections of an academic work, such as abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion.

For those whose mother tongue is not English, also feel free to watch some e-videos listed in the “Study English” and “English Composition” series.

Since it takes effort and time to improve your writing, why don’t you start the journey with a book from our book display today?

Depositing in ResearchGate doesn’t comply with Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications

ResearchGate has received wide attention from academia. Some researchers even believe uploading their published works to ResearchGate is a way of complying with Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications. As librarians, we keep telling researchers that ResearchGate is not considered an appropriate repository for compliance. Here is an article from The Scholarly Kitchen giving you some insights about ResearchGate and publishers’ actions to take down infringing articles deposited.

If you are interested in learning how to comply with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy, please visit  McGill Libraries’ open access page.

Oct. 4: McGill Engineering Research Showcase (MERS) & Canadian Graduate Engineering Consortium (CGEC) Graduate School Fair

Please join McGill’s Faculty of Engineering on Tuesday Oct. 4, from 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. in the McConnell Engineering Building Lobby and 1st floor hallway to learn more about the innovative research taking place via poster presentations from graduate students at the McGill Engineering Research Showcase (MERS). More information/register here.

And hear from the Canadian Graduate Engineering Consortium (CGEC) to learn more about pursuing graduate studies with some of Canada’s top engineering schools: University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, McGill University, University of Toronto, and University of Waterloo who will each have representatives present to speak with students. More information/register here.

Poster Presentation Fair for Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE)

sure_posterOnce again, SURE will host their annual Poster Presentation Fair on Thursday August 11 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm in Trottier Building where you will see exhibits of SURE students’ work under close supervision with McGill Engineering professors on research projects for the past 4 months this summer. For more information, please see here.

3-Day Dissertation Writing Retreat

Nov 10, 11, and 12; 9am-4pm

Need to carve out dedicated time to stay on track with your dissertation?  Struggling with writing blocks?  Think you might benefit from consults with writing tutors, librarians and others to help you reflect on and strengthen your work?  Apply now for a 3-day dissertation writing retreat.  Limited spaces available!

The 10th Annual Undergraduate Research Conference at McGill

2014-09-26_1409Once again this year on October 2nd in the lobby of McGill’s Arts building, students from the Faculty of Science will present their research projects at the tenth annual Undergraduate Research Conference (URC). All the projects will be entered into a poster competition judged by a panel of distinguished McGill researchers. Keynote address and reception will come after the prize ceremony. This all day event is open to everyone. See details here.

Undergraduate Research Commons –A Portal for Undergraduate Research Publications

I recently came across the Undergraduate Research Commons and thought I should share it with 2014-09-09_1446you. It is a portal where you will have access to hundreds of full-text undergraduate research papers from a large number of participating educational institutions worldwide. These include engineering capstone projects, faculty-supervised research, award-winning papers, peer-reviewed journal publications and so on.

You may browse by participating institution or type of documents, and find out the popular papers in each subject area. Of course, it also allows users to search by keywords. If you are interested in exploring the content, simply click on the info graphic at the left-bottom corner of the homepage to regroup the content by different criteria.

Do students need old school instruction?

1395855101181While we are getting excited about the great opportunities that emerging technology brings to higher education and busy with creating distant learning modules, online tutorials, videos, and MOOCs, research from Concordia University’s Department of Education says that “Yes, students like technology, and yes, they want it in the classroom — but they still want classical instruction.” Read more at here.

Image from Why the digital classroom needs to go ‘old school’

Welcome Grace!

AScreenshot_Graces April announced, this semester, the Turret will have a few new bloggers from the CCOM-206 class. The next new blogger I would like to welcome is Grace. She travelled from a small town in Alaska to Montreal. She will soon share with us her experience about this transition.

Have Your Personal Library on Google Scholar

Scholar_libraryGoogle Scholar recently released a new goody – your personal online library at Google Scholar. On the result page, click “Save” below a search result to save it to your library. Click “My library” on the left to open your library. Of course, you can find the full text at any of these two stages when it is available either freely online or from your local library’s collection. To organize your articles in the library, you may click on a result in your library and add a label to it.