TOKYO INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Course description and aims

Doctoral students have the ability to write easily-understandable scientific or technical papers, presenting them at international conferences and/or submitting them to top-level international journals and having them published in the journals. The students are required to understand and recognize the followings: 1) To understand both similarities and differences between an essay and a scientific or technical paper. 2) Not only to refer to the paper writing of a top-level journal in the research field of each student, but also to understand both similarities and differences between a Japanese scientific or technical paper and an English one. 3) To recognize differences in paper presentation techniques between Japanese research scientists and European/American ones. This course consists of seven classes by two emeritus professors at Tokyo Tech. It gives a practical lecture on writing and presenting a scientific or technical paper. Then, each student writes and presents a part of his/her research paper, followed by instructors' editing and commenting. Concretely stated, each one is asked to (1) select and present a technical paper/article by which you have been most stimulated and (2) write a document that describes the present status of your research following the convention of academic papers. The paper/article mentioned in the task (1) should be picked up by yourself prior to the class kick-off, whereas the document mentioned in task (2) will be discussed in view of English technical writing.

Student learning outcomes

This course will make it possible for students to do the following items:
1) Understand both similarities and differences between Japanese papers and English papers.
2) Learn various tips and tricks for English paper writing and presentation.
3) Practice how to prepare better English PowerPoint slides

Keywords

English paper writing skills, English paper presentation skills, Comprehension skills, Communication skills.

Competencies that will be developed

Class flow

The course flow is based on the combination of lectures and experiences/exercises in writing and presentation. Please be careful of the following important information:
1) Tokyo Tech “T2SCHOLA” will communicate between each instructor and students, including Zoom URL information, class materials, and student reports.
2) The maximum number of students who can register for this course is 20. When it is more than 20 students, the students will be selected from their TOEIC scores and JLPT levels.

Course schedule/Required learning

Textbook(s)

None

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Students can download lecture materials from T2SCHOLA.

Assessment criteria and methods

Evaluation ma be made by the submitted reports.
When a student is absent in a class, his/her grade point may be reduced.

Related courses

• Doctoral Academic Presentation I, III, V
• Doctoral Academic Literacy

Prerequisites (i.e., required knowledge, skills, courses, etc.)

1) International students can register for this class. However, they have the ability of a N1 level in the Japanese-Language Proficiency Test (JLPT).
2) Japanese students have the ability of higher than 700 points in TOEIC, or an equivalent one.
3) Doctoral students cannot register for this course within six months after doctoral program enrollment.

Other

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