Most of us know the feeling: 40 or more blank sheets of paper waiting to be filled. But how?! Now there is a new online service to provide advice to students: the “Bremen Writing Coach”. This online guide (www.bremer-schreibcoach.uni-bremen.de) is aimed at university students of all disciplines and provides advice on how to tackle written assignments – from the very first seminar paper up to Bachelor’s, Master’s, Diplom or state examinations. The new portal is the result of several years of development by the Bremen linguist and writing researcher Prof.Hans Krings and his team from the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the University of Bremen. The project was supported with funds from the Bremen Senator of Education and Science.
The “Bremen Writing Coach” offers practical advice concerning all stages of an academic writing task: from the planning and preparation, literature search, material collection and evaluation, through structuring, formulating and revision, up to the final stage of proofreading. The outward appearance doesn’t come too short, either. According to the author, this makes it the most comprehensive open-source offer of its type in the German speaking world. The advice and recommendations it contains are based on the author’s many years of experience in advising students as well as on the results of writing seminars. The author also draws on the findings of scientific writing research and writing didactics as commonly practiced in the USA, for instance.
The main goal pursued by the Writing Coach from the University of Bremen is to accompany students step by step in writing their assignments and coach them through the process, especially those unfortunates who have difficulty writing. Writing problems are seen to be one of the major causes for students dropping out and excessively long durations of study. At the same time, faculty can get relief from the ever-recurring task of introducing new students to the principles of academic writing, leaving them free to devote more time to subject-specific matters.
The Writing Coach also contains an abundance of tips to help with doctoral dissertations and academic publications. Each page incorporates a comment function so that the feedback from users can be used to refine the Writing Coach further.
For more information contact:
Universität Bremen
Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften
Fachgebiet „Angewandte Linguistik / Romanische Sprachen“
Prof.Dr. phil.Dr.h.c.Hans P. Krings
Phone. 0421/218-68430 (Secretary: 68055)
e-mail: kringsprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de
www.bremer-schreibcoach.uni-bremen.de
