English course for PhD candidates
14 May, 2009 by Ina
Why is it important to offer English courses to PhD candidates? Shouldn't they know how to write good English?
- We see a lot of minor English errors from both PhD candidates and researchers. Most of them speak and write well, but they make some of the same mistakes time and time again. By offering courses like this we can help them improve their English and be aware of such common mistakes. English is full of pitfalls and many native speakers are also unaware of them, said Stewart Clark.
- It is also good to get to know each other. NTNU wants to become internationally outstanding and knowing who you can contact when you have problems with an English expression or need some help with editing may help improve the quality of a paper you want to publish internationally, he adds.
Silje Aschehoug is one of the PhD candidates that participated in his English course.
How will you describe this course?
-This course was excellent, with a highly knowledgeable and skilled teacher, she said with a big smile.
What did you learn today?
I got a lot of guidelines and instructions, a good Internet guide that might be useful, good compendium for later use and recommendations about books within the same topic. I am inspired to improve my English and I think I will use the course compendium a lot during my PhD work.
Another PhD candidate, Henry Ako Baringbing, was very pleased to.
- The material was very good, it is brief and he gave many links to the books that we must read in order to get into detail. He gave many Internet link so we can work on them one our own. The presentation was also very clear and mixed with humour. The only input I have is that we could have more exercises during the course. That would make it even better, he claims. 
Daryl Powell is an English-speaking PhD candidate, but found the course very useful as well.
- In England we don´t learn so much about academic English writing. I found this course as useful as anybody else, he said.
Do you want to improve your English?
Here are some tips:
1. Use the "English Matters" portal at NTNU (one of the first hits on Google) with dictionaries, databases and lots of self-study exercises such as the course in Academic Writing. Check two of the most popular links - the British National Corpus at the University of Oxford and 'Words in the News' from the BBC.
2. Buy Stewart Clark's latest reference book: 'Words - a User's Guide', Longman 2009. Available on the Internet and at Tapir.
3. Always copy and paste important emails into Word before you click on 'send'. The spellchecker in Word will pick up a lot of typos and other mistakes that most email systems never find.
