New Academic Writing Course for Philosophy Students

13 May 2021

Philosophy students at Trinity had the chance to hone their academic writing skills thanks to a special course convened by Career Development Fellow in Philosophy Chris Fowles.

The course was specifically designed to improve the academic writing skills of Trinity’s philosophy undergraduates, and was taught by a specialist tutor from the University’s Language Centre alongside Dr Fowles.

Academic writing in philosophy has some distinctive requirements – in structure, argumentative style, and focus – that can be challenging to adapt to without instruction. The course therefore covered topics reflecting common mistakes made in tutorial essays and exam answers. There were three sessions which between them covered introductions and restricting the scope of one's essay; paragraph construction and connecting paragraphs; and revision and exam technique.

Dr Fowles says: ‘It's not uncommon for Philosophy students to be told that an essay is poorly structured or too discursive, that it requires better sign-posting or a narrower focus, etc., without it always being clear exactly what these complaints mean or what good philosophical writing is supposed to look like. This was the impetus for the course, which went very well. The students whose work I have read subsequently seem really to have taken the advice and guidance on board. I hope that this is something we will be able to run each year.’