All Language Centre courses

We are often called on to make presentations about our work, whether for assessment purposes, at a conference, or simply when sharing ideas with colleagues in our Departments. This workshop offers some tips on best practice in presenting and serves as a precursor to the workshop on 28 February, where students will have the opportunity to practise presenting and receive feedback.

No preparation is required before attending this workshop; however, if you are working towards making a presentation in the near future, you may find it helpful to bring your notes, slides, or other material with you.

This is a workshop which will concentrate on intonation and stress within normal spoken and written English, and will aim to give students some idea of how stress and intonation work at the level of the sentence or even the paragraph. It should help students understand how intonation is used in English to convey meaning beyond the surface value of individual words, and should help them to use this technique as well. .

From the reader’s perspective, the beginning and ending of a paper can often be the most impactful sections. Therefore, crafting effective introductions and conclusions is a vital academic skill. In this workshop we will discuss the essential components of introductions and conclusions, analyse examples of these, and develop techniques for ensuring we write effective introductions and conclusions going forward.

No preparatory work is required for this workshop.

Methodology and results are two very common chapters in academic papers and dissertations / theses, especially in scientific subjects. This workshop will focus mainly on linguistic aspects of these chapters. It involves a video to watch and exercises to complete before an online Zoom workshop.

One of the biggest leaps that students have to make as they move from undergraduate to postgraduate study is in the amount of secondary work they need to absorb and process. This workshop will offer some general instruction on how best to sort, assess and analyse a large quantity of information at speed.

One of the biggest leaps students have to make as they move from undergraduate to postgraduate study is in the amount of secondary work they need to absorb and process. This workshop will offer some general instruction on how best to sort, assess and analyse a large quantity of information at speed.

The switch to hybrid working and the use of online conference platforms for much teaching and graduate presentation work offers its own specific challenges. Following on from earlier workshops on in-person presentations, this workshop gives students a chance to present and get feedback on the specific complications of online presentation.

This workshop is limited to seven students.

Students should prepare a brief (5-7 minute) presentation on an aspect of their academic work. If using audiovisual aids, students should send these to jww41@cam.ac.uk the day before the presentation.

Across disciplines, academic writing uses a repertoire of patterns of language to organise and create coherent texts. Evidence from large databases (corpora) of academic writing shows us how grammar and vocabulary follow regular patterns to create clarity, appropriate information focus and argument structure. This is a practical workshop with tasks to complete before and during the Zoom workshop.

This workshop continues the theme of Patterns and chunks in academic writing (1), looking at how writers signal the organisation of their texts using a repeated repertoire of language chunks. This is a practical workshop with tasks to complete before and during the Zoom workshop. Attendance at Patterns and chunks in academic writing (1) is not a prerequisite for attendance at this workshop.

Academic culture in English-speaking countries places a lot of emphasis on avoiding plagiarism, but conventions are often different from those in students’ home countries. This webinar will examine what constitutes plagiarism and look at the University of Cambridge regulations. Students will then be asked to complete some exercises online.