Scientific English- English class for PhD students 1200-SZD-ANG
Scientific presentation
➢ Preparing presentation – technical details: colors, fonts, layouts
➢ Time management: slides/minute
➢ Presentation flow
1. What is my thesis about? (in 60s – scientific elevator pitch)
➢ Analyzing your research goals and results
➢ Preparing a one minute pitch
2. 3MT – 3 minute thesis competition and fame lab
➢ Closing the gap between general audience and scientists
➢ Learning to talk about your advanced at this point research in a clear,
understandable and relatable way
➢ Small group competition
➢ Analyzing videos of winning competitors
➢ TED talk
3. 10/15 minutes presentation practice, evaluation on presentation style and
presentation quality, rest of the students will be evaluated on their participation,
question preparation, helpful comments
Scientific papers
4. Efficient article reading
➢ Articles search engines
➢ Creating article data bases
➢ Finding journals most relevant to our research and keeping tabs
➢ Article ORGANIZATION – getting familiar with Mendeley, end-note, easybib, Zotero, RefWorks
➢ Article skimming
5. Article writing: introduction and abstract
➢ Finding key points in your results➢ The place of your results in the state of art, stressing the novelty and
innovation
➢ Grammar review, useful structures, conjunctive adverbs
➢ writing your abstract and introduction based on the current results
6. Article writing – I got my text what is next?
➢ How do we choose a right journal, what is a journal scope, impact factor?
➢ Why do I need to check section “for authors carefully”
➢ Professional formatting of text and pictures
➢ Letter to the editor
Software tools useful and helpful in science
➢ Software for article writing
➢ Software for presentations
➢ Pictures (graphs, plots, photos and drawing new content)
➢ Analyzing and plotting data
➢ Organizing web clips
➢ Time managing/cooperation software
➢ Editing grammar content
Soft skills practice
7. CV vs Resume
➢ Categorizing achievements
➢ Clear and attractive layout
Creating an updated CV and resume, a file to build upon
8. Scientific positions - applications
➢ The most popular search engines offering post-doc positions
➢ Short discussion about preparation courses that are typically required
SAT, GRE, GSCE, TOEFL, CEA, CPE, IELTS
➢ Emails, CV, Resume, cover letter writing revision
➢ Background research!!!
9. Social networking in science
➢ Importance of staying connected in the modern academia
➢ Linked in
➢ Academia.edu
➢ Google scholar
➢ Research gate etc.
➢ ORCID10. Managing labs, conflict prevention, discussion fascillitation, constructive criticism
11. Leadership and collaboration in science
➢ Concept of team science
➢ Person oriented leadership
➢ Task oriented leadership
➢ Processes influenced by leader behavior
12. Marketing in science
➢ Making my research/my group/my article recognizable
➢ Why it matters to me
➢ Scientific brand
➢ Useful marketing concepts that have been successfully transferred to
academia
13. Most common English errors in writing
➢ Dangling prepositions
➢ Oxford comma
➢ Misuse of articles
➢ Transitional phrases
➢ Watch your adjectives order!
➢ Thesaurus
➢ Wordiness
➢ Plural possessives
➢ Adverbs – SPLIT INFINITIVE
➢ Coordinating conjunctions
➢ Which/that