Scientific Writing for a Lay Audience

In this information age, why is it that misinformation seems to win out over science?  As science becomes more complex, parts of the general public are giving up on understanding what scientists do and instead turn to less expert sources of information like the internet, social media, and friends.

Under these circumstances, it has never been more important for scientists and academics to come down from their ivory towers and learn to communicate new scientific findings in a clear and engaging way. Scientific Writing for a Lay Audience aims to introduce you to the basics of popular science writing so that you can bring important scientific knowledge to a wider audience.

During this course you will

• learn about the features of different types of popular scientific text;
• become familiar with the stylistic, linguistic and structural writing conventions of popular science writing;
• receive feedback on the accessibility of the scientific knowledge you present from students who are not from your field;
• become more confident about your writing skills and more likely to enjoy the writing process

What does the course involve?
By planning and writing two articles aimed at a lay audience, you will learn about the key features of the popular science genre and develop your writing skills in English. Through a combination of in-class exercises, writing tasks and a planned interview with a scientific expert of your choosing, you will learn how to structure and present scientific information so that the significance of this work can be grasped by the wider public. You also will learn the basics of text structure, and you will have the opportunity to work on grammatical and vocabulary issues so that your writing comes across as professional and convincing.

Teacher
This course will be taught by Myrthe van Hilten. Myrte van Hilten is an academic communication teacher at in'to Languages, where she teaches courses like Academic Writing, Popular Science Writing, and Presentation Skills to students and academic staff of Radboud University. With a background in linguistic research, she knows what it is like to publish and present research to both experts and lay audiences. Based on those experiences and her thorough understanding of language, she helps students and researchers to communicate their work with more impact. Myrte is also active in the field of educational innovation, so you can expect to try out a new tool in her course!

Schedule
The course consists of 4 sessions which will take place on Thursday evenings between 18:30 and 20:30:
Thursday 9 February
Thursday 23 February
Thursday 9 March
Thursday 23 March