With the increasing emphasis on the international communication of research results, it has become necessary for graduate students to master English as a medium of basic academic communication. In response to this, the GSII has offered classes in academic English as part of its general curriculum of elective courses since 2006.

At present, there are four such courses, each designed to cater for different student needs and based around a different central task, such as preparing for a conference presentation or writing an abstract or paper for an academic journal. This article focuses on one of the four courses, taught under the title “Introduction to Academic English”. This class teaches the basics of academic style, grammar and writing structure for students who have little existing experience of studying English for academic purposes.

As a final exercise, each student writes an essay introducing their own topic or field of research. The genre of writing varies depending on what stage the student has reached in his/her academic career. Some write literature reviews on existing research. Others present proposals of the research they plan to conduct in the future, while the most advanced students produce abstracts presenting their own original research findings. There is a very wide range of topics, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the GSII. Below is a list of titles of essays written by this year’s students. By clicking on the title it is possible to view the whole text. Please take this opportunity to see what the students in this class have been able to achieve.

A sample of student’s essays (click on the links for the full text)
– Conference Abstract: Why Do Japanese Publishers Produce “Hate Books”?
– Research Proposal: Broadband Trunking Communication
– A Review Article About Information Diffusion in Social Media
– Previous Research on an AI agent for StarCraft II
– Recent Studies Related to the Economic Complexity Index

Text: David Buist (Project senior specialist)