BMET 12A00 - Academic Writing

The Academic Writing Workshop for first-year students at the Undergraduate College of Sciences Po has a twofold objective: to introduce students to academic writing while familiarizing them with a variety of practices and methods designed to improve the clarity and relevance of their written work. In line with research on academic literacy in higher education, this workshop aims to strengthen students’ writing skills by enabling them, through context-specific exercises, to deepen their knowledge and develop critical thinking through writing.

Based on the readings from the first-semester curriculum—in particular, those related to political institutions, law, political science, and 19th-century history, as well as classic texts of political theory—the workshop aims, as a first step, to introduce a variety of writing styles and academic formats. To this end, students will be exposed, through a multidisciplinary approach, to a variety of discursive and linguistic forms (scholarly articles, biographical narratives, journalistic excerpts, critical essays, novel excerpts, etc.).

As a second step, the workshop aims to provide a space for empirical experimentation, enabling students to independently produce academic work. Drawing on a variety of texts and formats (reading and summarizing excerpts from works, essays, research papers, policy briefs, scientific articles, etc.), they will be guided in producing their own written work.

The final objective is to provide students with a foundation of practical skills designed to support the diverse range of courses offered in the bachelor’s program while strengthening their skills in critical thinking, reasoning, synthesis, stylistics, and transmission.

Through this workshop, students acquire a structured knowledge base and skills directly related to the demands of academic writing and the development of critical thinking. They begin by mastering the main formats and types of academic writing, as well as understanding the conventions that govern academic writing across various disciplines. This introduction is accompanied by in-depth work on synthesizing, analyzing, and rewording texts, enabling students to identify the essential ideas within a corpus and reproduce them with precision. The workshop is designed to strengthen student reasoning skills by helping them structure their reasoning structure and framework, prioritize ideas, formulate a demonstration, and develop well-reasoned arguments. Writing skills are included as a means of reinforcing analytical skills as applied to humanities and social sciences analysis. Five learning objectives can guide the design of the content of the sessions:

• Using writing skills to develop argumentation and reasoning skills
• Using writing skills across various social sciences and humanities disciplines
• Using writing skills for text consolidation and conceptualization
• Using writing skills to identify textual typology, writing styles, and discursive genres
• Using writing skills to prepare for written exams

Course assessment is based on a pass/fail system.

The assessment primarily takes into account attendance, active participation in class, and the completion of assignments given throughout the course.

To pass the course, students must attend regularly and actively participate in class activities.