Syllabus
1. Stylistic correction of own piece of writing students choose from their own bachelor’s thesis one chapter, range of 10 to 15 standard pages in total (approximately) and make proofreading of this text basic guideline on best practice principles: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c1_p15.html corrections are made in MS Word, directly in the text – problematic or incorrect parts are marked in some color and new text is written in 2. Overview text on the topic of plagiarism students read the How to Avoid Plagiarism Handbook (available in Moodle) and then write an overview text reflecting content of the handbook (seven parts/chapters in total) the range is from 0,5 to 1 standard page maximally on each part of the book 3. Abstract abstract for this text (available in Moodle): Veronika Pehe (2015) The colours of socialism: visual nostalgia and retro aesthetics in Czech film and television, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 57:3-4, pp. 239–253 1000 characters maximally basic rules for abstract writing: https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/abstract/ 4. Reading a book for review students read one of the books listed below and prepare notes for future writing its overview; list of books for review
Valentina Fava. The socialist people’s car: automobiles, shortages and consent in the Czechoslovak road to mass production (1918–1964). Amsterdam, University Press 2013
Petr Roubal: Spartakiads. The Politics of Physical Culture in communist Czechoslovakia. Praha, Karolinum 2020
Miroslav Vaněk – Pavel Mücke: Velvet Revolutions. an oral history of Czech Society. Oxford University Press 2016 5. Review writing and submitting of a review on the book read in previous week some examples how to write a review, see Czech Journal of Contemporary History in English version (https://sd.usd.cas.cz/archive.php) two standard pages minimally, three pages maximally 6. Preparation for public lecture in the following weeks students will prepare their own lecture for a scientific conference, for example, the International Oral History Conference the lecture content is prepared on the book read before; students prepare a 15-minutes conference paper presenting this book, the research respectively this week students prepare basic overview (content) of the lecture, main ideas, etc. 7. Written text of a lecture students prepare their lecture for a fifteen-minute performance at a conference, the scope is stated wit respect to the time given – 9 standard pages minimally, 11 standard pages maximally it is not an article for a scientific journal, but a text to be presented at the conference – that is why the scope is rather minimalistic; the lecture should cover the main theses of the issue/text, research questions, basic findings, etc. 8. PowerPoint presentation for a lecture students work on presentation (pptx) for the conference paper written before two slides per one standard page of text, i.e., from 18 to 22 slides the minimum font size on the slide is 28 points, no less; graphic form of the presentation is not specified (be creative)
Annotation
The course focuses on improving students‘ skills in the presentation of research results. It offers a theoretical and practical perspective on writing professional texts.
In the first part, it introduces both the basic concepts related to professional writing, some stylistic problems of the text. In the second part, students try to prepare some writing outputs – abstract, review, professional lecture, presentation, essay etc.