Writing courses & workshops
In 2009, Text and Training launched its first scientific writing course for medical residents and researchers, which has been an immediate success in teaching hospitals all over the Netherlands. The participants particularly value the interactive nature of the course and the practical applicability of its content, which covers everything from setting up the overall structure of a paper to academic writing in English and composing submission letters and rebuttals.
Based on IMRaD and the excellent structured guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, I also developed tailor-made workshops for biopharmaceutical master students at Leiden University. A similar structured approach turned out to be very useful for a full-fletched writing course for master students of Environmental Studies and for weekend writing workshops for PhD candidates.
In all the courses, the example sentences and exercises are based on original manuscripts of students or scientists working in the same area of science. Also, participants are being trained to give each other feedback based on what they learned in the course. In that way they can continue to support each other in writing their manuscripts long after the course has ended.