Writing up your PhD thesis: One-to-one support

Course information for Writing up your thesis - One-to-one support, an Academic English course for postgraduate research students at UCL

Course overview

This course is for you if you have successfully passed your upgrade/transfer and have preferably completed Introduction to Writing your PhD Thesis. One-to-one support will help you consolidate and extend your writing, with exercises and feedback on improving structure and style.

Course aims

The course aims to:

• develop awareness of the theory and conventions of academic writing
• analyse the sequence of information in essays and chapters of a PhD thesis
• encourage you to develop your writing skills through guided practice and weekly tutor feedback.

Course content

Five individual tutorials will be arranged within a period of 12 months, at times convenient to both you and your tutor. You are required to take all five tutorials within 12 months from the date you receive the email confirming your place on the course.

Tutorials may take place either online or on campus, as arranged with the course tutor.

The tutorials offer suggestions to consolidate and extend your academic writing and exercises to improve structure and style. Extracts of your work will be read and commented on for general structure.

A short section of the work may be marked in more detail for surface features (grammar, spelling, punctuation and vocabulary).

Work should be submitted to the Thesis Writing tutor at least two weeks before the tutorial. You are expected to complete the recommended follow-up exercises and to submit them together with the next piece of written work.

Writing cannot be proof-read.

Use of a Marking Code to identify errors for self-correction

Tutors using a marking code may not correct every mistake, but are likely to focus on the most important ones.
When your work is returned to you, make the necessary corrections and resubmit your work.

Fees and funding

Fees

The course fee is £525.

This includes five one-hour tutorial sessions and pre/post reading and support.

Funding

Funding is available through the Doctoral School.

Language Funding Application Deadline (OD):

• Term 1 (Friday 6 October 2023)
• Term 2 (Friday 5 January 2024)
• Term 3 (Friday 12 April 2024)

How to register

You can register through the UCL Centre for Languages & International Education (CLIE) website.

Register now

Attendance

You must give 24 hours’ notice to cancel pre-arranged tutorials; otherwise the tutorial will be forfeited.

Course Feedback

All students on Academic English courses have the opportunity to give general feedback on their course to senior representatives of CLIE.

Academic support

If you have any questions about your course, please feel free to ask your tutor.

Alternatively, contact the Course Co-ordinator, Mrs Daphne Thomas: daphne.thomas@ucl.ac.uk.

Rights and Responsibilities

CLIE seeks to ensure that all students have a positive experience in respect of courses taken here, and fully adheres to the broader rights and responsibilities policies of UCL.

As part of our responsibility, our courses will follow a logical structure consistent with delivering the content and skills practise that we advertise, but with the freedom for teachers to respond (e.g. via needs analysis at the beginning of the course) to further relevant areas of particular interest to each student group.

Problems and complaints

If you are unhappy about any aspect of your course we would advise you in the first instance to speak to a member of staff at CLIE to see if the problem can be easily resolved within the department. For further details of our formal complaints procedure, please email the Academic English Course Coordinator or administration team at pteap@ucl.ac.uk.