Academic writing at Biochemistry

The project Academic writing at Biochemistry is one of many projects under the Language Strategy with focus on written academic English. This course differs from the mainstream, however, in dealing not only with writing in English but also in Danish. This concept of parallel language use was applied to a project course in the undergraduate programme in Biochemistry with the aim of supporting the students in expressing their academic work in writing.

The project developed two workshops in close cooperation between language teachers and teachers of biochemistry. The workshops gave the students tools to make an informed choice between writing in Danish or English for the mandatory written assignment, and they were also given support for handling the writing process in relation to this assignment in both Danish and English.

The project offers an exemplary contribution in that it has developed an approach in the realm of parallel language use: It has enabled the students to choose consciously between Danish and English and at the same time offered support for the writing process in both languages – all within the same course in Biochemistry. The project has yielded teaching methods and materials that have received very positive evaluations from the participants, and which can be adapted to other study programmes that want to support and develop the ability of their students to perform in and navigate between Danish and English