Save The Unit for Academic Language (ASK)

A report on the future of The Unit for Academic Language (ASK) and the PIL Unit at Gothenburg University, suggests that they are both diminished, and that the work they do today, will be carried out with in departments. The report makes no mention of support for employees' or doctoral students' language and writing development.We, the undersigned, believe that the workshops, retreats and individual coaching that ASK offer us as doctoral students, are instrumental for completing our dissertations. 

Our main point

No doctoral students were interviewed for the report on ASK and PIL. Therefore, the report misses important aspects of what ASK does for doctoral students, the university and research. ASK's work contributes to better theses and increased throughput of PhD students.

Argument 1 

The Unit for Academic Language (ASK) fulfills a social and educational role that is lacking in the doctoral program. ASK offers writing retreats, reading retreats, workshops, the writing room and individual tutoring. These are very important activities in the doctoral programme, as these opportunities for organized reading and writing do not exist elsewhere in the programme. The writing room, which takes place digitally, and the writing retreats, which take place IRL, help us as doctoral students to produce text for our theses. It thus fulfills a concrete function. When it comes to the digital writing room and writing retreats, it also contributes to a social exchange and a sense of meaning and context in the writing process. It helps to reduce stress for doctoral students in their work situation, which in turn can help to make it easier to produce a thesis text. ASK's workshops and retreats are a forum for meeting other doctoral students and staff, creating a sense of community across faculty boundaries. 

ASK also offers workshops aimed at learning the craft of how to structure and write up specific parts of the dissertation and chapters: introduction, literature review, discussion, thesis synthesis. This kind of instruction is difficult to get in the PhD program. These workshops help to give PhD students practical knowledge on how to actually write a thesis. Furthermore, ASK provides reading retreats, where you read previous research, theory, context and material. This type of structured support for taking on the craft is lacking in the doctoral program.  

Argument 2 

ASK:s services help reduce and manage stress for doctoral students ASK is an important part of the work to give us PhD students support in our work process. They offer concrete support that produces tangible results for writing. ASK's workshops and writing retreats also help to reduce the stress of doctoral work. They provide structure for the writing process.  

ASK offers individual supervision, where you can get help with ASK reading and commenting on longer dissertation sections, which means that doctoral students can develop their academic language but also the structure of the dissertation. They can also be helped by learning about different writing techniques. This type of support helps to reduce stress.  One of the measures introduced by LAMK to contribute to the well-being and good health of doctoral students and to counteract stress was to offer writing sessions with ASK. The Research Training Council has also recognized ASK's work on health factors and health promotion for students and staff, including doctoral students.

Alice Hymna Ramnehill    Kontakta namninsamlingens skapare