Activities and resources from the Centre for Doctoral Studies to help you engage with the literature and produce your own research.

Academic Reading and Writing is one of our eight key doctoral development themes, designed to help postgraduate research students across King’s navigate the support on offer.

For guidance on booking live workshops and registering for on-demand services, see how to access our courses.

Please note, to access SkillsForge you will require King's log in credentials. 

Academic Writing and Speaking Skills for PGR Students (Access through SkillsForge PGR333)

This 10-part course is designed for PGR students with English as an additional language (EAL). It will help you gain skills for effective writing on a sentence and paragraph level, and to demonstrate criticality through writing. You will learn strategies for using sources in writing, building clear complex sentences, and organising text coherently. This course will provide the foundations for accurate and appropriate written communication of your doctoral research.

Clear & Concise Academic Writing (Access through SkillsForge PGR269)

This course will offer many tips for writing clearly and concisely. These tips will help you cut 10–30 per cent of the words in your current drafts – and communicate your ideas more clearly. It will cover topics such as: cutting excess words; making the verb work; letting the argument flow; avoiding ambiguity; and using an appropriate tone. We will look at various examples of good and bad practice. The session will include a lecture and some interactive editing exercises

Fundamentals of Good Writing (Access through SkillsForge PGR302)

This course will look at the key writing elements needed to write clearly, accurately and elegantly. We will look at the components of good style; common difficulties and areas of uncertainty in grammar, syntax, and punctuation; good use of the verb; how to recognise bad style and avoid it; the nature of English vocabulary and how to make best use of it.

How to Construct an Argument (Access through SkillsForge PGR303)

This course helps you to develop clarity and logic by looking at what constitutes good argumentation. We examine the requisite vocabulary to structure and develop your thoughts; how to make transitions; how to establish hierarchies of argument; how to decide what to include and exclude; and write clearly and concisely. This course is aimed at any student wishing to hone rhetorical skills for PhD submission, and for their application in the wider world, such as publication or the workplace.

The PhD Thesis: A Chapter by Chapter Guide (Access through SkillsForge PGR357)

Writing an 80-100,000 word document is very difficult – typically PhD candidates find it more challenging than carrying out the research itself - and this session is designed to help break the task into straightforward and manageable chunks.

Turbocharge your Writing (Access through SkillsForge PGR270)

Learn the secret to high output, low stress scholarly writing, using clear and practical strategies that can greatly increase your writing productivity.

Writing a Literature Review for the Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (Access through SkillsForge PGR258)

Most research needs some kind of literature review, although its nature and position can vary. This session will cover different ways of handling literature reviews, while also identifying the core feature of all good literature reviews, which is to help you justify your approach, by identifying what is good, bad and missing in the literature. The session will also cover: literature searches; looking sideways at similar studies in other areas; and structuring and categorising your literature review(s). (NB We do not cover systematic reviews or coding the literature.)

Writing a Literature Review for the Sciences (Access through SkillsForge PGR259)

An integral part of research is engaging with the existing literature. At doctoral level this can be an inspiring activity as researchers interpret what has been published already. This session explores the relationship between your research and what already exists, covers the key principles of organising and critiquing published work and identifies the importance of key themes to help you structure your writing about others’ work. It is suitable for research students in the sciences at any stage of the doctorate.

To find out more about our on-demand platforms and how to access them, see how to access our courses. 

PGR Core Library

• Efficient and Effective Academic Reading (KEATS - King's log in credentials required)

This course is structured around five broad areas, all of which are designed to improve your academic reading practice. You will start with refining your existing behaviours before learning to build a reading toolkit and strategise what to read. By the end of the course, you will build good reading habits and learn techniques of rapid reading.

King's Academic Skills for Learning

• Writing at University (KEATS - King's log in credentials required)

A KEATS-based module that includes guidance on some key aspects of writing at university, and prompts to help you reflect on which aspects of writing you need to focus on. It also provides links to further sources of information if you want to develop your expertise in academic, disciplinary-specific writing.

SAGE Campus

• Critical Reading and Writing (External website)

This short, 2-hour course helps you refresh your skills in writing analytically, constructing arguments, and engaging critically with written and visual sources. It teaches a range of strategies for evaluating and questioning texts, note-taking, and critical writing.

• Conduct a Literature Review (External website)

This 5-hour course guides you through the process of preparing a literature review, selecting and analysing your sources, and writing a literature review. Different types of literature review are introduced, including Systematic Review, Chronological/Historical Review, Methodological Review, Thematic Review, and Integrative Review.

Royal Literary Fund Resources (External website)

A set of helpful writing resources developed by the Royal Literary Fund, including essay and dissertation guides, a step-by-step writing tool, and bite-size writing advice.

The Internet Grammar of English (External website)

This online course developed by University College London gives a comprehensive explanation of all key aspects of English grammar. It is also a useful resource for anyone wishing to look up a particular grammar problem. The course is available as an App too.

Research Support - Libraries and Collections

King's Library has collections of resources to help with:

• Managing Research Data

• Copyright

• Open Access Publishing

• Research Impact

Would you like to write more clearly, fluently and professionally? Our Royal Literary Fund Fellows offer confidential, one-to-one appointments for postgraduate research students & postdoctoral research staff. Find out more on our one-to-one writing support webpage.

Virtual Writing Retreat (Access through SkillsForge CDSD28)

Do you have a deadline coming up and are struggling with writer’s block? It’s important to take time to start writing thesis chapters, grant applications or papers early but often we find it hard to schedule ‘writing time’ into our busy research lives. The virtual writing retreat is here to give you time, peace, and space to fend off procrastination and beat writer’s block. We invite all researchers who need to get away from their usual surroundings to dedicate 2.5 hours to writing using the effective Pomodoro technique.