The Sociology Place

Academic Writing for Psychology Students

This is for the course “Critical Academic Writing” taught, in English, at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Psychology.

This course is designed to teach first-year MA students in psychology the skills necessary for academic writing in English in order to write a quantitative, high-quality MA thesis.

A high-quality MA thesis presents an argument based on facts and logic and thus has a clear contribution to the discipline and field of study.

The course will highlight important stages of the journey from research idea to MA thesis:

Students will learn how to efficiently and effectively collect, interpret, criticize, and synthesize information from multiple sources.

Critical Academic Writing_Guidelines for the Writing Assignments 2026Download

Class 1. Introduction to Academic Writing

A. Understanding the audiences and purposes of academic writing; Contributions, i.e. answering, “so what?”

Required: “Leadership Lab: The Craft of Writing Effectively,” by Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago’s Writing Program

B. Structure of empirical research articles in psychology

Required: Appelbaum, M., Cooper, H., Kline, R. B., Mayo-Wilson, E., Nezu, A. M., & Rao, S. M. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for quantitative research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 3.

Optional: A Brief Guide to Writing the Psychology Paper

Lecture Notes

Contributions: “How to write the introduction.”

What is an empirical research article in the social sciences?

Philosophy of Writing: How to think about academic writing in the social sciences

Concepts are the building blocks of research articles

The American Psychological Association provides specific guidelines as to the structure of empirical research articles in psychology, including for qualitative research: 

Levitt, H. M., Bamberg, M., Creswell, J. W., Frost, D. M., Josselson, R., & Suárez-Orozco, C. (2018). Journal article reporting standards for qualitative primary, qualitative meta-analytic, and mixed methods research in psychology: The APA Publications and Communications Board task force report. American Psychologist, 73(1), 26. 

UC San Diego Psychology also has a good webpage on the structure of psychology articles.

Class 2. Writing Habits, Productivity, and Using AI Assistants

A. Using AI assistants and digital tools to improve your writing

Required

Google NotebookLM https://notebooklm.google/

ASReview Lab https://asreview.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Taylor & Francis AI Policy https://taylorandfrancis.com/our-policies/ai-policy

Elsevier Generative AI policies for journals https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/generative-ai-policies-for-journals

Optional: Our Kids’ IQs are Dropping

Optional: “OpenAI CEO Sam Altman | AI for the Next Era” (2022)

Optional: Miao and Holmes. 2023. Guidance for generative AI in education and research – Unesco

B. Writing habits and productivity

Required: Smith, Chris. 2018. “Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity.” LSE Impact Blog

Optional: Peterson, Todd C., Sofie R. Kleppner, and Crystal M. Botham. 2018. “Ten simple rules for scientists: Improving your writing productivity” Plos

DUE: Notes on “Leadership Lab: The Craft of Writing Effectively” (ca. 200 words)

Lecture Notes

AI Assistants

Lecture notes for Writing Habits and Writing Strategies

Class 3. Finding, Reading, and Organizing Academic Research

Required

Optional: A Brief Guide to Writing the Psychology Paper

Lecture notes

How to Find, Read, and Organize Academic Social Science Research

DUE: AI-assisted concept list, thesis statement, and title (ca. 200 words)

Class 4. Knowledge gaps and phrasing the research question

Required: Churchill, Harriet and Teela Sanders. 2011. “Formulating a Research Question.” In Getting Your PhD, pp. 22 – 32. SAGE.

Lecture Notes

DUE: Literature review, min. 5 academic sources (500 words, plus references)

Class 5. Thesis Statement and on Writing Well

A. Crafting a thesis statement

Required: Thesis Statements from UNC Chapel Hill (nb: it is broad and designed mainly for essays and not specifically for empirical research articles, but their advice applies to what you are doing fairly well)

B. Writing clear and well-developed paragraphs; Arcs: Connecting point-first paragraphs

Required: Carson et al (2012) Chapter “Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Writing in Psychology”

Carson et al (2012) Chapter “Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Writing in Psychology”

Lecture notes

Arcs and Flow: Good academic writing with examples

DUE: Knowledge gap statement: “whereas we know this, we do not know that…” (100 words)

Class 6. From Introduction to Critical Literature Review

A. How to write the introduction

B. From critical literature review to theory and hypotheses

Lecture Notes

How to Write the Introduction to a Research Article in the Social Sciences

How to write the theory section of a research article in the social sciences

DUE: Critical analysis of an article: Students will write a critical analysis of an article published in a psychology journal (300 words)

Class 7. Titles and Abstracts

Lecture notes

Effective titles in social science research are short, truthful, and informative

How to write an abstract for a social science research article

DUE: An introduction to your research (300 words)

FINAL RESEARCH REPORT DUE ONE WEEK AFTER THE LAST CLASS