By: Svetlana Suchkova

My way to academic writing in English started with the letter “C” – challenge. When I was an early-career researcher, I got a rejection for my first publication in English. It helped me realize that writing conventions in English differ much from those in my mother tongue, Russian. The failure encouraged me to explore the area of academic writing in English and influenced my further career. I have published several textbooks on academic writing, and now I am directing a faculty–focused writing center at one of the leading Russian universities, Higher School of Economics (HSE University), Moscow. 

The Academic Writing Center (AWC) was established in 2011 as the university administration’s response to top-down governmental initiatives of internationalization of higher education. The Russian Academic Excellence project called for university administrative policies to increase the number of publications and make Russian universities more competitive globally. Russian universities were encouraged to attract international students and faculty, and to publish their research in international peer-reviewed journals. This meant getting a higher position in global university rating systems, where ranking largely depends on research output and the number of publications. Therefore, the center became a great asset in the process of assisting academics to write in English. Working in the area of English for research and publication purposes (ERPP), the center provides a specific type of support that focuses on high-stakes publishing in English. In addition to enabling university faculty to prepare publications, we later added events that focused on delivering research presentations and lectures because presenting at international conferences and lecturing in English was in demand, too. We are lucky to work with a motivated audience, as they get financial bonuses from the university to lighten that “publish or perish” burden. They willingly attend our events; the audience has grown from about 500 people in 2013 to 2500 people in 2024. Our services are free for the HSE University’s staff. The AWC has gradually become a space for academics’ professional development where they can enhance their writing and public speaking skills. 

The center operates as an educational hub, a research center, a consultancy service, and a resource bank. We offer courses and seminars, organize various educational events, and provide one-on-one consultations. We have also built up quite an extensive library of AI tools and other useful resources and created a series of self-study books and videos, considering the autonomous nature of our clients. Serving academics, we have to take into consideration that they are all life-long learners, experienced at developing themselves as teachers and researchers. According to the AWC survey on autonomy in writing (2021, n=118), 78% of the clients believe that they can find answers to their questions about specific writing issues in English themselves. The center’s annual survey (2025, n=314) shows that 31% would like to use house-made self-study materials. We are proud that the users of our self-study books evaluated them 9.4 out of 10 (n=82). Developing researchers’ writing competence through creativity and collaboration is how I see the center’s mission. 

Creativity

We try to bring something new each semester, offering innovative activities and different formats: from new challenging courses to writing memes or poem contests. In designing our educational program, we strive to meet our clients’ needs. No one would refute that needs analysis is the core of any educational activity. We always take into account the findings of our annual surveys on clients’ writing challenges, requests, and thematic priorities. The data we gather is then translated into workshop topics and course content. For example, “AWC AI Marathon to Foster Research Writing” was one of the highlights of 2025; that was the center’s response to one of the most frequent requests. 

The five most challenging topics voiced by our clients are (1) using AI for writing, (2) genre characteristics of a research article in different disciplines, (3) English academic writing conventions vs. Russian conventions, (4) typical problems of Russian writers, and (5) English grammar and punctuation (the use of articles in particular as we have no articles in the Russian language). A distinctive feature of our audience is that academics can be well published in L1 but have to acquire a different way of communicating their research contributions internationally. Their challenges can stem not only from working in English as an additional language, but also from the clash between writing traditions. Russian writing is non-linear and less guided than English. Applying L1 strategies while writing in English, Russian writers tend to make sentences long and wordy, paragraphs unfocused; they often overuse passive voice and synonyms, making referents unclear. 

Even those who are well-versed in English need focused training on English writing conventions and research article genre features. To satisfy the need, every fortnight we run workshops and webinars, and also offer about ten courses per year that vary in length, format, and learning outcomes. Recently, we have launched a project “How to communicate with …” focusing on intercultural peculiarities of academic collaboration. We started with Chinese culture and discussed appropriate communicative behaviors, the level of formality, the attitude to time and deadlines, gift-exchanging traditions, etc. I am inviting everyone interested in the project to join us and open up the dos and don’ts of academic communication in your culture. 

Collaboration

I think every culture has a similar saying to “One man is no man” (A man is nothing without the aid of others.) I am sure that effective collaboration is what helps our center grow and ensure its success. We invite writing instructors, journal editors and reviewers, textbook writers, and prolific authors as speakers. We also try to involve HSE researchers from various disciplines (from hard and social sciences to humanities) in the center’s activities. Doing research and reading much in their discipline, researchers can share their observations about discipline writing conventions, research trends, and methods. The AWC Welcome Day, for instance, serves as a platform where colleagues from various research fields share their writing success or failure stories. We value such collaboration and treat those colleagues as the center’s ambassadors in academia. 

Competence

I think you will agree that working with faculty is both challenging and rewarding. It requires a high level of expertise on the one hand; on the other hand, academics themselves are a valuable resource: they can bring their own knowledge, experience, and learning strategies to share with colleagues. This can be clearly observed at one-on-one consultationswhen the consultant and the client work on the draft in tandem: clarify ideas, discuss better wording, improve style and structure, and check for mistakes. The sessions help writers to not only make the text mechanically sound but also ensure its rhetorical effect and readability. Importantly, the content of the paper remains the entire responsibility of the author. The motto “We invest in writers, not in a writing piece” is the guiding principle of the service. The center consultants are both native speakers of English and Russian teachers proficient in English. All of them are educators with editing experience. They underwent a training program, and we regularly monitor their work to ensure the educational and interactive nature of consultations. 

We not only learn all the time ourselves, but also help others master their skills. Willing to share our experience, we also offer internships for writing center staff from other universities. The international conference for writing instructors, “Supporting Faculty in Writing for Publication: Best Practices” in 2021, gathered more than 60 speakers from nine countries. We are planning another one in 2026.

The center’s teaching philosophy of targeting programs on individual needs and creating an atmosphere of discovery seems to be highly conducive to adult learners who strive to develop their research writing proficiency. Gaining competence through creativity and collaboration gives the center another “C” – confidence in what we are doing for the benefit of our clients. 

Svetlana Suchkova, Ph.D. is an associate professor, teacher trainer, and materials developer. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Center at the HSE. She authored a number of course books for university students and researchers. Her areas of expertise are writing for research and publication purposes, public speaking, and teacher training.