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Workshop on Writing Book Reviews for the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies (CURE)

On 3 March 2022, Dr Greg Wu conducted the second Zoom workshop for postgraduate students in Prof Douglas Gildow’s BUDS5014 Buddhist Studies in the West. This new collaboration with the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies aims to enhance students’ academic writing skills to support the completion of written tasks at a postgraduate level. This workshop was conducted to tackle the evaluative book review assignment in the course. Dr Wu focused on the essential components of a book review and gave valuable insight and advice that reflected his range of experiences. The learning outcomes of this session were to understand the structure and components of an academic book review, identify praise and criticism, and use reporting verbs and clauses effectively. This session provided opportunities for students to learn techniques for their writing process and apply their new knowledge during scenario-based activities and breakout room discussions. The overall engagement and responsiveness of the class was high, and the workshop received many positive comments from the students. According to the student feedback, the workshop was useful, insightful, and informative, and students were very satisfied with the content. Dr Wu’s clear, concise, and passionate delivery of the topics was much appreciated, as well as his targeted approach to writing the book review specific to this discipline. Each major component of the book review was thoroughly explained and reinforced through writing exercises based on disciplinary texts and published book reviews. The EAC project team is pleased with the excellent results of this new intervention and is excited to contribute to this collaboration for future years to come.