Effective English for Postgraduate Research Students (EEPRS)

Effective English for Postgraduate Research Students (EEPRS) is an advanced academic English programme launched in September 1998 by our Department, to provide support, advice and guidance to postgraduate research students at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Since its inception in 1998, EEPRS has offered help and support to more than 1,900 workshop and mentoring session participants from various departments at the PolyU, through more than 170 one-to-one, face-to-face mentoring sessions, and more than 100 general, department-specific and faculty-specific workshops and tailored courses. The feedback from research students and staff has been extremely positive, and awareness of the value and contributions of the EEPRS programme continues to grow.

In addition to generic workshops, EEPRS offers the subject ENGL6016 Advanced Academic English for Research students: Publishing and Presenting.

You can contact EEPRS

at this email:	egeeprs@polyu.edu.hk
at this phone:	+852 2766 7010 (Ms Iris Kan)
at this fax:	+852 3400 2925

Provide EAP (English for Academic Purposes) support to PolyU postgraduate research students
Raise awareness of the existence of this new programme through a variety of different means
Develop an extensive series of workshops designed to improve research students’ English skills
Provide individual, face-to-face mentoring to develop research students' writing skills
Embark on niche areas in EAP research for postgraduate students
Embark on research studies based on data collected and analyzed from the programme

Programme Coordinator

Dr. Scott Daly
FG330
+852 2766 7644
scott.daly@polyu.edu.hk

Clerical Support

Ms Iris Kan
AG415
+852 2766 7010
egeeprs@polyu.edu.hk

As well as offering workshops aimed at improving the English skills of RPg students, EEPRS offers the course ENGL6016: Advanced Academic English for Research Students: Publishing and Presenting. Click here for details.

PolyU postgraduate research students are invited to submit to us parts of their written work for advice, from one of the EEPRS team members.

Work submitted by students will first be read by us, then there will be a face-to-face, one-to-one session with the research student and the EEPRS team member. In the session, the students will be helped to develop their writing skills, through an increased awareness of their own writing strengths and weaknesses.

We recommend that students start taking advantage of this service at the beginning of their writing process so that areas needing improvement could be identified as early as possible.

As our aim is to improve the writer, not just the writing, requests to proofread chapters or the complete thesis will be declined.

General guidelines:
- Dissertation Chapters / Students' Research Papers based on Dissertation
- Each one-hour session covers around 10 pages. Currently, each student may book up to 2 hours / 20 pages.
- Font size: 12 points
- Spacing: Double-line spacing

Here are some comments from students who have been to EEPRS mentoring sessions:

"clearly provides alternative of words and suggests the ways to rewrite the sentences"
"This service is very helpful to understand some viewpoints and requirements of the reader. It can improve the flow of my thesis. I will highly recommend this service to other students."
"wholeheartedly concerned by the mentor on my writing"
"I found the mentor nice and helpful"
"the discussion session is useful that provides a chance for me to discuss with the mentor"
"gave me some useful general suggestion on how to express ideas clearly in thesis"

Examples of recent EEPRS workshops are:

"Corpus resources for academic writing" (Dr. Phoenix Lam, May 2024)
"English and academic presentations" (Dr. Margo Turnbull, April 2024)
"English vocabulary learning strategies for research students" (Dr. Phoebe Lin, April 2024)

We will be holding more workshops throughout the 2024/25 academic year. Keep an eye on your RPg email for promotional materials. If you’d like to enquire or make suggestions about the workshop programme, please email egeeprs@polyu.edu.hk.

Seminar PowerPoint : English Needs of PolyU Research Students
Handbook 2004

by Dwight Atkinson & Andy Curtis

This Handbook is designed for postgraduate research students who are required to write either an MPhil thesis or PhD / doctoral dissertation as their main degree requirement. The Handbook is based on the accumulated experience of the EEPRS Programme. The main audience for this Handbook is therefore MPhil and PhD research students. There are, however, other groups that we hope will also find it useful, including supervisors of research students, full-time academic staff completing their own research degrees part-time, and research associates and assistants who need to write for publication, as well as others. You can now download the handbook here: