The aim of this interactive course of six 2.5-hour sessions is to support (bio)medical scientists at every stage of writing a research article, a review, or a case report. You will learn to effectively organize a bulk of information into cohesive paragraphs, to choose the right academic English words, and to compose readable English sentences. In addition, you will also learn to write a cover letter, to submit the finished article to an international peer-reviewed journal, and to write a rebuttal to the comments from peer reviewers.
If you are interested and work in one of the participating STZ teaching hospitals (in Amsterdam, Alkmaar, Apeldoorn, Breda, Delft, Den Haag, Dordrecht, Eindhoven, Geleen, Groningen, Heerlen, Maastricht, Sittard, or Tilburg), just contact your science coordinator to register for one of the Zoom courses listed on the course schedule below. You can also participate in the course as an individual trainee. If you are interested, just contact me at info@textandtraining.com.
Text and Training
This course was developed in 2009 by Text and Training-founder Lisette van Hulst and has been offered to more than 1,500 participants in teaching hospitals all over the Netherlands. Each time, the participants appreciated the practical and interactive setup of the training and the individual feedback on their own manuscripts. In 2025, I took over the course from Lisette van Hulst.
In the autumn of 2025, participants awarded the course an average score of 8.3 and commented that the course was very helpful. In the spring of 2026, participants awarded the course with an average score of 8.6.
Course objectives
The course aims to help you spend less time and effort at each stage of scientific writing, from planning and organising your information, to composing sentences and paragraphs, and submitting the finished manuscript. You will be guided step by step through the writing process and learn to use tools that you can immediately apply to your own work. Ideally, by the end of the course, your manuscript will be ready for submission to an international biomedical journal.
Medical English
The language lessons are restricted to those aspects of English that are essential for professional communication among health care professionals. Hence, all the examples and exercises are based on passages from medical manuscripts.
Rhetorical skills
A substantial part of the course is dedicated to advice on clarity of communication and convincing argumentation. The advice is based on general rhetorical principles and on the specific expectations of English readers regarding the sequence of information in a text. This audience-based approach will help you to understand and control how English readers will interpret each part of your writing. To practice these skills, you will not only be trained to improve your own drafts, but also to give others feedback from an English reader’s perspective.
Syllabus and course language
The syllabus is in English. The course will be given in Dutch.
Text and Training Schedule Autumn 2026 -tentative schedule
Participating STZ hospitals in 2025/2026:
