CRITICAL THINKING AND CREATIVITY AS VEHICLES FOR IMPROVING ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS

The article considers two basic problems students face, dealing with academic writing. First, practice shows that students find it difficult to write a scientific article as they lack knowledge of academic writing rules. Second, they need practice in composition. It requires definite teaching techniques to be introduced into the curricular. The author supposes that creativity and critical thinking can significantly promote students’ writing skills. Thus, the author suggests tasks aimed at enhancing creativity and critical thinking. Those include problem solving, exploring, reading, comparing. Integration into international scientific society demands the knowledge of the structure of an article to be published in international scientific journals. The author pays attention to the peculiarities of academic writing style. Those include exercises on grammar, vocabulary and syntax peculiar for scientific style. Scholarly writing, hands-off approach, synthesis writing were considered in the article as well.