Showing posts with label Academic Writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academic Writing. Show all posts

Thursday, 20 November 2014

How do you Write?

Before you start the actual formal writing, it helps to think about and identify why you are
writing something, and what you are writing.

Answer some basic questions first 
Before you start writing a draft, think and scribble around answering these questions:

o Why am I writing this?
o What do I want to achieve?
o Who am I writing for?
o What do I want people to think, feel, know or do after they have read it?
o What would be the best form for it to be written in? An article, pamphlet, poster,  etc?

You can use the freewriting tool included in this toolkit during your thinking time.

Answering these questions will help you to be clearer, more confident and quicker in your
writing process.

Writing beyond what is needed to be said. Exploring creative writing intellects.


Reasons for writing 

What is your objective with your writing? What do you want to achieve? What do you
hope your audience or reader will think, feel, know or do afterwards?

We write for many reasons. It is good to identify a main objective. Sometimes we have
additional objectives. But if you have too many, you may weaken your piece of writing by
trying to achieve too many things at once. Your audience can end up feeling overloaded
and confused if your objective is not clear, or there are too many.

Be able to let go of some secondary objectives – you can tell yourself to hold them for
another publication or piece of writing so you can come back to them another time.

So why do people write?

People write, among other reasons, to:

  • advocate 
  • agitate 
  • educate 
  • entertain 
  • evoke certain emotions 
  • debate 
  • inform 
  • lobby 
  • mobilise 
  • persuade 
  • plan 
  • promote particular action 
  • strategise 
  • raise awareness 
  • train 
  • win an argument 

Tuesday, 24 June 2014

Learning about academic writing




Academic writing is one of the most complex and yet understandable English course at the University level.
Let's start by outlining the "Do's" and "Don't" of academic writing. The first thing not to do is to underestimate the module; furthermore, never try to seek work and or handouts for essay online, because plagiarism is taken seriously. Your "Do's" are very clear and seems understandable. Firstly, try to gain knowledge on critiquing an article, premises of a sentence and mostly literary devices before your classes begin.
In some universities it may be called different names, but it's all the same actually. As such, in some cases there are "Academic Writing 1" & "Academic Writing 2".
When writing your essay try to seek a credible online and or offline source for information. Using online sources maybe tricky, thus, you must look for scholarly sources that can bring out the informative and professionalism of your work.
Examples of scholarly sources:
  • Journal of Agricultural Education
  • Journal of Extension
  • Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education
  • Adult Education Quarterly
  • NACTA Journal
  • International Review of Education
  • Journal of Continuing Higher Education
  • Google Scholar

Examples of non-scholarly sources:
  • Newsweek
  • New York Times
  • Time
  • USA Today
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • National Geographic
  • Wikipedia
  • Most website 


Writing an article critique in Academic Writing
The first thing one should do when considering to critique an article is to:
Read the article very carefully to gain a primary understanding of the writer’s intention.
Re-read the article to make sense of the language, tone and purpose of the article. 
Ask yourself what else you think you should know about this article. Gain an outlook on the topic, discuss with friends if you of to and or if your allowed to do so about the topic. Build on your knowledge of what you may already know about the article.

When you’ve finish getting an understanding, the next approach is to compile information about the article by starting off with:

  • ·         introduce the name of the article/book and name of author(s)

  • ·         summarize the article/book’s main claim, goals, methods, and findings

  • ·         show how the article/book supports its claims

  • ·         indicate the main position or claim that your review will make in response to the article

  • ·         develop your critique in relation to aspects of the article/book, offering thoughtful, well-supported proof for your claim(s)
  • ·    conclude by pointing to the scholarly value (worthy or limited) of the article, suggesting particular   audiences who might benefit from the work and proposing further directions that research might take in relation to the article’s topic

N.B.  All essay writing should be done in APA six edition formatting style.