Seventeenth Lesson

Making an argument and persuading your reader

Your reader

Throughout this book we have thought about your reader as the actual person who will be reading your work: usually your tutor but sometimes another student. Your tutor is usually the person who will be marking your work and who also helps you to develop your ideas and improve your writing.

Your fellow student is someone who will be helping you to make your work clearer. Both of the readers should be interested in what you have say. In addition, we also talk about you yourself as the reader of your own work.   

What does argument mean

Argument is quite different term when applied to student writing because it is used in many different ways. Sometimes a good argument and a good structure mean the same thing. On the other hand, you can have a good structure in piece of writing without it strictly being an argument. Students who enjoy writing learning journals find that they are often more interested in raising questions, or playing with a range of different ideas than committing themselves to a particular point of view. 

Much of a student's work involves analysing different points of view or interpretations before they can think about making their argument. Sometimes getting a good argument as tutors see it, can be more or less equated with thinking critically: taking a questioning approach and thinking about Why or What? and going beyond the surface of what is described. 

Sixteenth Lesson

Organizing and shaping your writing

Some structure used in university writing

Here are seven examples of some structures commonly used in university writing, in last lesson we discussed three of them and in this lesson we discuss remaining four.

4- Compare/contrast writing

This is a very common structure. It shows the similarities and differences between two things and, in the process, it tells you more about each of them. One common feature of university writing is that the things may well be quite abstract or intangible - for example, two different social policies of two different psychological theories. You can handle the compare/contrast structure by moving back and forth between both things or by discussing each in turn.

5- Summary writing

You will sometimes be asked to write a summary and to give the gist of what an article or book is about as an exercise in its own right. You may also have to write briefly about what someone says, or about a particular position or way of thinking a part of your assignment. This is necessary because a lot of university writing is specifically about discussing what other authors have said about a topic. In the case, you will need to refer to just those points and ideas that are relevant to your particular assignment.     

6- Analysis writing

This is the most difficult kind of writing to explain because analysis is a term that is frequently used by the university tutors in different ways. It always demands that you say more about, for instance, what you are describing or comparing. Strictly analysis means breaking things down into their constituent parts, and this idea comes from science. This taught can be helpful in understanding what you need to do in any analytical writing.

7- Evaluating writing

In evaluating writing you have to make some sort of judgment, often about what other writers are saying. This is different from the kind of judgment you might make in daily life, for example, "That was a good film". You have to evaluate different positions, perspectives or points of view. You have to do more than say, for example, "This is a false argument". You have to give reasons for your judgment. Evaluating may involve writing about how different positions suggest certain attitudes or omit some crucial information, weighing up one against the other.       

Fifteenth Lesson

Organizing and shaping your writing

Some structure used in university writing

Now let us consider the shape of work from a different angle by looking at some ways of organizing material into different kinds of structure that are commonly used in university writing. Here are seven examples of some structures commonly used in university writing in this lesson we discuss three of them. 

1. Chronology writing 

      This structure follows time with a sense of the sequence of events, one following another. You relate or recount what happened. This may naturally, often be used in history. Chronology can be expressed visually as a timeline which shows the sequence of events during a certain period as a calendar does. A similar structure may be used to tell the plot of a novel or film. Chronology writing might well appear at the beginning of an assignment, to give the background to the rest of the piece.

   

     2. Description writing

       Description usually needs to be followed by or linked to explanation. The visual way to represent description may be as a diagram, with labelled parts as in biology. However, if we are describing something more abstract - for example, the characteristics of the twentieth-century family then a spider diagram may be a good way to build up our thinking.

     3. Cause-effect writing

        In practice you will not get far in recounting what happened without bringing in cause and effect, which relate events to each other. Take a simple example; the king died; the people rejoiced. For this to make sense we need to know why the people rejoiced. However, the idea of a straight correlation between two events - that something is caused by something else is often seen as a bit simplistic. 

    

                       

Fourteenth Lesson

Organizing and shaping your writing

Getting the assignment into shape

We are assuming that you have already done a lot of work for your assignment. 

• You have worked on the title and have begun to get a sense of where you will be going, and of your argument. you have gathered together a good deal of information from books, lectures and other relevant sources. 

• You have done various kinds of preparatory writing. 

• You may have made some kind of plan and have done pieces of various kinds of writing towards the assignment. 

• But now, probably with the deadline looming, you wonder how you are going to get it into shape as a finished product to hand in to your tutor. 

It is true that this can be a very difficult point for the writer. It is an important to realize that planning and shaping your writing happen at different phases in the writing process and in different ways. 

• You continually move back and forth between planning and thinking, as you think new thoughts and write down 'old' ones. 

• As you think and gather information you are also planning and writing bits as you go. 

• Sometimes, you may find that you have gone in a slightly different direction from the one you had planned so that now you need to revisit material you have already looked at, or even find some new information. 

• At some point you simple need to make the best of what you have got and just finish this particular piece of work.       

Thirteenth Lesson

Reading as the part of writing

Reading and note taking

One way of approaching a new piece of reading is to break it down into manageable chunks and try to assimilate things bit by bit. There is close correlation here between your reading and your note taking, and this feeds directly into your writing. 

Making mind maps from reading

Some people find that making linear notes from reading does not always work very well for them and they prefer to create a mind map as more visual representation. This helps them remember what they have read because they can visualize the different notes that they have made and the ways that they relate to one another. 

Keep records

One good way of recording your references as you go along is to use record cards. On these you can put referencing information that you need about a book or article that you have read. You can also record brief notes on why you found it useful, you can refer to important page numbers and even record complete quotes if they seem relevant to you.

Making meaning through reading

It is you, the reader, who makes sense of what you read and the meaning that you will be able to make depends to some extent on how you are reading. We are concerned with the latter kind of reading in the two tasks that is as follow:

'Fitting together' reading

Approaching your reading so that everything that you are reading and studying fits together helps you to focus on your ideas, and both to synthesize and elaborate them.

'Analytic' reading

This is less concerned with reading to fit together with what you know already than with the analysing what you are reading as you go long. Again, this is an integral part of the strategy that you will need to adopt to read successfully for your writing.  

Twelve Lesson

Reading as a part of writing

Working with your reading

There seem to be two major difficulties that students have when they are reading academic books and materials. One is struggling with the ways in which things are written. The other is the length of time that things can take to read. 

Many students express surprise at the need to make repeated readings of the same material. Academics themselves find it necessary to 'repeat-read' articles and books. 

The following activity is designed to help you to see the differences between types of text and identify what you might find particularly hard work about an academic text that you have to read. 

Activity Ten: Thinking about reading

Thinking about what kinds of things you normally read ( novel, reports, news-papers, magazines). First, choose a type of reading that is most familiar to you. Second, choose a book or article that you are having to read at the moment for your study. You are going to think about the contrast between these two pieces of text. Take a blank piece of paper and divide it in half. On one side of the paper put the title of the familiar kind of reading, for example a novel; on the other side of the paper put the title of the academic text. 

Now make a list of some of the ways in which you think the two texts appear to be different from one another.        

Eleventh Lesson

Reading as the part of writing

Reading is an integral part of the whole writing process. There are different important points regarding reading a good material that is relevant to you writing. One of them is "Choosing your reading for an assignment".

Choosing your reading for an assignment

The initial stumbling block that most students face is choosing their reading. The first thing to do is to consult the reading list for books and article that seem relevant to your particular assignment. Doing a library research, by keywords or subject, is also useful if the references on your reading list are already on loan from the library.

Once you have got a few references you need to be able to decide which will be the most useful to you. As this stage it is important that you pay particular attention to the signposting in the book; this will tell you how the book deals with subject matter that is relevant to your assignment.

Starting with the index, look up relevant words and subject areas until you find the parts of the book that seem most important. Do not choose the book if it does not seem to be appropriate to your assignment. 

Following are the important points that must be follow by the student regarding searching relevant materials for the assignment. 

Getting hold of publications

Use your reading list
Ask your tutor
Note down other up-to-date references that tutor mention in the lecture
Ask other students on your course
Use library search

Checking a publication for relevance

Check the title
Check the index
Turn to relevant chapter
Check headings
Check introduction
Read a short section to get the feel of its usefulness for you
Check conclusion
Does it seem relevant to the assignment question?

Photocopying

Use highlighters and different coloured pens to mark your own copy
Make your notes and annotations on the copy.

Tenth Lesson

Reading as the part of writing

Reading is an integral part of the whole writing process. There are different important points regarding reading a good material that is relevant to you writing. One of them is Approaching reading.

Approaching reading

With academic writing, it is necessary to maintain a constant grip on what the another is saying. The list below gives you a few a ideas about what may be important, but you will probably want to add to it or modify it to decide what would be the best for you.

• Try to set aside reading time when you will not be interrupted. 

• Try to find a physical environment that is conducive to reading: perhaps at home or may be in the university library.

• Make sure before you start reading, that you have all the things you might want to use for taking notes and highlighting: A4 Paper, index cards, different coloured pens perhaps a laptop computer.

• Make sure that you are comfortable and can write notes from your reading without feeling cramped.

• Take frequent short breaks and during this time try to digest what you have read.

• Don't except to be able to make any useful sense of your reading if you are tired, stressed or constantly interrupted. 

Ninth Lesson

Beginning with the title

There are two ways to find out a suitable title for your study.

a) Keywords

b) Analysing the assignment

Today, our focus on the Second way to find out a suitable title that is analysing the assignment.

b) Analysing the assignment

The following five points outline a method for analysing your own writing tasks, beginnings with the title.

1- Write down in your own words what you think the assignment is asking you to do.

The purpose of this exercise is to get you to consider the question in your own words and through your own ways of expressing things, using language that feels comfortable and familiar to you.

2- What do you already know about the subject matter of the assignment?

Once you began to analyze the question you can start to relate your analysis to what you already know about the subject matter.

3- What do you need to know to help you complete this assignment successfully?

This might seem a strange question but you will find that this question does help you to begin to focus on the gaps in your knowledge.

4- How do you think this assignment differs from or is similar to other assignments that you are working on at the moment? 

Each assignment title needs its own analysis and of course, as you become more proficient in writing at university, you will become much quicker at unpacking each title and piece of written work. 

5- How are you going to choose your reading material? 

Choosing what you need to read is an important part of the process of writing an assignment. Choose a book that you consider is best according to your own work.   
 

Eighth Lesson

Beginning with the title

There are two ways to find out a suitable title for your study.

a) Keywords

b) Analysing the assignment

Today, our focus only on the first way to find out a suitable title that is keywords.

a) Keywords

One way that students are often taught to approach a new title is to pick out the keywords and work with these to understand how they should approach the assignment.

With the keywords approach you pick out what seem to be the important parts of the question and ignored the linking words.

The focus is on leaving out less important linking words and piking out both the content keywords that can help to understand "what the assignment is about" and also can help to find out appropriate title to your assignment.

Some academic keywords are mentioned in list below:

Discuss
Explain
Compare and contrast
Describe
Analyse
Illustrate
Evaluate
Outline
Critically examined
Assess

Activity Eight: Identifying academic keywords

Look at the list above. Look over some of the questions for written assignment in your course.

• Do they use any of these words?
• Why do you think the lecturer has used a particular academic keyword rather than another?
• Write down your own ideas about what the academic keywords mean (do not use dictionary definitions).   

Seventh Lesson

The 'building block' approach to writing

• Writing assignment is about finding the right building blocks each time and putting them together in a coherent order. 

• In the same way that using the same raw materials is unlikely to result in two identical buildings, even if you use the same sources and answer the same question, no two assignment will ever be exactly the same.

• Using 'building block' is a metaphorical way of thinking about writing, which we hope will be helpful to you when you come to a new assignment.

• As you approach each new assignment, you, the writer, are the 'apprentice' but your tutor is more likely to be an 'experienced builder'. Your tutor will be able to tell you where you went wrong with your writing. 

• As the writer you have to be able to identify the building blocks and put them together in a way that make sense.  

• Brainstorming is a useful technique to use to now identify the building blocks, the different parts of your assignment.   

Sixth Lesson

The key element of university writing

Following are the key elements that should be exist in your university writing.

• Developing an argument

• Linking theory and evidence

• Drawing a conclusion

• Analysing

• Being critical

• Developing a central idea

• Processing information

• Incorporating facts

• Correct terminology

• Logical order

• Use of evidence to support an argument

• Use of primary texts

• Use of quotations

• Drawing on personal experiences

• Expressing own opinions

• Using personal interpretations

Activity Seven: Looking for key elements

Choose an assignment that you are working on at the moment. Work through the above list and consider key elements are likely yo apply to this particular assignment.  

Fifth Lesson

Now we are elaborating the third method of beginning to write:

Brainstorming

The next method that we look at for getting started on as assignment uses note form rather than the continuous prose of practice writing.

•  The idea of brainstorming your ideas is that you simply note down as many ideas as possible about a topic, in words or phrases. 

• Later you will select and throw out some items. you can do task as a list, but many people like to begin to arrange their brainstorming ideas spatially, which helps them to see how they relate to each other.  

• It can therefore be a good idea to use a blank piece of paper so that you can arrange your jottings where you like the page as you think of them. 

• This technique has now become very familiar and helps to select the appropriate ideas for your academic writing.  

As  in practice writing exercise, use your own topic for the following activity if you prefer.

Activity Five: Brainstorming for writing

Take the topic "The family in your country today". Write down as many points about this topic as you can, using single words or phrases. You may find it useful to arrange your ideas spatially on your page, to give you an idea of how they begin to group together. 

Now compare the brainstorming ideas that you have noted with the list below. Can you think about where your own ideas have come from?

The family in your own country today

• Parents
• Different cultures
• High rate of divorce
• Family values
• Are families in decline? 
• New kind of family emerging   
• Families religion 

Fourth Lesson

Now we are elaborating the second method of beginning to write:

Practice writing

When you are first trying to get into the method of a new kind of writing it can be very useful to make yourself to write as much as you can about a topic, as a way of getting your ideas into some kind of external form, and in the process discovering what these ideas are. since you are simply practising writing at this stage, we call this 'practice writing'.

The essential idea of this method is that it doesn't matter what the writing is like because the only reader, unless you choose otherwise, will be yourself. It doesn't matter weather it is well written, or even whether it makes sense; the point is to keep doing it.

One thing that makes writing difficult is that we are inclined to be critical of what we are writing as we do it and to try to make the writing good and correct from the beginning. If you are writing something that you find easy, where you know more or less what you want to say, this may work, and you might possible end up with a piece of writing that you can use straight away.

An important purpose of practise writing is that it separates the first thinking part of writing from the critical editing part. In addition, practise writing is an easy way of making yourself do plenty of writing. Next activity is regarding the practise writing is given below:


Activity Four: Practice writing for University

Set a timer for five minutes, then just write as much as you can on "The family in your country today". Start from any point of view you like.

When you have finished, read through what you have written. What do you think of it?

Identify what you have written about and think about why.

Have you written in complete sentences? Do you pursue one thought or jump about?

Did this exercise work for you? Are there any surprises in what you have done? 

Third Lesson

Getting started

We acknowledge that university writing can be difficult but believe that there are ways of approaching it that will build up your confidence and develop your competence. There are three well-known methods for beginning to write:

• Bridging a gap

• Practice writing  

• Brainstorming          

Today we are going to elaborate only first method that is bridging a gap:

Bridging a gap:

When you come to write at university you may find that there is a gap that you have to bridge. On one side there is you, with your background, sense of identity and ideas about the world, and on the other there is the subject you have to write about, based on academic disciplines. 

This can open up interesting new ways of seeing and understanding for you but it can also present problems of how to behave, and how to speak and write. So, the way is read as much as you can. The more you read the more you bridging the gap between what you came with and a different way of thinking and speaking.

In addition, familiar words are used differently and new terms are invented. Different uses of words indicate different ways of thinking about and viewing the world, thus it is important that you learn the new terms and meanings and that you are able to use them in your writing. The next activity will help you with this.

Activity Three: Make a glossary of terms

Take a subject that you are studying. Choose a few terms that are commonly used in it. Use your own words to try to pin down that the terms means for you. Pay attention on unfamiliar terms in the extracts and main body of the book. Use your computer to put together a glossary of terms, editing it as you learn more about the terms you have included. Print it off regularly so that you can use the hard copy for reference.    

    

Second Lesson

1- Types of Writing

• Writing consists of words and these words are put together in particular formations to make sentences. sentences are the grouped together into paragraphs.    

• In some ways we can see all writing as being the same. However, it is quite possible to communicate what we need to say in writing with an incomplete sentence. For example:          

          dinner in the oven

          three copies please

         

         As long as they were in the know, and the context was familiar, people would easily understand these simple messages, but they do not consist of complete sentence. Neither phrase contain a main verb. If we wanted to turn these into formal standard English we would have to say something like:

        your dinner is in the oven.

        Please would you make three photocopies of this article as soon as you can. 

        In these examples 'is' and 'make' are the main verbs of the sentences. So, when we write email  or letters to friends we often use informal style and leave out words but when we write something for academic purpose, must use the main verb and complete sentences. 

2- Talking for writing

• We have said already that working and share ideas with others can help you to develop and enjoy your writing.        

• Talking about ideas and material from the subject you are studying is always good way of learning the subject.  

• In talking around a subject you can also raise and explore your own questions, clarify your understanding and discover a variety of other ways of seeing a topic.  

For incorporate above mentioned tips, you should practice activity two:

Activity Two: Speaking and writing

Work in pairs, think about an assignment that you are having difficulty with at the moment. Record yourself (not more than ten minutes) having a conversation with your friends about the problems. 

When you have finished, both of you should write about the things that came out in your conversation on the paper. Discuss your writing with your friend. Listen the recording again and check what you have written a fair reflection of the conversation.   

First Lesson

The purpose of this blog is to help you to think of yourself as a writer, and to understand the ways in which you may need to adopt what you already know and do in writing.

Tips regarding write up improvement

1.  Reading

• One good way of increasing your own command of standard English is to read articles in the broadsheet newspapers. Articles about issues are more useful in this respect than reading the reported stories. 

•  In general, reading is a very good way of broadening your own knowledge of different forms of writing as well as being essential for writing your university assignments.

     2.  Working with others

• We should also emphasize the value of working with others on your writing. When you are working with other, there are many parts of the writing process where it is enormously useful to get ideas and feedback form others.

• Many professional academic writers make use of 'critical friend' to read drafts or talk though ideas.

• We are not suggesting that you co-write an assignment, just that you find a critical reader to explore and perhaps provide feedback on what you may be doing. 

     3. You as a writer 

• How do you think of yourself as a writer? You may feel more or less confident about writing, whatever your background, you will have already experienced many different forms of writing. 

• Whenever puzzling over the assignment title in front of you, gathering your thoughts and ideas together, and incorporating what you have read about the subject into your work.

For incorporate above mentioned technique, you should practice this first activity.

  Activity One: Writing your own linguistic history 

Think, and write down as much as you can, about your own personal linguistic history,the ways in which you have written, read and spoken in your life. 

you must think these three important things before writing...

• The purpose ----- why you are writing?
• The audience ----- who are you writing? 
• The types of writing----how would you describe the writing?

Purpose of blog

This blog is for new learners about academic writing. I will share various tips of writing with reference of different books and also welcome your school of thoughts about different writing skills.

I will start it with the book written by "Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea". The title of the book is "Writing at University" recommended by my supervisor Dr. Muhammad Muhaizam Musa. I really appreciate his efforts of knowledge sharing at different forums. I am one of the branches of this knowledge sharing tree.