Twenty-Fifth Lesson

From the personal to the academic

On way of thinking about the specificity of academic writing is to compare it with what we can broadly term 'personal' writing, where the writer obviously at its center and there seems to be clear relationship between what is written and writer. 

Then you can think of writing for university as shift from a personal to an academic way of thinking and writing, involving shifts in the writer's sense of 'I' in their writing in specific way.

The following activity is linked to the work you did on the difference between an auto-biographical and an academic text in previous activity, but the focus in different; here we are asking you to consider things from the perspective of yourself, the writer, rather than yourself the reader, and, in particular, to think about your identity and position within your own different kinds of writing.

Activity Seventeen: Writing from a personal perspective

Identify an event in your childhood that was important to you. When you have decided on this, write one or two paragraphs about it. Imagine that you are writing for a friendly fellow student or tutor. 

When you have finished, read over what you have written and not how often you have used 'I'. Can you say from this piece what the 'I' character is liked and what he or she seems to be doing in the account?

Does the 'I' character seem to identify with the child or an adult looking on the child? 

Can you identify features of the writing that show that it is 'personal'?