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MSc. Psychology Professional Skills Íde O’Sullivan Regional Writing Centre, UL www.ul.ie/rwc Regional Writing Centre 1 Writing Critiques of presentations Reviews of articles Literature reviews Regional Writing Centre 2 Key Considerations Regional Writing Centre 3 The writing process Prewriting Drafting Revision Editing and Proofreading Regional Writing Centre 4 Prewriting Planning Evaluating the rhetorical situation, or context, into which you write Choosing and focusing your topic Establishing an organising principle Gathering information Entering the discourse on your topic Taking notes as a strategy to avoid charges of plagiarism Evaluating sources Regional Writing Centre 5 Planning: Assessing the rhetorical situation Occasion Topic Audience Purpose Writer Regional Writing Centre 6 Stylistic differences that mark academic writing Complexity Precision Formality Explicitness Objectivity Hedging Accuracy Responsibility (Gillet 2008) Regional Writing Centre 7 Planning: Analysing journals Cracking the codes of academic writing Analysing the genre/text and modelling Identify important criteria that will make your writing more effective Ask yourself the following questions: How is the paper structured? How is the contribution articulated? What level of context is provided? What level of detail is used? How long are the different sections? Regional Writing Centre 8 Planning: Analysing journals What organisational features/patterns are in evidence? How are arguments and counterarguments presented and structured? What types of evidence are important? What stylistic features are prominent? Is the text cohesive? How does the author achieve such cohesion? What kind(s) of persuasive devises does the author employ? Voice? Regional Writing Centre 9 Drafting Try to visualise your report. Work toward that vision. Begin to structure it—establish your section headings; give them titles. These do not have to be permanent. Examine the logical order of ideas reflected in those titles. Do not get hung up on details; elements of the draft are subject to change in the revision stage. Start to write the sections that you are ready to write. Regional Writing Centre 10 Drafting Continue to reassess your rhetorical situation. Does what you have written so far contribute to the achievement of your purpose? Experiment with organisation and methods of development. Don’t get bogged-down in details; focus on the big issues: organisation and logical flow. Regional Writing Centre 11 Revision Is your paper logically organised? A good way to check the logical flow of your ideas is to outline your report AFTER you’ve completed your draft. How did you introduce your topic? By giving it definition? Describing its development? Explaining what it is? Does each section contribute to your reader’s understanding of your topic? Does your report service your purpose, aims, and objectives? Regional Writing Centre 12 Revising Outline each section. How does each paragraph contribute to our understanding of the topic of that section? Take a close look at paragraphs: Does each paragraph have a central idea? Does it have unity? Is it coherent and well developed? Is there a correspondence between the title of your report, your section headings and sub-headings and the central ideas in your paragraphs? Regional Writing Centre 13 Revising Do the methods used to illuminate your topic lead to logical discovery? No truths are self-evident. Claims have to be defended with evidence. Processes have to be described and explained; Design features and research methods have to be justified; The justification for generalisations and conclusions need to be made explicit; The criteria used to qualify our results also needs to be explicitly put forward and evaluated for objectivity; Underlying assumptions need to be evaluated for their objectivity. Regional Writing Centre 14 Editing and proofreading Once the report is cogent, it must be made to be coherent. Work methodically, checking one feature at a time. Do not exclude formatting issues. Editing and proofreading is more than just grammar and punctuation; it is also about voice, rhythm, tone, style and clarity. Regional Writing Centre 15 Editing and proofreading Check for ambiguity Check for comma splices, run-ons, stringy sentences and fragments. Check for how sentences introduce new information: is it in the beginning of the sentence or at the end? Check that you use sentence types that are appropriate for your discipline. Check word order and usage. Check for agreement: Subject/verb; pronoun or noun substitute/ antecedent or concatenation. Check for bias. Check for obstacles to clarity: Poorly chosen words Vague references Clichés and trite language Jargon Inappropriate connotations Regional Writing Centre 16 Editing and proofreading Check for plagiarism Check the form of your in-text citations and of your full references in your References page. Check the content of your citations. Is everything that should be there there? Check that paraphrases are not too close to the original. Check that all figures, tables and graphs are captioned and cited (below figures and graphs; above tables) Check that any borrowed ideas, words or methods of organising information are referenced and clearly marked. Regional Writing Centre 17 Logical choices and unity of purpose Every choice serves to defend a claim, answer a question, or confirm a hypothesis Word, phrase, sentence-structure Does the choice satisfy audience expectations Does it speak to your authorial credibility Does it further your argument, analysis, Regional Writing Centre 18 Arguments & logic A good argument will have, at the very least: a thesis that declares the writer's position on the problem at hand; an acknowledgment of the opposition that nods to, or quibbles with other points of view; a set of clearly defined premises that illustrate the argument's line of reasoning; evidence that validates the argument's premises; a conclusion that convinces the reader that the argument has been soundly and persuasively made. (Dartmouth Writing Program 2005) Regional Writing Centre 19 Flow Logical method of development Effective transition signals Good signposting Consistent point of view Conciseness (careful word choice) Clarity of expression Paragraph structure Unity Coherence Regional Writing Centre 20 Writing a Critique Regional Writing Centre 21 Writing a critique Making a claim Argument Evidence Counterargument Audience Reference to the literature Critical reading Evaluation Synthesis Credibility Regional Writing Centre 22 Useful Strategies Regional Writing Centre 23 Getting started Where and when do you write? Why are you not writing? “I don’t feel ready to write.” Writers’ block Getting unstuck Writing to prompts/freewriting (write anything) Set writing goals Write regularly Integrate writing into your thinking Break it down into a manageable process Regional Writing Centre 24 Outlining (Murray 2006) Title and draft introduction Level 1 outlining Level 2 outlining Main headings Sub-headings Level 3 outlining Decide on content Regional Writing Centre 25 Writing in layers (Murray 2006: 125-27) Outline the structure: write your section heading for the research paper. Write a sentence or two on the contents of each section. List out sub-headings for each section. Write an introductory paragraph for each section. At the top of each section, write the word count requirement, draft number and date. Regional Writing Centre 26 Writing a ‘page 98 paper’ My research question is … Researchers who have looked at this subject are … They argue that … Debate centres on the issue of … There is work to be done on … My research is closest to that of X in that … My contribution will be … (Murray 2006:104) Regional Writing Centre 27 Dialogue about writing Peer-review Generative writing The “writing sandwich” (Murray 2005:85): writing, talking, writing Writing “buddies” (Murray and Moore 2006:102) Writers’ groups Engaging in critiques of one another’s work allows you to become effective critics of your own work. Regional Writing Centre 28 Resources Ebest, S.B., Alred, G., Brusaw, C.T. and Oliu, W.E. (2005) Writing from A to Z: The Easy-to-use Reference Handbook, 5th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hacker, D. (2006) A Writer’s Reference, 6th edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press. Regional Writing Centre, UL http://www.ul.ie/rwc/ Strunk, W. and White, E.B. (2000) The Elements of Style, 4th ed. New York: Longman. Using English for Academic Purposes http://www.uefap.com/index.htm The Writer’s Garden http://www. cyberlyber.com/writermain.htm The OWL at Purdue http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill http://www.unc.edu/depts /wcweb/handouts/index.html Regional Writing Centre 29 Works cited Dartmouth Writing Program (2006) “Logic and Argument” [Online], available: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/material s/student/toc.shtml [accessed 08 Jan. 2008]. Elbow, P. (1998) Writing without Teachers (2nd edition). New York: Oxford University Press. Murray, R. (2005) Writing for Academic Journals. UK: Open University Press. Murray, R. (2006) How to Write a Thesis (2nd edition). UK: Open University Press. Murray, R. and Moore, S. (2006) The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach. UK: Open University Press. Regional Writing Centre 30