Introduction to Academic Writing WorkshopScience/ Applied Science

Dr Jo Edmondston Graduate Education Officer

Graduate Research School

Objectives of Workshop

1) Provide a strategy to improve quality of academic writing and the speed of text generation 2) Describe a 3-step approach to producing coherent and well-structured drafts 3) Develop an individualised editing checklist to use to improve the readability and comprehension

of generated text

Graduate Education Officers

The Graduate Education Officers provide a range of academic writing support to Higher Degree by Research students at UWA, including workshops, writing spaces and writing retreats.

Read more here: http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/students/resources Find writing event dates here: http://www.postgraduate.uwa.edu.au/students/resources/events

Dr Krys Haq 6488 2095 krys.haq@uwa.edu.au Dr Jo Edmondston 6488 7010 joanne.edmondston@uwa.edu.au

Dr Michael Azariadis 6488 1726 michael.azariadis@uwa.edu.au

Study Smarter

StudySmarter are a team of learning skills advisors that help UWA students develop study skills. They offer a range of online support, workshops and drop-in sessions and a number of their team are trained to provideEnglish language skills development.

Read more here: http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/learning/studysmarter Find the workshop dates here: http://www.student.uwa.edu.au/learning/studysmarter/orientation

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Resources

Explorations of Style http://explorationsofstyle.com/

Doctoral Writing Special Interest Group (SIG) https://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/home/

Writing for Research https://medium.com/@Write4Research

Thesis Whisperer http://thesiswhisperer.com/

Online Writing Lab (OWL) https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/

Academic Phrasebank http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

Academic Word List https://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist

Taboo words in Academic Writing https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/taboo-words/

Academic Writing Style www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/academic-style

What to avoid in Formal Writing http://learnline.cdu.edu.au/studyskil ls/studyskills/aswhattoavoid.html

Writing a Paragraph www.student.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/2747107/ES4-Writing-a-Paragraph.pdf

Topic Sentences https://arts.uottawa.ca/writingcentre/en/hypergrammar/writing-paragraphs

Writing Concise Sentences http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/concise.htm

Transition Word List www.collierschools.com/cms/lib/FL01903251/Centricity/Domain/220/Literacy%20Tips/Transition%20Words.pdf

Effective Transitions https://explorationsofstyle.com/2011/02/23/transitions/

Punctuation Made Simple http://punctuationmadesimple.org/

Word Choice https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/word-choice/

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Academic Writing: Models and Resources

What do you find most difficult about academic writing?

Academic writing is a skill like any other research skill - you need to commit to developing this skill throughout your research career. Take the time to develop your writing skills and confidence by attending courses, reading texts (academic writing for research, editing guides in your discipline), being receptive to feedback and practising.

As you are reading research papers and theses in your discipline, take note of the texts you find easy to read and understand – these texts are likely to be well written. Model your academic writing on these texts.

You can create a library of ‘framework text’ by removing noun phrases from paragraphs (this process is call strategic language re-use).

You may also find the Academic Phrasebank and Academic Wordlist useful.

Academic Phrasebank: Introducing Work - Highlighting a knowledge gap in the field of study

The response of X to Y is not fully understood Uncertainty still exists about the relationship between … The basis of X is poorly understood. Little is known about X and it is not clear what factors …

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Drafting: Writing to Develop Your Understanding

The first stage of any writing is to get ideas from your head and onto the page – often know as a brain ‘dump’ or ‘download’. Develop a technique that allows you to do this quickly and easily, and use your technique regularly to test your understanding of the ideas in your head.

Free writing is one of the most widely used unconscious writing technique. The technique involves write continuously for a set time period, forcing you to focus on writing while ‘freeing’ you from the temptation to do anything else, such as edit, engage with negative thoughts, procrastinate, multi-task and/or search for additional references.

Free write for 3min about what you hope to gain from this workshop (or choose a topic of your choice). Write continuously for this time – do not allow your pen to stop moving. If you get stuck write ‘blah blah blah…..’ until your brain re-engages with the task.

[You can adapt pen-and-paper free writing to on-screen free writing by reducing your font size to 5 point OR changing your font colour to white or very light grey. In both cases you will be typing but unable to see the text. At the end of the time period make the text visible by increasing the font or changing the font colour back to black. You can also free write online using the Write or Die App by Dr Wicked http://writeordie.com ].

If you find unconscious writing techniques too unstructured, you may prefer conscious writing techniques like listing or mindmapping.

Purdue OWL’s Introduction to Invention http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/673/01/ Empire State College’s Developing Ideas for Prewriting http://www.esc.edu/esconline/across_esc/writerscomplex.nsf/0/ce2b510e7d9975ae852569c3006acccc?OpenDocument

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Free Write

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Once you have units of information on a page, you will need to organise this information by grouping, ordering and linking ideas.

Take the complex jumble of lollies provided. Organise them by grouping them, then ordering the groups in a line from the top to the bottom of the page. Describe your grouping and ordering principles.

Grouping principle:

Ordering principle:

In the early stages of writing, you are developing an understanding of your messages, the order you want to present your ideas, and the evidence you will use to support your messages. Focus on the big picture (‘higher order concerns’) rather than editing individual sentences and paragraphs (‘lower order concerns’).

Use drafting as an opportunity to explore your understanding of the subject, your main messages, the structure of your text, and the content of your text. Ask yourself:

• What do I understand? What do I need to understand better before I can continue to write about this subject?

• Is the structure I am proposing the most effective structure? Is there a simpler alternative? Can I rearrange my text to tell a ‘better story’?

• What evidence do I need to support my message? Can I remove text? Is the amount of text I have allocated to any one point appropriate? Do I need to condense any sections of text?

From your ‘organised brain dump’ you can then begin to roughly draft your sections. Avoid the temptation to edit these early drafts - an academic writing style can be ‘stamped’ onto this writing at a later stage. Focus instead on the content of the paragraphs. Ask yourself:

• What is the focus (topic) of each of my paragraphs? • What order will I present sentences within each paragraph? • How will I link the paragraphs together?

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Once you have a rough draft of a section of work, it is often useful to reassess the main messages in the text. In the processing of drafting you are likely to have deviated from your Forward Outline – the notes you used to help you draft individual paragraphs. Before you commit to editing the section, revise the structure of your section to ensure your message is clear and well structured.

Revision of drafts can be difficult using a word processor because you tend to look at individual paragraphs on a screen, making it hard to see how paragraphs relate to one another. To assess the ‘big picture’ structure of your draft, it is useful to create a Reverse Outline.

Explorations of Style - Reverse Outlines http://explorationsofstyle.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/reverse-outlines/

1. Number each paragraph

2. Identify the topic of each paragraph

3. Create a numbered list of the paragraph topics

4. Analyse the structure of the numbered list

5. Reorganize the list, and/or add or delete items from the list

6. Describe your new list to someone to test the clarity and ‘flow’ of information

6. Use the revised list to restructure your full text

Reverse outlines can be useful for early discussions with your supervisor(s) about the structure and content of your draft text. Provide your supervisor(s) with your reverse outline and talk them through the outline to see if they agree with the direction your writing is heading in. Once you have agreed the outline is good, you can then commit to editing.

When you want to discuss a section of your writing your supervisor(s), what do you provide them with? What sort of feedback do your receive? How many drafts do you expect to write before your text is finished?

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Create a reverse outline from this text:

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Editing: Writing for Your Reader

Once you are confident your draft has a clear message and a logical structure, you can begin to edit. At this point, you are moving from writing for you, to writing for your reader. Some of the things you need to conscious of are:

• Switching from assessing your text for what you think it should say, to what it actually says. This can be difficult because you understand much more about the subject than you may have written and therefore, you are likely to miss many of the ‘holes’ in your text because you ‘fill them in’ in your head.

• Understanding the expertise of your reader- What they know about the subject you are writing about? What is their level of presumed knowledge? How ‘gently’ do you need to introduce your subject? What terms will they be familiar with and which will you need to define?

• Meeting your reader’s expectations. What academic and disciplinary conventions do they expect you to use? What structural clues have you provided – do you conform with this expected structure? Does your topic sentences match the topic of the paragraph?

• Focussing on editing rather than drafting. There will be some overlap in these processes, but avoid too much distraction – quickly note that at a later date you need to address a section, add a reference, remove some text – then continue with editing.

• Aiming to deliver a complex message in the simplest way possible. Use simple structures and simple vocabulary where possible.

The Chicken, Chicken, Chicken, Chicken paper illustrates clearly how much a reader understands a text, even without any words.

Zonker, D (2006) Chicken Chicken Chicken Chicken (the academic study), Annals of Improbable Research 12(5).

Chicken Chicken Chicken (the lecture), AAAS Humour Session, FEB 2007. http://www.improbable.com/2007/05/20/chicken-chicken-continued/

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Developing an editing checklist will help you take a strategic, and focussed, approach to editing. Create a checklist from higher order concerns to lower order concerns. Check the entire document for each item on the checklist.

As you progress through your studies add to this checklist (and as you get better at academic writing you’ll be able to stake some off). Be sure to add your supervisor’s requests / instructions to this list. Maybe start by reading an academic style guide for your discipline to help you identify your mistakes and errors.

Which of the following checklist items should be included in your editing checklist? What items should you add to your checklist?

Editing Sections

Headings and subheadings representative of section

Structural summary of upcoming section matches actual order of text

Amount of text in each section reflects the relative importance of each section

Editing Paragraphs

Paragraphs link together

Paragraphs are correct length

Each paragraph has a single, concise topic sentence

Transitions are required and correct

Editing Sentences

Sentence length and structure are appropriately simple

Mid-sentence interruptions are minimised

Punctuation is correct and minimised

Redundant lead-in words or phrases are removed

Lists are grammatically consistent

Key terms are consistent and synonym use is restricted

Acronyms and abbreviation rules for discipline are followed

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Edit the following 3 paragraphs. To help focus on the text, any references have

been replaced with REF.

Example 1

Various Eulerian link-node models have been developed for the simulation of transport for

water quality modelling, including REF, REF, REF, REF who have used WASP5 for water

quality modelling in rivers and lakes. REF and REF used QUAL2E for river water quality

modelling. However, the Eulerian models contain an undesirably large amount of numerical

diffusion in the advection simulation (REF) and are found unsatisfactory for transport and

water quality modelling. Also, due to the limitations in time steps, Eulerian models may not

be suitable for long term simulations of large river systems. In the Lagrangian frame, as the

control volumes are moved with the mean flow velocity, numerical diffusion associated with

advection is totally eliminated and accurate modelling of transport and water quality may be

achieved (REF). Further, a Lagrangian model allows a large time step so that a long term

simulation may be achieved.

.

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Example 2

The level of demand on the ability of communities to undertake coordinated and targeted

action in Natural Resource Management has increased over the last two decades (REF, REF)

and there has been recognition of the need to develop community capacity to meet these new

challenges (REF, REF, REF) yet there is little evidence of consideration of the notions of

communities that can be derived from a rich, if fluctuating, history of community research.

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Example 3

Recently, immunoprecipitation experiments with antibodies to purified, bovine heart

rotenone-sensitive NADH-ubiquinone oxido-reductase (also known as Complex I), as well as

enzyme fractionation studies, have indicated that six human URF’s (URF1, URF2, URF3,

URF4, URF4, and URF5) encode subunits of Complex I which is a large complex that also

contains many subunits synthesized in the cytoplasm.

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