UPM-CALC/LPE2501/SEM 1/2020-21/SCL/WORKSHEET 7

LPE2501 ACADEMIC WRITING

SCL WORKSHEET 7

Name:

Matric no.: Group:

Due Date: 31 January 2021

REFLECTIVE WRITING

Reflect on your experience taking LPE2501 Academic Writing and provide short
responses to the following questions:

1. What was your overall experience taking LPE2501 Academic Writing?

I had an enriching experience taking LPE2501 Academic Writing course. I managed

to greatly improve my academic writing skills throughout the course. This was
made possible by the detailed explanation and guidance provided by the lecturer
throughout the learning process whereby all the topics covered under the course
were neatly and clearly presented and structured to aid better understanding
among the students taking the course. In addition, being able to communicate with
the lecturer and other students taking the course has made me become a more
active participant during the course. This indirectly has helped in improving my
communication skills in addition to my writing skills. Not only that, I also had a very
pleasant experience with the lecturer of the course who was willing to answer every
question and discuss every assignment with the students. This enables me to
easily seek for clarification on any topic or assignment that I was struggling with
throughout the course.

2. What did you find useful about LPE2501 Academic Writing? List at least three things.

The first thing that I find very useful about LPE2501 Academic Writing is learning how to
write a proper essay. It allows me to learn to neatly organize my ideas and arguments.
This helps to convey my ideas in a more concise and coherent manner to aid better
understanding on the part of the readers. This is especially important considering that I
may be required to prepare a lot of reports for my work. Secondly, the worksheets given
for every topic covered under the course were also very useful in reinforcing my
understanding about the topics. The worksheets enable me to test my understanding of
what has been taught by the lecturer and this therefore allows me to identify my weak
point and improve them by doing more exercises relating to the topic. Last but not least,
the course has also enabled me to learn from the simplest to the most complex elements
of academic writing which was very useful. For an example, learning how to properly cite

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academic sources as well as paraphrase and summarize these sources will be very
helpful to avoid plagiarism in any of my future reports.

3. Are there any writing topics/skills you wish you had learned in LPE2501 Academic
Writing?

I wish I could have learned the different rhetorical modes of academic writing in the
course. Considering that different styles of non-fiction writing serve different
purposes, it is therefore important for me to understand the specific types of
rhetorical modes which can be used to serve each distinct purpose in order to
properly support the thesis statement. Secondly, I also wish to have learn the skills
of reading and responding to assigned readings which, in my opinion, are vital to
academic writing. Since academic writing mostly involved reading various
academic sources, mastering the skills of reading and responding to assigned
readings will greatly help me to write a better academic article. Moreover, reading is
an especially important skill in paraphrasing and summarizing academic sources.
This therefore makes it an important skill to be taught and included in the
Academic Writing course.

4. Did you encounter any challenges while learning to write academically?

If yes, describe the challenges and explain any actions you have taken to overcome the
challenges.

Yes, I have encountered several challenges while learning to write academically. The
biggest challenge for me is to paraphrase academic sources in order to avoid plagiarism.
Reading academic sources such as articles or journals as references prior to writing an
academic article made paraphrasing the sources difficult for me considering that I always
tend to follow the words and writing styles used in the source. This made it difficult for me
to form my own sentences using different words and writing styles as compared to the
original author of the academic articles. In addition, I also find it difficult for me to
paraphrase certain sentences without making writing errors such as fragments and non-
parallel sentence structures. In order to overcome these challenges, I have done several
additional paraphrasing exercises on my own by reading academic articles and
paraphrasing them using my own words. Not only that, I also did extra exercises on
various writing errors to avoid making them in paraphrasing a sentence.

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5. What will you do to further improve your academic writing skills to be more effective in the
future?

In order to further improve my writing skills, I will continue to read and write as
much as I can considering that practices and experiences are the best teacher in
improving my academic writing skills. This may require me to dedicate a little of my
time every day to read and write in order to help polish my reading and writing
skills. Additionally, I will also try to improve my vocabulary by learning new words
every day and incorporating them in my writing. Mastering a large vocabulary is an
important skill in order to improve my academic writing skills because it can help
me to write an idea or a meaning in just a few choice of words. Not only that, large
vocabulary also will ensure I will be able to convey my ideas and arguments more
clearly and accurately to my readers.