What is academic writing?

Hi, I'm Ellen. In this video, I'm going to talk about some general features of academic writing that
you need to be familiar with if you want to succeed in your own writing at university.

First of all, you need to consider that writing is communicative. In all forms of communication,
there is a sender who transmits the message to a receiver.

In academic writing, that message will be a fact based argument. And in order to successfully deliver
this, you need to know who you're writing for and what you can expect your target reader to already
know. In other words, identifying your audience is crucial.

Another central feature of academic writing is that it's objective,which means that you should avoid
biased language and generalizations and that you shouldn't bring in your personal pre-conceptions or
opinions.

An academic essay about say, a fictional character, a political conflict or a religious issue should
present an argument that sheds light on the actual topic, but mustn't be a subjective statement on
the part of the writer.

Academic writing is a formal genre and you are expected to use a rather strict register and format.

This can be a challenge, especially for non-native writers as different levels of formality might be
difficult to recognize in a second language.

Remember, the question of style and register in writing is not necessarily a difference between what is
right or wrong language wise, but rather specifies what is the preferred style for a specific occasion.

In other words, what is right in one context may not be considered okay in another. Just as you
wouldn't wear flip flops to a formal dinner, you don't use the informal style of text messages between
friends in a job application or a university essay. But how do you go about finding the right level of
formality for writing at university then?

Well, one way is to study texts within your specific discipline. As a university student, you have loads
of helpful resources at hand. You have access to your university library resources, books as well as
journals and perhaps also student papers and degree projects written at your department.

Read texts within your discipline to learn how scholars and experienced students write. Look at
things like how they introduce their arguments, how they define and use discipline specific terms and
how they make use of previous research within the field.

The last thing I would like to raise here is a fact that writing practices do vary from one academic
discipline to the next. This means that you need to learn what is expected of you for the particular text
that you are writing. An article in physics looks very different from one in history, for instance.

If you transfer from one discipline to another, you'll notice that although the basics remain the same,
the way the texts are written when it comes to referencing and text structure, for instance, may differ.

Interpreting the task

Hello I'm Satu and this video is about interpreting instructions.

When you write an essay at university, you need to clarify to yourself from the start what is expected
of your text. Your teacher has most likely given you instructions that explain what you're expected to
do, and what criteria the finished product should meet. These instructions are referred to as essay
guidelines or style sheets in the academic world. The essay guidelines usually also inform you of
what type of essay you're expected to write.

Should you only describe something, for example, or should you try to persuade your reader of a
particular point of view.

The essay guidelines often also say something about how the finished product will be assessed and
how it will be graded. Making sure that you understand the essay guidelines, and that you follow them
carefully, can help you reach a better result.

In fact, many students who fail their undergraduate writing courses do so because they haven't read
the instructions, or they haven't fully understood them.

And they end up writing an essay that may still be a good essay, but it just isn't the kind of essay they
were expected to write. An essay that only describes something or tells the reader what happened or
who did what, won't be enough for a passing grade.

If the instructions state that you need to present an argument and defend it, on the basis of
evidence that can be examples, statistics, references to other peoples' work, and so on.

So, let's look at some common types of information in essay guidelines. In addition to telling you what
kind of an essay you are expected to write, descriptive or argumentative, for instance, the guidelines
usually say something about the expected length of the essay and about the layout, that is what the
finished essay will need to look like. So this means there will be information about things like the
minimum and maximum number of words, font type, line spacing, margins and text
justification.

The essay guidelines also often specify if you need a separate title page or not, and if you need to
write a short summary of your essay in the form of an abstract.

So, when you plan for your essay, you need to check for these things and make sure that you get them
right from the start, and that you have a good idea of what the finished product will need to be like
before it can be passed.

You, of course, want to be able to focus on the contents of your essay when you write. It is a good
idea at this stage to also learn the functions of your word processing program, so that you'll be able
to format your essay document according to a teacher's instructions from the start.

That way, you needn't come back and fix things like type font and indentation and margins later on
when you edit and proofread your text. This will save you a lot of time at the end of the essay
process. This may seem like a small thing, but it's actually not at all uncommon that students who
haven't written a lot of essays before are unfamiliar with how their word processing program works.

We've seen a number of times how, instead of the tabulator key, a student has used the space bar to
indent their text. This may look fine in their own computer screen, but when someone else opens the
document, the indentations look totally messed up.

Fixing this manually at the end of the essay process takes a lot of time, and it will also make you
very stressed because at that stage there are so many other things that also need to be taken care
of. And did you know, by the way, that there are a few issues that non-native writers of English need
to be extra careful with when fixing the formatting of their essay documents.

Quotation marks, for example, may look different in different languages. So when you write in
English, you'll need to make sure that you set your word processing program to English language,
so the quotation marks will look the way they should.

Another thing that essay guidelines often provide information about is the expected structure of your
text. Will you need a separate introduction, for example, and what will you need to do in the rest of
the essay?

There may be also instructions about text levels and headings. For example, if the text should be
divided into paragraphs of if there should be separate sections and perhaps also subsections. And
what this paragraphs sections and sub-sections are expected to do and what they should look like.

Should they have headings? Should they be numbered? Should you leave a blank line between
them? And should you or shouldn't you indent the first line of each new paragraph, section, or sub-
section?

As academic writing always draws on previous work, you will usually need to make references to
previous work that is of relevance in your essay.

The essay guidelines will usually tell you what reference style, for example APA or MLA, you are
expected to use, and where you can find more information about this particular reference style. Just
like with layout, you can save a lot of time later on by getting this right from the start. So, you should
really try to make sure that you understand the instructions, and that you have access to the resources
recommended by your teacher.

Before we stop, I'd like to stress that the types of guidelines that I've talked about here, essay type,
layout, text structure, and referencing style differ between disciplines, and that it's important that
you find out what requirements your own department has.

And what rules apply to each specific writing assignment that you get from your teachers. You also
need to make sure that you understand the terminology used in the essay guidelines. In other words,
what terms like, indentation, or flush left, or full justification, actually mean. You should always
look up the meanings of words and concepts that you don't understand in a dictionary so you can be
sure that you follow the guidelines, and don't make unnecessary mistakes.

You may find it useful to write down some of the things that I've talked about here and use them as a
kind of check list while you're writing your essay

The writing process and process writing

Hello, I am Cecilia. This video is about writing as a process and how breaking up a writing
assignment into several stages can help you avoid some problems that essay writers often face.

We all get stuck occasionally when trying to produce a text, especially if the topic poses a challenge,
and if we don't know how to tackle it.

Analyzing the task at hand by breaking it down into smaller components is a fruitful way to get
past this initial kind of writer's block. Many writers find process writing a useful method.
Now, using a process-oriented approach means that you divide the task into different stages. And
a good thing about this method is that as you're text develops, you see that you need to return to
previous stages to make additions and to revise your work.

The fact that process writing makes you go back in order to rewrite for improvement is the reason
why this method is sometimes described as Loop writing.

Now, let's us look at the three basic stages of the writing process. Before you start to write, you need
to define your topic, decide how to approach it and of course collect material for your project. This
is the pre-writing or invention stage. At this initial stage, its a good idea to write down a
preliminary plan of what you'll think will be your main points and also outline how you aim to
present your argument and in what order.

Depending on what works for you such initial writing can be done with bullet points or in the form
of a mind map. This tentative plan will then serve as a road map for your writing. So the second
step in the writing process is to produce a first draft based on your blueprint plan.

As you write you're likely to discover that some of your initial ideas don't work or that you need to
add some section or aspect that you didn't know of or think of at the pre-writing stage. A good thing
about process writing is that it caters for that development as you are expected to evaluate,
rethink, and rewrite as you work on your text.

In fact rewriting, which is the third stage of the writing process may well take up as much time as
the initial writing. It's thus important to recognize the need for revision and development. Writing a
perfect text at once is difficult maybe even impossible, in other words, writing takes time.

Now to make the most of the time you have at your disposal, planning is essential, so make sure you
set off enough time for invention, writing and for rewriting. If you have time to leave your text for a
day or two in between the stages or even while working on a specific passage, this will help you
create a distance which will make it much easier for you to review your own text.

And did you know that research shows, that students who apply a process oriented approach to their
writing and who revise their texts while working on them, learn more about the subject they write
about and produce better essays.

So, writing for a course is not just about producing a text, that will earn you credits but, also a
learning opportunity

Feedback and peer review

The chances are that you've encountered some form of peer review before, either in your academic life
or perhaps in a work or school context.
The reason for this is that peer review works, and thus educators are keen to reap its benefits for their
students.

If you've participated in peer review before, you've probably witnessed these benefits firsthand.
In this video, I'm going to talk about some of the reasons why peer review will make you a better
writer.

But firstly, I should explain what peer review is. Peer review involves some sort of evaluation of your
work by people of a similar level, or at a similar stage of their studies.
If you are new to peer review, you might be asking your self, well, what's in it for me?
What can I possibly get from feedback from someone who only knows as much or maybe even less
about a topic than I do myself? Perhaps the idea of giving and receiving feedback from your peers is
something that you feel uncomfortable about.

And another thing, students I meet also often worry about their own ability to provide useful feedback
to their fellow students.

Of course, all these reactions are valid but receiving and responding to feedback from your peers can
be invaluable to your own development as a writer.

Yes, your peers are probably not likely to be as experienced at giving feedback as your teachers.
But the more sets of eyes you can get on your own work, and the more feedback from different
perspectives, the better.

Sometimes we as writers are up so close and personal to our own writing that we can fail to see the
wood for the trees. In other words, we might miss the bigger picture such as how the essay fits
together as a whole, because we are so focused on the details. Equally, it's very easy to be blind to
mistakes in our own texts, mistakes that a second reader will pick up easily.

You should bear in mind though that a peer reviewer should not do the job of proofreader for you.
Your text is your responsibility. And if you proofread your own text carefully before handing it over,
your peer reviewer will find it much easier to comment on the text itself.

One of the trickiest things about writing is seeing our text from the perspective of the audience since
it's literally impossible to get outside of our own heads.

All language is about transmitting a message to a receiver. And your peer reviewer can help you to
evaluate how successful this process of transmission has been without the need for a brain transplant.
For instance, your reviewer will help you to see if there were any parts of the text that don't make
sense, or if there's any terms that need to be more carefully defined.

Peer review can also help provide the motivation that you need to get writing in the first place.
Producing drafts for peer review is one way to keep writing projects on track.

Writing can be a lonely activity sometimes but the peer review process can provide you with a ready-
made support group. There are other people out there who are going through similar struggles to your
own. When it comes to receiving feedback from your peers, it's important to think carefully about how
you will use the comments that you get.

Ultimately, you are the author of your essay, and it's up to you to carefully evaluate feedback and
think about what changes you will make as a result. If you're not used to receiving feedback on your
writing, it can be something of an uncomfortable experience.

Some people tend to take feedback on their writing personally, but it's important to remember that
criticism on your writing is not criticism of you as a person, and even experienced writers can
sometimes produce bad texts.

When it comes to receiving feedback, think carefully about each comment, and ask yourself what you
will do with it.

If you choose not to act on a particular piece of feedback, reflect on why this is the case.
Peer review usually involves texts in progress, and this is of course where feedback can be most useful
to you.
Because when it comes to peer review, we're not talking about the finished product.
It's inevitable that there will be some aspects of the texts that you as the author are not 100% happy
about.

understand that this can be a particular challenge for perfectionists. Handing over an unfinished piece
of writing for review can be a daunting prospect, but understanding why the peer review process is so
useful to your development as a writer can help to overcome some of these anxieties.
I wanted to save the best thing about peer review until last.
Perhaps you have worries about the quality of the feedback that you might get or maybe you doubt the
value of receiving feedback from students who may have even less experience in the writing process
as you do yourself.

Well, as far as I see it, these issues don't actually detract from the main benefit of the peer review
process and this is in developing your own critical and evaluative capacities.
There is plenty of research to suggest that as the reviewer, you gain just as much, if not more, than the
reviewee.

If you learn what to look for in the essays of others, you'll be much better equipped to evaluate your
own writing also.

One of the most effective ways of learning is to explain a concept to someone else. If you can
successfully explain the problems with someone else's essay and suggest possible solutions to fix these
problems, you can be sure that you probably understand the principles of academic writing yourself.