A Course on Academic Writing

Dr Manideepa Patnaik
Director, Language Resource Centre
Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India

MODULE ONE

Session One

Getting Started

Academic writing is a very solitary process. The crucial phase of this entire process
involves identifying the research problem, seeing various issues and sub-issues related to
the research problem, having the ability to surf the net about it or read books and articles
on it at least for half a day, having the desire to participate and organize seminars on the
research area, amassing data and analyzing them to give them a fresh new look. All these
activities put together makes a research scientist and a successful doctoral candidate.

Celebrating the process is a great way to get at it. The moment you type the first word till
you get the doctoral degree puts you through a process that makes you an ‘academically
mature person”.

Self Motivation

You can always get a supervisor or a friend or few colleagues who should or who would
motivate you to be a great researcher. But the most important aspect of becoming a great
scholar is self motivation. There is nothing wrong in writing a thesis for a degree. These
days it’s very important to get this degree for professional growth. Even getting this
degree makes you so academically sound that even if you stop at this point of research
you are still worth an asset for your institute. But if you do not stop here then you become
a great academic writer. You need enough self motivation (i) to a write doctoral
dissertation/thesis for a degree and (ii) to do research to be a contributor of knowledge
system.
Get started with an activity of self motivation when you realize that writing is getting
burdensome for you. The feeling of getting burdened with the task of completing the
thesis is helpful when you need to do it for career growth alone. But that can be fatiguing
too. That feeling gets out of your mind when you think what you are doing is very
creative and many people from many parts of the world are going to read your work and
refer to your work for many many years. Thesis writing becomes a very challenging and
interesting phenomenon when you get yourself submerged in a very creative self
motivating way. Knowing yourself and knowing your work very well is very crucial to
feeling self motivated.

Describing your work

The very first task that can motivate you well enough and deter you from academic
fatigue is the clarity that you develop about your work. You must first describe your work
and goal of the research activity at the very start and keep updating yourself so that you
don’t get out of your track at any time. You get fatigued about your research when you
feel lost with your work. You feel lost with your work when you lose the ability to
describe your work and limit the scope of your work.

Describing your work essentially means defining your work and limiting your work for a
specific purpose. While doing this exercise you have to keep in mind that you have gotten
into an academic exercise that reflects your own intellectual world view about a given
topic or issue but there is time constraint.

Readership

A research gets bizarre when the author thinks he/she is writing it for a degree which is
for herself and her own self growth. No research work – whether for a degree or for an
academic enterprise- is done for one’s own growth alone. There is a defined readership
for every academic work. You have to constantly keep the reader in your mind and you
should constantly speak to the reader at every step of your writing work. Your first reader
is your supervisor. Second reader is your examiner and third group of readers are people
who are going to follow your work at every step of their research. You are the teacher of
your own research field. You should constantly realize this reality as the greatest reality.
Your reader is your only reality. You will never lose motivation till you see and hear your
readers as your timeless companions of your academic work.

Academic Membership

You sign into a specific academic body the moment you are able to describe your
research work. In the process you are developing ideas that would contribute to the
development of the world. Writing a thesis is about building upon ideas of researchers
and thinkers who have worked on it in the past time , who are working on it at the present
time and who will work on it in future time. You are a part of that indefinite timeless
academic membership. You cannot afford to ignore this at any time.
Literature Review

You can do a fantastic review of existing literature when you sign into this large
academic body that includes your readers and colleagues. Constantly argue with the
writer when you review a literature.

Literature review involves reviewing and analyzing the existing work on the area. It
should usually come with a critique of appreciation or innovation. While reviewing a
literature you should constantly think of the ways how you are adding to the existing
body of knowledge.

The doctoral thesis has traditionally involved generation of an original contribution to

knowledge, but the writing of any thesis provides an opportunity to create fresh insights
into the social world.

Aim of the course

This course aims to help your doctoral process a very smooth and memorable phase
of your life and your work a very adorable one. I hope this course can enthuse you
well enough and help you to find companions at every step of your solitary academic
activity. If I can help you to maximize your potential as an academician then that
will be my pleasure! See you tomorrow for the next session. Please post me your
thoughts and queries.

Yours truly,

Manideepa