Author Archives: Helen

About Helen

Head of the Writing Development Center

Frequently Asked Questions about the WDC

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It’s week two already…! Teaching has started in earnest and term is really starting to get under way. Many of you are starting to think about your first assignments, and may be wondering how the WDC can help. We’ve put together a list of FAQs about the WDC- what we offer and how we work, to answer some of the common questions that we’re asked at this time of year!

What does the Writing Development Centre do?

We offer guidance on a range of academic issues to help students develop their skills and succeed as independent learners. Our service includes individual tutorials, workshops as part of our own programme and also in the context of degree programmes and modules in the Schools. We are developing our range of online resources too.

What can the Writing Development Centre help me with?

Academic writing is one of the main issues we offer guidance on, as it’s usually the focus of assessment. We can help with not only the final product (authorial voice and academic style), but also the whole process of writing, from analysing the question, planning and structuring, building an argument to pulling a draft together and editing it. However, we can also advise on a wider range of study skills which will help support your studies such as exams and revision, time management, critical reading or note-taking.

When should I come and see you?

We embed our advice in the context of work you’re actually doing, so that it’s relevant, specific to your studies and practical – based on your own experiences and study style. If you’d like to book a tutorial, it’s best to wait until a little later in the term when you have a specific assignment you’re working on which we can discuss, rather than bring general questions before you’ve really made a start on your studies. Until you’ve begun working on that first essay, you won’t know what you need to know, and it’s hard for us to know what to suggest!

We’re currently running a lot of workshops around the university, so tutorial availability is lower than it would be later in the term. Look out for our workshops – either run as part of your course, or our central programme – you may find your questions are answered there.

How does the WDC work? What happens in a tutorial?

We aren’t subject experts – our expertise is in learning, teaching and assessment. We can help you to identify areas in your work which you can develop, and explore study strategies, skills and techniques which work for you, so you can become a successful independent learner.

In a tutorial, we will discuss your query with you, look at your work or ask about your approach to study, and any feedback you’ve had on your work, to identify where you might further develop or adapt your study skills. We can explain assignment briefs, marking criteria or academic conventions to help ensure you understand your lecturers’ expectations. We can then explore and illustrate study strategies that will suit your needs and personal preferences, and discuss how you might put them into practice. We can also offer follow-up tutorials to see how you’re getting on.

Do you run classes?

We run a programme of workshops throughout the term (and sometimes in the long summer vacation) on a range of study topics. We try to anticipate the topics which are most appropriate for the majority of students, and welcome suggestions as to the timing of sessions, or new topics you’d like us to offer. Our workshops are stand-alone sessions, and may be aimed at students at different points in their studies. We also run workshops as part of degree programmes and modules in the Schools – look out for sessions in your own course. We don’t run a series of classes on writing as we feel study skills are best learned in context, rather than as a separate course.

I’m an international student and English isn’t my first language. Can you help?

We are not specialists in teaching English as a Second Language or English for Academic Purposes. If you would like help with your academic English, and have a UELA score of less than 70 in your writing, you will be best supported by INTO’s In-Sessional English programme, which offers classes and individual consultations. If you have near-native English writing skills (a UELA score of over 70 or exemption from the UELA), you are welcome to make an appointment with us.

We may be able to comment on a limited range of fundamental grammar issues, but our main role is to help you understand the expectations, assumptions and conventions of study in UK university culture, which may be very different to your own. This might include understanding how teaching, learning and assessment differ (and how you need to adapt) or how academic UK English writing conventions are used to signal things like criticality, authorial voice or structure.

I just wanted to ask a question about the WDC or my studies….

We don’t currently offer a drop-in service – tutorials are by appointment only. Our tutorials are confidential and student-centred, and we try to ensure that when you book an appointment with us, we can focus on your questions without being disturbed, and ask that you extend this courtesy to others. At busy times we operate a waiting list for appointments, and ask that students don’t try to ‘jump the queue’ by dropping in. If you have a question you’d like to discuss with us, please book an appointment. If it’s a quick question or is about the WDC service, you can check our website or email us WDC@ncl.ac.uk

Can I make an appointment?

You’re welcome to book a tutorial with us – appointments are made online. As we don’t have a reception desk, our booking process is handled by the Library Admin team, we aren’t able to book appointments or answer questions about bookings from the WDC offices. You can book a tutorial on our website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/students/wdc/students/tutorials/ If you have a question about booking, please email us on WDC@ncl.ac.uk.

How can I contact the Writing Development Centre?

Our website is the main source of information about the service: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/students/wdc/ You can also email us WDC@ncl.ac.uk or tweet us @NCL_WDC. As we use our offices for teaching, we don’t offer a drop-in or phone service.

Editing: Killing Kittens

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KILL THE KITTEN

A friend of mine used to be a journalist, and she once told me that they used the catchphrase “kill the kitten” all the time in the office. Although it sounds like a ghoulish bit of journalist slang, this is actually really great writing advice, just like the literary saying “kill your darlings”.Why?

Particularly when you’re writing about something you’re really interested in, it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between material that really needs to be in the essay or report for the sake of your argument and material that you have included just because you like it. This is especially common with long projects like dissertations: the process of research can throw up huge amounts of interesting ideas, facts and information, and it can sometimes be hard to focus on the things that are really important. The material that you include solely because you like it is the kitten. It is pleasing you, as kittens do, and that is why you have kept it.

There’s nothing wrong with putting information that makes you happy into your writing. Sometimes a point is productively demonstrated or reinforced through reference to something that is witty or unusual. For example, Mikhail Gorbachev earned the nickname “Comrade Orange Juice” when he tried to introduce policies that would reduce the amount of alcohol drunk by the general Russian population. This is a colourful detail, and if you were to write an essay about the public perception of Gorbachev’s morally-driven economic policy, it could also be a pertinent fact. It would demonstrate the ridicule and resistance that this measure was met with, and it would strengthen your essay by providing evidence for your argument.

A problem arises, however, when the information is only there because you like it. If you were writing an essay about another aspect of Gorbachev’s premiership, this same fun fact could just be an irrelevant bauble on your essay that detracted from the main point. Now, baubles are lovely, but there isn’t much room for them in academic writing, for which prettiness is optional but functionality is key. All of the information in any piece of academic writing needs to be doing a job, rather than being ornamental or entertaining. For example, I was recently writing about James Bond, and I desperately wanted to include a reference to “007 in New York”, a short story in which Ian Fleming provides Bond’s personal recipe for scrambled eggs. There isn’t a much clearer example of an unnecessary bauble than that! It wasn’t doing anything at all for my argument, and was only there to please me. I had to – however reluctantly – get rid of it.

The problem is that it’s not always going to be this clear. How do you know which points are the most important? How can you be more concise? Here are some questions I like to try on my own writing:

  • If you have several examples that illustrate one point, can you do without some of them? Do you need every single example, or will one strong example do it?
  • Sometimes you’ve found a really great quotation that can illustrate your point, and it’s funny too. Can you explain the point without this quote? Paraphrasing is a key academic skill, and it often helps you be more economical with language.
  • Can you identify what each piece of information in any given paragraph is doing? Is it evidence? Is it analysis? If you can’t explain the academic function of something that makes you smile, it’s a kitten and it needs to come out.

My unsentimental journalist friend was right. Sometimes a kitten has to die for the greater good of your writing. You don’t have to delete it – there may well be a way for you to rethink your argument so that the kitten can help you. But certainly try reading your work without it.

DECLARATION: No kittens were harmed in the writing of this blog post! Kittens can also sometimes help your writing. There is a great piece of online positive reinforcement software called Written? Kitten!, which is a lot of fun and very motivating.

Posted by Alex

Write here, write now!

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NOTE: these sessions ran in the summer of 2015 – we’d be happy to run another series if there’s demand!

Now that the semester has ended, and the long summer vacation has begun, the library has really started to quieten down. For those of you who are Masters students working on your dissertations or PhD students looking forward to getting some concentrated writing done over the summer, it’s a great opportunity to find some quiet study space now library seats are no longer in demand from undergraduates revising for their exams.

And yet… many of us find that lots of unstructured time is harder to work with, with no other commitments to break up the day or week, and little reason to do today what can be put off til tomorrow. It can be a struggle to find the motivation to work productively over the summer, and to develop a routine which will help you keep going. Writing can also be a solitary practice, and if there are no peers around to support us, cheer us on and keep us on track, we can start to flag. Those of us who encounter issues like writer’s block, perfectionism, procrastination or loss of focus or motivation in the course of our writing can feel particularly isolated during the summer.

If this is your experience, you might be interested in the initiatives offered by the Writing Development Centre and by Student Wellbeing.

The WDC will be running regular Write Here, Write Now! sessions over the summer. There aren’t formally taught workshops – they are simply a space during the day in which to sit down with others and create a productive and encouraging environment in which to get some focussed work done. The sessions are facilitated by the WDC tutors, but our role is simply to get you writing with a few quick warm-up exercises, and then to give you the space to write, together with others who are similarly focussed. This approach is based on the work of Rowena Murray, a researcher who has written a great deal on graduate student work, and similar sessions have been very popular at other universities. The WDC tutors will also be hosting writing clinics following these sessions, for quick queries and consultations alongside our usual tutorials which are still available over the summer.

Update! Write Here, Write Now sessions will run:

  • Tuesdays 2-4, Tees Cluster

  • Thursdays 10-12, Tees Cluster

  • between 21st July – 27th August

No need to book, just come along with something to work on! Of course, there’s no reason why you can’t set up your own writers’ groups with your peers – if you’d like to explore this, then here are our slides so you can see how we do it!

Student Wellbeing will be offering its ‘Want to Work group’ over the summer. This group is aimed at students who are struggling to move forward with their studies, for whatever reasons. These may include procrastination, difficulties concentrating/focussing or lack of motivation or/and interest. The group welcomes students who are stuck with part or all of their work. Rather than looking at study skills, the group will take a Solution Focused approach – exploring possible ways forward by identifying what works as opposed to what does not. Please contact Rob at rob.bedford@ncl.ac.uk if you’re interested – the group will run as soon as there are enough students signed up.

 Update! Want to Work group will run:

  • beginning 27th July, 2pm

  • running for 4 weeks

    See Wellbeing for more information including booking

     

 

So What? Part 2

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In a previous post, I talked about a drafting strategy that helps me resolve issues with muddled paragraphs. I use questions that help me identify things to change, remove, or improve about paragraphs that are causing me problems. In this post, I want to go through an example to illustrate what I mean. The questions I use are:

  • What is this paragraph really saying?
  • How does this help me answer the question or problem I’m addressing?
  • How significant or essential is this point?
  • How is it related to the material that precedes and follows it?

Overall, the question is: So what?

Here’s an example of a paragraph that I used this method with. The text is from my own PhD in English literature, but you don’t need to read it in detail, it’s just an illustration of my approach.

1

Of course, I wouldn’t be this brutal on a piece of work that a student brought into the WDC! I’m able to be this critical here because it is my own work.

I wasn’t happy with it because it was trying to do too much at once. When I thought about what the paragraph was really about, I concluded that it was about one specific way that a particular movie was critical of American torture in the war on terror. The really key bit is the relationship between the quote from Cheney in the middle and a bit of dialogue from the film which echoes his words. However, there is other stuff getting in the way: the remarks about the film’s reception don’t add much, and a lot of the beginning of the paragraph is pretty vague. My concluding sentences also don’t really feel like they follow from the evidence that precedes them. I needed to tighten this up.

Armed with these decisions, I started typing.

2

It looks like a lot of editing. All I really did, though, was reorient the paragraph around the piece of information that I thought was most interesting: the relationship between Cheney’s remarks and the dialogue. I’d looked at each part of the paragraph and thought So What?

  • I cut out an unnecessary explanatory footnote and a sentence about the reception of the movie – I’d only put that stuff in there to show that I knew it, and not to help my argument. When I asked So What, I didn’t have a good answer about this information.
  • Likewise, I removed the term “heteroglossia”. I hadn’t defined it, and it was only there as a bit of jargon that made my argument less clear.
  • The quote from Cheney is interesting, in fact the key piece of information here. But in the first draft I’d assumed that a reader would just “get it”, and understand why I had included it without my having to explain it at all. I also had not reminded the reader about the connection to the topic of my essay. Asking So What helped me identify what was missing from these sections.
  • At the top of the paragraph I had to tell the reader what the paragraph was about. I had sort of done this the first time round, but actually I hadn’t been as specific as I had thought. By making a decision about doing one thing at a time, and not lots of things simultaneously, I made both the beginning and the conclusion a bit clearer.

Here’s the final paragraph without all the red boxes and blue lines.

3

 

Posted by Alex

So What?

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When drafting academic work, it’s not uncommon to feel a bit unsure about or frustrated with what you have in front of you. There can be plenty of reasons for this. It can feel like the writing has too many things going on at once, or like it doesn’t really answer the question. Often, for example, I feel that I know what I want to say, but I’m not really sure how what I have written actually helps me get there. Perhaps you have lots of points that are good on their own terms, but the essay or report as a whole doesn’t really add up to much; perhaps you have made a lot of points and you aren’t quite sure which ones are the best. This post is about a useful and simple strategy that I find helpful when trying to resolve problems like this.

It’s often quite hard to see an entire piece of writing at once, so I like to break it down and look at it on the level of the paragraph. I try to answer a few simple questions about each point in a piece of writing.

  • What is this paragraph really saying?
  • How does this help me answer the question or problem I’m addressing?
  • How significant or essential is this point?
  • How is it related to the material that precedes and follows it?

Put simply, the question is: So what?

It is standard (and good) advice that academic writers should include topic sentences at the beginning of paragraphs in order to make it clear to the reader what each paragraph is about, and that each paragraph should end with a bridge or signpost to the next. This helps to structure and frame the material into a paragraph. Answering that fundamental So What about each paragraph of your writing can also make for much more readable and accessible work, because it helps improve the overall clarity of your answer to the question. Whereas topic sentences and bridging language help give shape to your writing, the answer to your So What question helps you define what it is about that material that is really interesting. This can help you identify and strengthen the really good bits of your work, and streamline away the parts that aren’t so good or important after all.

Perhaps you’ve had this experience: when reading a confusing or dreary academic text, a beautifully comprehensible sentence suddenly shines through and explains both why the author is making the point they are making and how it is connected to the broader aims of the piece.

This is signposting, and it has two helpful functions.

  1. It helps to orient the reader, to give them a foothold in your writing and help them follow what you are saying. Sometimes it’s easy to assume that the reader is following you, and including these sentences helps make sure that the reader actually can follow you.
  2. It can also help you as a writer. If you can clearly signpost to the reader precisely why the information in your work is pertinent to the question you are addressing, then you are able to answer that So What. 

Signposting like this can form the architecture of your writing, the scaffolding or skeleton that helps keep everything clear for both you and your reader.

So if the piece of writing you’re working on feels a bit muddled, this one question can help clarify it a little. If you’ve got a rationale for the inclusion of each piece of information – if you can give a definite answer to that So What? – then you may be more able to give your tutor something focused, interesting, and readable to read. Try it with your next assignment, and see whether it helps you. If you want to see an example of how it works, I’m preparing a post with an illustration from my own writing to demonstrate how I’ve used it – watch this space!

 

Posted by Alex

Thinking about Writing – What’s your Story?

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If you think about it, we all tell stories every day. Whether we’re talking about what happened at the shops, how bad our day was or our plans for the weekend, we are natural storytellers. We know how to make stories interesting; we know what to emphasise, what to cut and how to start and end a story. It might seem like writing an essay is different but really all we’re doing is telling a story.

Like any good story it’s good to give some context in your essay. It would be hard to make plans for the weekend with a friend if you only said, ‘I will be at the café at 7’. If you didn’t agree which café you meant then you might both wind up waiting in different cafés on different days. This is the same for essays; before getting into the specifics it’s useful to provide some context otherwise the reader will be lost. Imagine the introduction of an essay as the opening of a conversation. Give the reader some context, provide some details to the topic and then say what the aims are. It’s important that the reader, just like the listener, knows what is going on otherwise they might get left behind.

At one moment or other I’m sure we have all found ourselves part of a conversation that stopped making sense almost as soon as it started. I had an uncle who couldn’t mention a person’s name in a conversation without giving me their full biography; I would almost be asleep by the time he returned to his original point! It’s very easy to get carried away when telling a story, forgetting the original point. But good storytelling, just like good essay writing, is about staying on point. Every story has a purpose just like every essay and the purpose of an essay is the argument. When developing an argument/telling a story, it’s important to remember the audience. They don’t want to hear anything that isn’t relevant to the story. It’s best to stay on point and if the story seems to drift, ask ‘what story am I trying to tell?’ – this can help bring the story back into focus.

The majority of stories have a very natural way of ending. Typically we finish by summarising the main sentiment of the story. After telling a funny story about a night out you might end by saying ‘It was such a good night!’ Statements like this bring stories to a close; they indicate the end while highlighting the purpose. Essay writing is no exception. It’s good to bring a story to a close by highlighting the central argument and summarising the key points. It’s a way of not only reminding your reader of the argument but of showing that it’s at an end. Concluding an essay is a polite and clear way of ending a story.

It might be more formal but an essay is a story just like the ones you tell every day. A good storyteller is one who always has a purpose, always provides relevant information, always stays on point, never forgets their audience and ultimately reaches a happy ending.

Posted by Adam

Exam technique

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Exams test your knowledge and understanding of your subject, and also your problem solving skills under time constraint. But if that were all, then perhaps they wouldn’t be quite such a stressful experience! Exams also test a set of skills commonly known as ‘exam technique’, which are in some ways nothing to do with your learning of the subject matter, but can still make the difference between pass and fail. There’s quite a lot of mystique around exam technique, as if there were some kind of arcane magic trick or secret password which would unlock higher levels of performance. Actually, a lot of ‘exam technique’ is plain common sense, which can be a bit deflating until you realise that these skills really do make or break exam performance regardless of how much revision has been done – and that common sense is not exactly in great supply in stressful situations!

Time management is the most obvious aspect of exam technique. Coursework has to be completed to a deadline of course, but the time pressure in exams is rather more acute! Time management in exams involves making sensible decisions about how to realistically divide up the time you have and keeping an eye on the clock. You could think of it as a calculation:

  • How much time do you have in total?
  • How many questions do you have to do?
  • How many marks are they worth?*
  • Subtract 10 mins at the beginning for reading the paper and planning your approach (including for this calculation)
  • Subtract time at the end (15 mins?) for reading through and checking all your answers, and to accommodate ‘slippage’ if questions take longer than expected
  • Divide the remaining time by the number of questions (*adjusting for marking weight) Factor in experience from doing past papers about how much you can expect to write in that time.
  • Split the time per question into three – some time for reading the question and planning, the bulk of it on writing, and a little time for checking.

Now there’s a plan, you need to keep an eye on progress. If an exam consists of two questions and you accidentally let time run away with you and spend all your time on one question, no matter how perfect an answer it is, you can still only get 50% of the mark. Don’t worry if the plan goes a little astray, though, and don’t feel you have to stick to it rigidly – if you get stuck on a question or haven’t finished it within the planned time, leave it and come back to it. It’s just there to make sure you give yourself the opportunity to shine equally in all the questions.

Reading the exam ‘rubric’ (instructions) and the questions very carefully is the second factor which can have a major impact on exams. An exam question isn’t asking for everything you know on a topic – it’s asking you to do something very specific with your knowledge. A student might write the fullest, most accurate and intelligent answer ever, but if it’s not the answer to the question that’s set, then it’s not going to do well. Similarly if a student answers all the questions, only to realise that they were only supposed to choose three out of them, then it’s going to harm their marks on the three questions that count, and certainly won’t win them any extra points!

Planning is a related skill – the ability to plan the time and also plan the answers, on paper or in your head, however briefly, to make sure that it’s well-structured and isn’t going off on a tangent. The structure of an exam answer isn’t going to be as elaborate or polished as a piece of coursework, but it should still give a logical direction to the argument or answer.

Related to both reading the exam paper and planning is the issue of tactics. Which questions will you answer first? Would it be better to go for the one you find easier or quicker to answer, to make a good start? How much more time should you give to questions which have higher marks, or how much information should you give if there aren’t many marks available? Tactical decisions like this, based on the information in the exam paper itself, can help boost your confidence, make best use of your time and energy, and also get a significant proportion of the marks under your belt early on.

Good presentation matters too – of course, you’re handwriting at speed, without much time or possibility to tidy up mistakes, so your answer isn’t going to be – and doesn’t need to be – a thing of calligraphic beauty. However, it does need to be legible. Many of us don’t actually do much handwriting on a daily basis any more, so simply building up the strength in your hand through writing more in the weeks coming up to the exam will help. Your answer paper also needs to be easily followed if you have edited anything in or changed the structure on re-reading it, so if you have changed anything, arrows, asterisks, crossings-out, numbering etc can help.  You can usually answer the questions in any order, and sometimes there may be a choice of question. Clearly mark your answer paper so the examiner knows which question they’re marking! Remember to give a clear indication of the material you want them to mark, too – you can use the answer paper to scribble plans, and you may edit what you’ve written – but remember to cross it out.

Finally – personal organisation counts. The ability to get yourself to the right exam room, at the right time, on the right day and with the right equipment is essential!

All of these things are common sense, and probably there’s nothing here which you didn’t sort of already know. But every year, students do make unnecessary mistakes due to poor exam technique, and their learning doesn’t appear to the best advantage. Exams can be stressful events, and common sense isn’t easy to hang onto!

posted by Helen

Exams – where to find support

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It’s coming up to exam time, an experience many people understandably find a bit stressful. Some of the stress may come from facing The Unknown – after all, in most cases you won’t really know what you’ll encounter in the exams until you actually get into that room and turn over that paper. Exams are of course a test of your ability to think on your feet and apply what you know to a new situation under time pressure, but there are some things you can inform yourself about in advance, which might help to steady your nerves and make you feel more in control of the situation! In this post, we’ve collated some of the support that’s available to you so you can be as well prepared as it’s possible to be.

Things you should know about:

  • The University Examinations website has all the information you need about exams at Newcastle, including FAQs, timetables and details of the processes and procedures.
  • One of the best revision resources is looking at and working with past exam papers. You can find out more about the kind of paper you’ll likely be sitting, and can practice with authentic questions. You can find past papers for your modules online.
  • It’s a good idea too to make sure you’re familiar with the examination regulations– you don’t want to accidentally fall foul of them!
  • Hopefully all will go well, but it’s a good idea to know what to do if the unexpected happens. Find out about how to let the University know about Personal Extenuating Circumstances and what adjustments might be possible. The earlier you let the University know of any personal issues which might have impacted on your exams performance, the better. You can find out more via Student Progress, or have a chat to the Student Union Advice Centre who can talk you through the process and support you.
  • Similarly, it’s useful to know what to do if you feel that there was a problem with the exams or examining process. You can find out more about Appeals from Student Progress or talk to the Student Union Advice Centre.
  • If you have a disability, you can talk to Student Wellbeing to find out more about any reasonable adjustments or concessions which can be made to the exams process to make sure you can achieve your best.

Things you might find helpful:

  • Your lecturers and personal tutor are of course a first point of call if you have specific questions about exams in your subject. They can also be a useful source of hints, tips and reassurance more generally through.
  • If you want to talk through your revision strategies, exam technique, or just think about what exams are really there to test, you can come and chat with us in confidence here in the Writing Development Centre. In addition to this blog, we have some advice and tips on our website. We’re also running exams and revision workshops over the period, but if you can’t make it, you can find our slides online.
  • If you have a disability, including a Specific Learning Difficulty, you can also talk to the advisers in Student Wellbeing about exam tips and revision strategies which will work for you.
  • The Student Union are running a Stressed Out Student campaign to help you bust your stress levels with fun, calming activities. Get in touch with your inner child, or cuddle a puppy! They also have a handy planner to help you stay on top of all your deadlines and exams.
  • The University Chaplains will be available in the Robinson Library for you to chat in confidence to about exams, study, or any wider issues for which you’d appreciate a friendly listening ear. Ask at the Robinson Library reception desk for further details.
  • Exams is a busy period for everyone, and study space is at a premium. If you’re struggling to find a seat in the library, remember there’s additional space available throughout the exams period in the Pop-up Library at the King’s Road centre!
  • There are study skills books, including on revision and exams, in the library on Level 3.

let us know if there are any other sources of support you’re aware of, and we’ll update this post!

Good luck with your exams!

Posted by Helen

Editing: Clarifying your Reasoning

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One of the trickiest things I find about being both the author and the editor of your own work is knowing whether you’ve explained your thinking clearly enough. When I’m writing, my argument is obvious enough to me, of course! How can I tell if I’ve spelled out my reasoning clearly enough for the reader, though? Have I skipped stages of my argument, assuming they’re obvious? Or perhaps I’ve gone the other way and patronised and bored them by over-explaining every little obvious thing at great length.

Argument, reasoning, analysis – these are some of the highest level thinking skills, and they’re what lecturers will be looking for above all in your university work. But to check whether or not they’re apparent to the reader, I turn not to university but to primary school for help. Small children are some of the most critical thinkers I know – most of us know some small children and certainly all of us have been children at some point. So I channel that inner three year old to help me check if I’ve layed out my argument clearly enough.
I don’t mean write as if for a child – I mean read your own work with that same persistent use of very simple but powerful questions:

  • Why? (the most powerful question of all)
  • What’s that? (am I defining my terms?)
  • How does that work? (am I explaining cause and effect, or analysing something enough?)
  • What does that mean? (am I defining my terms, or explaining the significance of a point?)
  • What’s that for? (why I am telling the reader this?)
  • Where does that come from? (Have I explained the context enough, or traced the course of a process or argument?)
  • What happens if…? (am I thinking creatively enough – could there be other conclusions to draw?)
  • What’s that made of? (am I analysing enough?)

You can also, as my colleague Alex suggests, channel your inner sulky teenager:

  • So what? (what role does this play in my argument? What’s its relevance or significance?)
  • Says who? (what authority do I have backing up my point?)
  • How do YOU know? (if I don’t have an authority to back up my point, am I explaining my evidence and how I reach that conclusion?)

As you read through your work, pause at the end of each sentence and see which of these questions apply. Have you answered them, either in that sentence or the one just after? If not, would answering them help to unpack your thinking a bit more for the reader?
Of course, there comes a point when even the most patient grownup has to resort to the response ‘Because it just IS, ok?’ And this raises the question of what general knowledge and shared understanding you can assume on behalf of your reader. At what point can you start to feel that you don’t have to explain everything? That some things are just generally known and accepted, and you don’t need to completely unpack every statement you make? This will depend very much on your subject and the level you’re studying at, so it’s hard to give a straightforward answer. But remember that it’s the higher level thinking that your lecturer is mostly looking for, your ability to use and interpret evidence to reach an informed conclusion via sound reasoning. It’s that chain of reasoning that they need to be able to see. These questions can help you make sure you make that thinking stand out.

 

Posted by Helen

Why Read Aloud?

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If you ask me, one of the most useful strategies for editing your academic work is the simple act of reading it out and listening to the way it sounds. I do it when drafting my writing, and I recommend it to students all the time. This little anecdote, which builds upon previous posts on this blog, describes why.

I discovered this technique when I was preparing an essay for an academic conference. I knew it was probably too long, but I wasn’t really interested in editing it any more. I thought it was basically finished, so I wanted to practice reading it aloud in order to develop my presentational skills and make sure I wouldn’t go over my allotted time.

What happened when I read the paper aloud really surprised me: there were all sorts of things wrong with it that I simply had not perceived when I had been writing it on the screen. I noticed loads of small punctuation errors, occasional typos, and small but important referencing details that I needed to check. I realised that some of my paragraphs were over a page long. I discovered that if a sentence has a massive subordinate clause in it (or maybe an unnecessarily long bracketed sentence, which adds very little to the meaning of the sentence), or if it features three semicolons, then it is very hard to read it aloud in a way that feels natural and clear. Reading aloud is great for identifying overlong sentences – if you’re running out of breath, you should probably stop!

Further, on a level deeper than presentational detail, there were some fundamental decisions about the structure of my argument that I needed to change. Two long paragraphs in my theoretical section, for example, were doing basically the same thing. When I had been typing them up, I was convinced that I was making lots of different, nuanced, and interesting points. But the act of saying all of these things aloud made me realise that for a lot of it I was simply repeating myself.

There was also something about reading for an audience that was particularly helpful. The conference audience were only ever going to encounter my paper once, and they were not going to have the luxury of going back over it in order to check whether they had understood (and if I wasn’t clear, they probably wouldn’t care). If they were going to follow my paper, I had to be really clear about what I was saying, why I was using certain bits of theory to help me say it, and how each example and piece of critical material helped me get my point across. If, when I read one of my own sentences, I thought, “why am I saying this?”, then I could be pretty sure that someone in the audience would think, “why is this guy saying this?” That imaginary audience member needs their questions answered.

Reading drafts aloud can help anyone who wants to improve their academic work. It helps you notice things to improve, it helps you gain some objectivity on your work, and it helps you develop a clear and readable style. It doesn’t matter if you’re not going to a conference – undergraduates can benefit from this simple technique just as much as can doctoral students. Get reading!

Posted by Alex