Academic Writing

First semester English and English SIS Fall 2008

Why this course?

• To improve your awareness of form and function in written texts

• To improve your awareness of the writing process• To improve your awareness of genres• To improve your writing in English• To give you a vocabulary for describing your writing and

its processes.

This course is useful for:• ”Language and communication skills”

(Sprogforståelse og sprogproduktion)

• Project work

• Home assigment in Social and Humanistic Theory and textual analysis assignments

• Future translation courses

• All your future written works!

Exam – language portfolio FALL 08

• One grammar assignment (group or individual) with your teacher’s commments

• One exercise from a workshop from “oral language and communication skills” (mdt sprogproduktion).

• The individual academic writing assignment with your teacher’s comment

• A number of other working papers from the module “Sprogforståelse og sprogproduktion 1” (academic writing, grammar,) (max 15 pages)

• An account (individual) of the content of the portfolio.

 

When you account for the content of your portfolio, you should:

• focus on issues of language – describe how you have worked to improve your understanding of language and your language skills. Be specific!

• describe what language areas you have worked with in particular and how. Keep in mind that you work with language and language skills in several courses and activities.

• look through the language feedback you have received from teachers and fellow students. Do you see a pattern in the comments you get? Do certain problems recur? Have you followed the advice and recommendations you have been given, and if so, how? Can you see progression in your work?

• consider what aims you will pursue next semester in terms of writing and language skills.

How important is language and communication skills?

I bedømmelsen af samtlige skriftlige arbejder, uanset hvilket sprog de er udarbejdet på, indgår en vurdering af den studerendes stave- og formuleringsevne. Til grund for vurderingen af den sproglige præstation lægges ortografisk korrekthed og overensstemmelse med normerne for formelt, akademisk skriftsprog samt stilistisk sikkerhed. Den sproglige præstation skal altid indgå som en selvstændig faktor i den samlede vurdering. Dog kan ingen prøve (medmindre andet er anført) samlet vurderes til bestået alene på grund af en god sproglig præstation, ligesom en prøve normalt ikke kan vurderes til ikke bestået alene på grund af en ringe sproglig præstation (medmindre andet er anført).

Course structure

• Lectures

• Study time/Evaluation

• Workshops

• Homework

The academic genre is:• documentation• of an examination or a study• of an academically relevant problem • by means of academic theories and

methods• with the aim of convincing

peers• of the accuracy of

the study’s results and conclusions• in a presentation which is

acceptable within the academic discourse community.

What is academic language NOT?

• Pompous and pretentious

• Complicated and complex

• Confusing and chaotic

• Unintelligible and incomprehensible.

What IS academic language?

The four Cs:

• Clear

• Coherent

• Concise

• Correct.

clear:

- comprehensible

- objective and unbiased

- simple

- distinct

- unambiguous

- instructive and guiding.

coherent:

- well-ordered

- logically structured

- reasoned

- well-argued.

concise:

- specialist language

- to-the-point

- Avoids unnessary words or phrases.

correct

• Orthography/spelling

• Grammar

• Punctuation.

speech acts

 

 

 

 

Workable speech acts in the academic genre

• analysing• arguing • categorising• citing• constructing• contextualising• critisising • defining• describing• discussing• evaluating• examining• interpreting• paraphrasing• prioritising• problematising• proving• reasoning• reflecting• relating• showing• substantiating

Not workable speech acts in the academic genre• agitating • reviewing• confessing• lecturing• presuming• telling• feeling• praising• believing• proclaiming• degrading• experiencing• popularise• postulate• plagiarising• entertaining • (Adapted from Rienecker & Stray Jørgensen m.fl. 2005).

Task 1 – compendium p. 7

Genres – text 1There's seldom anything funnier than the self-obsession that precludes self-knowledge. (POSTULATING) As Labour meets for its 10th conference since winning the 1997 election, it's fair to say (PRESUMING) that the party has attained that state and all the fuss of the coming days would indeed be a comical if its record on foreign policy and liberties had not been so damaging to the interests of the British people. But the people are the very last thing to concern Labour at the moment. Sustained by a sense of entitlement and removed from reality by the habit of power (DEGRADING), Labour deliberates succession with all the bewildering violence of an immune system attacking itself (METAPHORICAL LANGUAGE). What lies at the bottom of this sickness is not principle, policy, or ideological vision, but love of power (POSTULATING, LECTURING)- the calculated necessity to dump the man who raised their sorry asses in the first place and who is now considered an electoral liability.

Comment in The Observer (24 September 2006)

Genres text 2 A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story

and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect; the other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. … (LECTURING, PRAISING, POSTULATING)

But I digress. … (DIGRESSING)Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and circumference of knowledge; it is that

which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of life. …

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. (LECTURING, AGITATING, PRAISING, PROCLAIMING)

Percy Bysshe Shelley ”A Defence of Poetry” (1819) (ESSAY)

Genres text 3IN THE DECADE SINCE Roddy Doyle published The Woman who Walked into Doors I have often wondered

(EXPERIENCE, CONFESS) about its heroine, Paula Spencer. Did she wake peacefully in the mornings now that the terrifying Charlo was dead and could beat her no more? Did

alcoholism take hold of her and drag her down so far that her liberation had come too little and too late. … (PRESUME)

So she’s back, in a new novel, this time entitled Paula Spencer. Ten years older and still ambiguous about the dead Charlo. She has been off the drink for four months and five days. As she says: “A third of a year, half a pregnancy nearly.” And it’s very hard. …

Time has passed and this is a different Ireland — but not for Paula Spencer, whose teeth will never come back and whose joints will always ache. She is only 48 years old.

And yet it’s an amazingly cheerful story (REVIEW), full of real resilience. For Paula to have got to this stage is survival on an epic scale. Her language is appalling, she seems constantly to score own goals by saying the wrong thing, then realising that she has and, in trying to improve it, making things worse still. …

But she is so utterly likeable that we cheer for her (EXPERIENCE, CONFESS), and every tiny victory for her is a triumph for us as well (LECTURE, POPULARISE, PRAISE).

She is like the kind of exasperating friend that everyone has known (POPULARISE, EXPERIENCE), the friend who has been through so much and taken so much abuse that you cannot really blame her for the next thing, but you still do. (ENTERTAIN) …

And Roddy Doyle has done the impossible — he has made Paula Spencer even more unforgettable the second time round (REVIEW, PRAISE), .

The Times September 2, 2006 (BOOK REVIEW)

Genres text 4She looks around. She’s the only white woman.

Someone smiles. She catches herself, smiles back. She turns to face the front. She remembers — she finds her seat belt and puts it on. She has to push and shove. She’s like a cranky kid.—Sorry.She knows. There’ll be no crack on the way. And no singsong coming home. No one speaks. It takes about an hour and stops being familiar after twenty minutes. Ranelagh, Milltown, Windy Arbour. She doesn’t know them. Dundrum. She knows the name — of course she does — but she’s never been there before. She looks up at the new bridge for the Luas, where the tram goes right over the road. It’s like a different city.She doesn’t feel uncomfortable but it’s weird. She’s the only white woman. And the only Irish woman — she supposes. The only one born here. The driver’s white but he says nothing. He mightn’t be Irish either, although he looks it from where she’s sitting

Extract from PAULA SPENCER by Roddy Doyle (2006)

Genres text 5This article discusses (DISCUSSING) postwar efforts to document (SUBSTANTIATING) the survivor

experience,which continue to the present time (CONTEXTUALISING). Many historians today acknowledge the

importanceof these primary source materials to their work as well as the necessity forcareful analysis of them ( REASONING). These materials could not be used without both physicalaccess—which reinforces the need for preservation regardless of media—and recognizedcataloging standards and vocabulary.(REFLECTING) The article includes examples of the usesmade of testimonies in various disciplines (INVESTIGATE) and challenges present and future

researchers (RELATING, CONTEXTUALISING, CRITICISING)to expand the use of such resources with a view to obtain a more complete historyof the Holocaust.(REASONING)

ACADEMIC WRITING

Genres text 6To return to Boder’s work mentioned previously (DISCUSSING), Boder titled his bookI Did Not Interview the Dead. This is a profound recognition of a major limitationof witness testimony. (INTERPRETING) Primo Levi (2001: 122) reminds us as well: ‘‘Allof us survivors are, by definition, exceptions because in the Lager you weredestined to die. If you did not die it was through some miraculous strokeof luck.You were an exception, a singularity, not generic, totally specific.’’ (CITING)The Holocaust is about being killed, not about surviving (ARGUING). Although (QUALIFYING) Levi

observed that ‘‘the story has been almost exclusively written by those whohave not fathomed the depths of human degradation.Those who did havenot come back to tell the tale’’ (ibid.: 30), (CITING) it is incumbent on us to try toreconstruct those stories, using all the resources we have. (PROVING, SHOWING, JUSTIFYING)

Joanne Weiner Rudof, ”Research Use of Holocaust Testimonies”. Poetics Today 27:2 (Summer 2006)

The writing process

Traditional views on writing(think and make plans first, write later)

1. Choose topic

2. Construct an outline of the text

3. Search for literature

4. State problem

5. Write

6. Revise

7. exam

Process-Oriented view on Writing (write first, revise later)1. Choose topic

2. Pre-writing activities (freewriting, mindmapping, webbing, fragment writing, clustering, “the Journalist’s six questions”)

3. Research your topic for an overview

4. Make a preliminary problem statement

5. Make a tightly focused literature search

6. Read and write a draft

7. Feedback and revision

8. Make final problem statement

9. Feedback and revision

10. Plan your essay

11. Revise

12. exam

• (Adapted from Rienecker & Stray Jørgensen m.fl. 2005).

The writing process1. Pre-writing activities (freewriting, mindmapping, webbing, fragment writing)

2. Drafting (concentrate on your ideas and do not try to produce perfection immediately. Leave spelling and grammar for later)

3. feedback and revision (peer response and teacher response. Revision is not only correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation: it means substantive revision, perhaps re-structuring your paper completely, perhaps adding paragraphs, perhaps cutting away sections – whatever it takes to make the text better)

4. Evaluation and grading - exam

A bit about pre-writing activities

• Writing makes you think.

• Free-writing and other kinds of pre-writing is for yourself.

• The aim of pre-writing is to generate ideas and thinking - not to produce texts for fellow students or teachers to read.

Pre-writing activities

• Brainstorming

• Mindmapping

• Free-writing

• Fragment writing

• Displays (graphical illustrations of the assignment and its coherence)

Brainstorming• Write down all thoughts, ideas, and associations

you get from thinking about a topic. • Do not evaluate or think too much! • Set a time limit (for examle 5 minutes)• Make lists, diagrams, keywords, time lines etc.

mindmapping• Mindmapping is a graphic network of thoughts, ideas and

associations you get in relation to a topic. • Compared to brainstorming, mindmapping is more

systematic in terms of connections and relations. • Write down a topic in the middle of a piece of paper.• Write down associations in ’rays’ or circles from the topic

in the middle. • Develop sub-topics in the same way. • Set a time limit, for examle 10 minutes.

Free-writing• Write about a topic without planning or revising for for example

15 minutes. Do not stop, think, plan or correct. Do not take your hands off the keyboard or lift your pen from the paper.

• Write coherent text – no bullets or a), b), c).• Keep writing!• Do not go back in your text to revise or delete. • Continue writing even if you do not have anything to write

about the topic – repeat your last sentence again and again,or write blablablabla, until you again have something to write about the topic.

Fragment writing

• Write short, unorganized texts within the topic area.

• Feel free to jump from one sub-topic to another one.

Displays• A cross between a mindmap and the actual

structuring of the underlying idea of the assignment.

• Illustrations of ”bubbles” or boxes joint by keywords

• Time lines• Diagrams.

Study time activities

• Task 1(compendium p. 7)

• Task 2 (compendium p. 9)

• Begin your homework for next week.

HOME WORK for next week

• A paragraph (ca. 8 sentences) on the topic ”Why study English”.

• Bring a paper copy to class!