Just Write

An Easy-to-Use Guide to Writing at University

Bill Kirton, Kathleen M McMillan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134154593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This is a basic, short guide that helps students make the transition to writing at college or university as simple as possible, providing them with the basic skills they need to write in an effective academic style.

The authors draw on their own work to demystify the academic writing process that many students, in all disciplines, find daunting. By understanding exactly what obstacles students face when approaching writing at university they offer proven advice that is simple, uncomplicated and easily achievable.

Clear and accessible, this book gives students step-by-step advice to overcome the main hurdles. It covers:

• overcoming apprehension – then making sure you know exactly what you are supposed to do
• planning reading – managing your time and keeping your focus, helping you get the material that needs to be in your work
• getting organised – you are ready to write the first draft, take a break and finally come back and edit it.

Jargon-free, the book helps students at all levels of higher education to write clearly and persuasively, expressing both opinions and findings.

Chapter 1

No problem

What am I doing here?

However competent and confident you are, universities and colleges can sometimes make you feel a bit uneasy. Fear may be too strong a word, but some of the experiences you have can provoke feelings of apprehension.

There’s the impression that other students in tutorials contribute more than you do, seem more confident, more informed. Or the possibility that the marks you’re getting for your essays aren’t as good as they used to be at school. Some of the things you read and the lectures you hear are so full of unfamiliar words and complex structures that they almost sound like a foreign language. It’s all too easy to start imagining that everyone else is sailing along effortlessly and that you’re just . . . well . . . thick.

And, even if none of those comments applies to you, there’s the newness of the experience, the unreality of it all. Perhaps for the first time, you’re responsible for organizing your own timetables and work schedules, for having to look for answers and arguments rather than being shown them by a teacher. Depending on your chosen discipline, you’re having to deal with abstractions, philosophy, engineering theory or any of the other demanding processes that seem to need a different level of understanding from the one you had at school. It can seem airy-fairy, irrelevant and, at times, you may wonder what any of it has to do with your everyday life. Well, in some ways, the answer is ‘nothing’. Abstract or conceptual thinking doesn’t get your teeth brushed or your stomach filled. It’s an exercise.

But it’s good for you. It may be hard for you to believe it at present, but it does help to improve your quality of life. You’re exercising your mind, making it a better tool. And that’s what we’re trying to help you with here. This isn’t a book for dummies; it’s for anyone who wants to improve their written work and organize the way they think about things. Sometimes, thinking is hard, elusive, frustrating. And having to write down what you think is worse, because there’s no hiding place. The words you choose commit you. You can go through life convinced that Shakespeare was a lousy writer, that Einstein had a poor grasp of physics and so on but, as soon as you say so or write down your opinion, it becomes a ‘fact’, which has to be proved and supported with evidence. So it obviously pays, in all walks of life, to be confident about how you use words.

Of course, people’s problems or blind spots vary, so some of the things we say may seem obvious to you. It depends what you perceive your strengths and weaknesses to be. At this early stage, it might be useful for you to make a sort of checklist of issues you need to deal with.

DIY

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Evaluate your own writing skills

It may be that markers have written specific comments on a piece of your work saying that your sentences are too long or short, or that they’re ambiguous. Perhaps the problems are with your choice of words, the overall structure or some deficiencies in critical analysis. And even if you’ve had no such comments, you may feel that you know of some specific problems you need to tackle. Take some time to think about your writing and ask yourself where, if anywhere, you need help. The first DIY task at the end of the chapter will help you to focus your analysis.

Academic writing

DIY

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What is academic writing?

The first thing to address is academic writing itself. You’ll be using and seeing many different types and we’ll deal with them a little later in this chapter but, for now, let’s look at the sort of thing that often seems as incomprehensible as Klingon. One of the early experiences at university that sometimes contributes to feelings of inadequacy is that of reading academic books and articles. Here’s a quotation to show you what we mean. The first few words will probably be enough to depress you, but read it anyway. There’s a good reason for it, you’ll see.

Given the Hegelian preference for meso-morphic declinations of syntactical variables, dysfunctional paradigms of primordial recession are endemic in any coherent lexis of digressive para-linguistic modalities. Thus, semiological interpretation of intertextual anomalies necessarily engenders a phenomenological disassociation which is, in its constituent elements, complete rubbish.

DIY

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The nonsense generator

The last two words sum it up. It’s not a quotation from any learned article, it’s something we just made up. It’s an example of the worst type of academic writing, writing that calls attention to its own importance. It uses long, impressive words and complicated constructions, but it says nothing. Writing that fails to communicate is bad writing. So, don’t worry; not only do you not have to write that sort of thing, it’s counter-productive to try to do so.

Getting started

The suggestions we’re going to make can be applied to all sorts of writing – academic, commercial, journalistic, even creative (although we’d maintain that almost all forms of writing are in some way creative) – but, to keep things simple, we’ll focus on the sort that’s required for exercises such as projects, case studies, reports and, of course, essays. And, as we said earlier, to avoid boring or confusing you by repeating that little list every few sentences, we’ll use the word ‘assignment’ as a general term that covers all of them.

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Instruction words

First, let’s make sure we understand the other terms we’ll be using. Students often talk about having to do an essay QUESTION and that’s misleading. If there’s a question, that presupposes that there’s an answer. It also implies that the answer could be right or wrong. Of course, an essay title can take the form of a question – for example, ‘What effect did the USA’s economic policies have on the development of post-war Europe?’ – but, perhaps more frequently, it’s phrased as an instruction, as we’ll see in the five examples we’ll look at next. So, rather than think of an essay as a question that calls for an answer, think of it as an instruction that needs a response. And don’t think in terms of right and wrong.

The good thing about essays is that they give you both the recipe and the ingredients for what you’re going to make – in other words, a title. It tells you the topic you have to deal with, the particular aspects of it to concentrate on and the approach to take to organizing them. The sort of essay topics you’ll get will obviously depend on your chosen discipline. We’ve tried to invent generalized essay titles that, in terms of what they’re asking for, should be accessible to students in all disciplines. Some examples will show what we mean:

• Account for the rise in unemployment in the inter-war period in Britain and the USA.
• Discuss the presumed trends in flower structure during the evolution of the angiosperms.
• Evaluate different methods of energy production adopted in the UK since 1945.
• Compare the structure and life cycles of red algae with those of brown algae.
• ‘In Madame Bovary, the narrative is driven by emotions rather than events.’ Discuss.

You don’t need to know anything about the subjects to recognize that each title is made up of the same elements. There’s a word or expression to tell you what approach to take. That’s the instruction:

• Account for
• Discuss (twice)
• Evaluate
• Compare.

There’s the main topic:

• unemployment
• flower structure
• energy production
• red algae
• the narrative in Madame Bovary.

There’s an indication of which aspect or aspects of the topic you should concentrate on:

• the rise in (unemployment)
• the presumed trends in (flower structure)
• different methods of (energy production)
• the structure and life cycles of (red algae)
• (the narrative is) driven by.

And finally, there are elements (one or more), that restrict your study:

• in the inter-war period (1), in Britain (2), and in the USA (3)
• during the evolution of angiosperms
• adopted in the UK (1) since 1945 (2)
• with those of brown algae
• emotions (1) rather than events (2).

Breaking it down

So, the first thing to do when you’re given an essay title is decide exactly what it’s asking for. If there are any words or expressions in it you’re not sure about, look them up, ask about them, do something to make sure that you’re not missing the point or misinterpreting some part of the title. Then ask yourself, what’s the topic? Are there any specific aspects of it to concentrate on? Are there any restrictions that limit the field of study? And what are you being instructed to do – compare, discuss, describe, or something else? If it helps, jot down the answers to your questions in your own words. Understanding exactly what’s required of you is a sound basis for a good essay. You’ll find some sample essay titles from a variety of subjects at the end of the chapter. Use them to practise your ‘breaking down’ technique.

You know, then, what’s expected of you. Breaking the title down into its component parts helps you to focus clearly on your area of enquiry, so you know what sort of material you need to collect. If you’re writing the first of our five sample essays, for instance, you can see that statistics about French unemployment, or unemployment in Britain in 1945 are irrelevant (unless, of course, you’re using them to make a point about unemployment in inter-war Britain).

A little warning: avoid the tendency to jump to conclusions or to write a partial response. Sometimes students do concentrate on just one facet of a topic because they know a lot about that part of it. In other words, they answer a question that isn’t being asked. When faced with the title ‘Discuss the importance of Lady Macbeth in her husband’s decision-making processes’, it might be tempting to concentrate on writing a detailed character study of Lady Macbeth. The title is, after all, implying that she’s important. But the topic is Macbeth’s ‘decisionmaking processes’ and there may be many other influences on them. Lady Macbeth will obviously figure largely in the essay, but it’s not exclusively about her.

In your essay, be sure to deal with all the required elements.

First steps

OK, you know what you’re looking for. What next? Well, you’re going to have to argue for or against a case (or maybe both, if the instruction involves comparison or contrast), and that means you’ll need some substance to back up the points you make. In other words, you need the ingredients for your essay.

Where you get them will depend on a variety of things. In the sciences, for example, you may need to conduct experiments and produce or refer to graphs, charts or tables. In the social sciences, there may be questionnaires to analyze or interviews to organize. We can’t anticipate every eventuality but we can identify some of the basics.

Getting started is rarely easy. What if, having tried what we’ve just suggested, you’re still finding that the question’s phrased in ‘difficult’ terms or that its meaning still seems elusive? Well, there are some common strategies that may help.

First, just try to rephrase the question in simpler terms. Use your own words instead of those in the original, write down your version and compare the two. Also, jot down quickly what you already know about the topic – not in any structured way, just as quick notes, bits of shorthand to start building the heap of material you’ll need. Do some brainstorming. Look at what you’ve written down and see where else it leads you, follow any associations and jot them down, too. You may discard some or all of them later but, for now, just let your mind wander round the subject and look at it from different angles.

DIY

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Sample essay questions

An important part of writing (and learning in general) is asking questions. Ask yourself, ask other people. The answers you get or give will open up more possibilities, stimulate more questions. At the moment, all you’re doing is collecting material. You’re not trying to see where it fits or even if it’s any use; the important thing is that you’re finding something to say. What it is and how you’ll say it will come later.

If you can’t think of any appropriate questions, use the basic technique of asking yourself who? what? which? when? where? why? and how?

• Who’s it for? Who has an opinion on this topic? Who’s affected by it?
• What’s the instruction word? What’s the main point? What do I need? What opinion is being expressed in the title (if any)?
• Which words or expressions are important? Which sources will give me the information I need?
• When’s the deadline? When should I stop researching and start writing?
• Where is the title leading? Where can I find the information I need?
• Why is the title being phrased in this particular way? Why are particular words preferred to others?
• How can I break it down int...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: No problem
• Chapter 2: What’s it all about?
• Chapter 3: Read right,: write right
• Chapter 4: Creating a plan
• Chapter 5: Joined-up writing
• Chapter 6: Style and impact
• Chapter 7: Style and convention
• Chapter 8: Making it better
• Conclusion
• Quick reference
• References