A Lecture in Academic Writing by kamo

A LECTURE IN ACADEMIC WRITING By/ kamo araz ahmad

WHAT IS ACADEMIC WRITING?

• “Academic Writing Skills is a three volume series that develops students' abilities to compose college-level essays.”

• http://www.cambridge.org/us/cambridgeenglish/catalog/skills/academic-writing-skills

WHAT IS WRITING?

If you really want to know yourself , start by writing a book.

“Shereen el feki”

Writing skills

Writing process

Step1:prewriting

Step2:writing

Step3:editing/

revising

Step4:Publishing

Writing styles Referencing

STEP 1 : PREWRITING

• The best and most successful writing start with pre writing, Good question! Prewriting is a term that describes any kind of preliminary work that precedes the actual paper writing. It doesn't necessarily have to be writing. In fact, prewriting can just be concentrated thinking about what you want to write your paper on.

• http://slc.berkeley.edu/you-start-writing-paper-guide-prewriting-techniques-0

PREWRITING TECHNIQUES ::

• 1.Brainstorming:

• Brainstorming refers to quickly writing down or taking inventory of all your thoughts as fast as they come to you. In this sense, your ideas are like a gigantic storm swirling around in your brain, and it's your job to get them out of your head.

EXAMPLE OF BRAINSTORMING ::

• Example: Brainstorming for Toni Morrison's Beloved.

• Sethe's relationship with her children.

• Significance of milk and the breast. Possible connection to mother/child relationship.

• Familial relationships under slavery. Perhaps Morrison is examining (or complicating) this through Sethe's extreme relationship with her children. Possible connection to milk and breast imagery. Breastfeeding her children may be so important because mother/child relationshps are often destroyed under slavery.

• Motherly love. Sethe seems to think murder can be taken as an act of motherly love. Maybe she's rewriting the role of the mother under slavery.

• Return of Beloved and inability to explain/justify murder. Even though Sethe claims that the murder was right, she seems conflicted.

• 2.freewriting:

• Freewriting is very similar to brainstorming in that it gets all your thoughts out onto

paper. However, where brainstorming often looks more like a list of ideas, freewriting usually takes the shape of more formal sentences. Even so, grammar, punctuation, and the like should be far from your mind.

• Example: Freewriting for Beloved.

I have to write a paper on Beloved for my English class. There's a lot to write on in this book. When I first read it, I noticed a lot of things about Sethe and her relationship with her kids. Her motherly relationship with her children seemed important to her, especially in terms of breastfeeding them. Perhaps this is symbolic of something. Like milk and the breast represent motherhood itself. This might be why it was so important for Sethe to get milk to her baby; she may have wanted to retain that motherly bond. Perhaps that's important because of the fact that slavery interferes with the mother/child relationship. In slavery, Sethe and her children are just her master's property, so she's not the ultimate guardian/owner of them. Maybe breastfeeding is her way of reestablishing the bond that slavery attempts to destroy by making humans into property.

• 3.mindmapping or clustering ::

• Once again, clustering and mindmapping, like brainstorming and freewriting, allow you to take inventory of your ideas. However, they both focus you on a central word (usually something that embodies a theme, topic, motif, etc. that is important to your ideas), which you then work out from by associating other words, thoughts, and ideas to that central word. These may be very useful techniques for extremely visual people. A lot of online diagrams of clustering have the central word in a circle, with all the associated words in their own circles and lines connecting them back to the central word.

• 4. Question-Asking ::

• This is one of the best and most useful approaches to get yourself started on writing a paper, especially if you really have no idea where to start. Here, you write down all the questions that seem relevant to your material.

• Example: Question-Asking for Beloved.

• Why does Morrison focus on Sethe's relationship with her children?

• What is the significance of mother/child relationships in Beloved?

• Is milk and breastfeeding important? Why? How does it connect to other themes in the book? Could it be symbolic? If so, what does it symbolize?

• How does slavery affect Sethe's relationshp with her children? Is Morrison addressing this? If so, how?

• What does Sethe's murder of her baby signify? Is it clear by the end of the book? Or is it unresolved? How does it connect to slavery, mother/child relationships, and other themes?

• 5. Journaling ::• This technique is best used as an on-going process. While brainstorming, freewriting, clustering, mindmapping, and question-

asking can wait until you have your paper assignment and are thinking about where to start, journaling is best throughout your engagement with whatever material you could potentially be writing on. Journaling can involve aspects of all previously mentioned techniques. However, the idea behind it is to write down whatever strikes you about the material when it strikes you. That way, rather than trying to remember your first impressions and ideas about the material, you'll have them already conveniently written down. Although many ideas that strike us in the moment don't lead to great papers, many of our initial thoughts become the seeds of a successful essay.

• Example: Journaling for Beloved.

• On page (x), Sethe mentions milk and breastfeeding. This seems really important to her, especially as a mother. Is this a theme Morrison is developing? Possibly the relationship between mothers and children.

• On page (x), Morrison describes how Sethe murdered her baby. Why is the detail so vivid? If Sethe's trying to argue that she did it out of motherly love, why does Morrison make the murder so graphic? Also, what does slavery have to do with this? Does the fact that Sethe murdered her baby to protect her from slavery justify her actions?

• On page (x), Morrison writes that Sethe is constantly trying to explain and justify the murder. Elsewhere, Sethe defends it as the right thing to do. Why this conflict? Does this tie into other themes? What is Morrison trying to say?

STEP 2 : WRITING

• Now you have your plan and you’re ready to start writing. Remember, this is your first rough draft. Forget about word count and grammar. Don’t worry if you stray off topic in places; even the greatest writers produce multiple drafts before they produce their finished manuscript. Think of this stage as a free writing exercise, just with more direction. Identify the best time and location to write and eliminate potential distractions. Make writing a regular part of your day.

• http://www.liferichpublishing.com/AuthorResources/General/5-Step-Writing-Process.aspx

STEP 3 : EDITING/REVISING

• Revision is the step or stage of the writing process where the writer reviews and then amends their essay. Revision is not a one-stop stage in the writing process and often involves circling back and forth between drafting. Good writers will go through multiple drafts and revisions before moving on to the editing and proofreading stage. Revising differs from editing and proofreading because it requires the writer to look at large-scale or global matters in their essay.

• http://library.defiance.edu/content.php?pid=265770&sid=2195934

STEP 4 : PUBLISHING

• After all your hard work, you are now ready to share your finished writing with other people. Here are some of the ways you could do this ::

• give it to your teacher to respond to

• read it out loud in class

• post it on a bulletin board

• submit it for publication in a magazine

• send it to someone (e.g. your pen-friend)

• publish it on internet

• make it into a book for keeping in the school library• http://esl.fis.edu/learners/advice/wp-pub.htm

Source : this two slides source is a “Introduction to Academic Writing” by Catherine Mitchell, Learning Development Lecturer