Week 12 Project Presentation Seminar 1: Writing Dr. Richard Nowell ¨Structure ¨ ¨Our views of academic writing as readers ¨ ¨Becoming a reader-oriented writer ¨ ¨ ¨Targeted Learning Outcome ¨ ¨Precise, economic, elegant writing. ¨ ¨ ¨What is the purpose(s) of academic writing? ¨ ¨What are your views on the writing style of the scholarship you have read? ¨ ¨How would you describe your academic writing? ¨ ¨ ¨What do you think about this piece of writing? ¨ ¨Do you know what the author is trying to say? ¨ ¨If you don’t, whose fault is it? ¨ ¨ ¨Success in academic writing can partly be down to the style in which a piece is written; it can be the difference between top and lower grades ¨ ¨Style is not simply a matter of taste here, although folks will invariably be more or less accepting/forgiving of certain writing tendencies ¨ ¨However, what we must first acknowledge is that academic writing takes as its subject matter quite – sometimes very – challenging ideas ¨ ¨Under these circumstances, it is surely the responsibility of the writer to do all they can to help the reader understand this complex material ¨ ¨Given we ask so much of readers, there are three qualities to which we should aspire if we are to become the best academic writers we can be ¨ ¨1. Precision: or avoiding ambiguities or hesitations in our writing ¨ ¨2. Economy: or saying things in as few words as possible ¨ ¨3. Elegance: or facilitating a relatively “smooth” reading experience ¨ ¨These qualities are both mutually complementary and dovetailing to a greater extent; together they put the burden on us and not the reader ¨ ¨In each case they serve to reinforce the power of our authorial voice: they help us to convince the reader we are authorities on our topics ¨ ¨In all cases, these qualities are concerned with putting the reader first 1. ¨ ¨It is important to try to write precisely, after all we are trying to persuade our readers to adopt our perspective on a quite complex topic ¨ ¨Being precise, requires we know exactly what we want to say; it is the hard-earned outcome of having thought very carefully about our points ¨ ¨Tip 1: Read Mindfully – ask yourselves why certain academic writing is precise about its topics, whereas others fall short in this respect ¨ ¨Tip 2: Know Your Topics – think about the main agents, actions, and phenomena you are writing about 1. ¨Tip 2: Build Glossaries – make a database of the terms and concepts you most frequently use and talk about in your academic writing ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨This involves saving readers’ time, requiring them not to mentally edit our repetition, redundancy, and empty rhetoric as they read our work ¨ ¨On the other hand, we might also want to avoid using so few words that the reader is overwhelmed with information, and misses key points ¨ ¨Tip 1: try to avoid using multiple words when one suffices: saying something is “enormous” instead of “very large” ¨ ¨Tip 2: try to avoid passive constructions which require more words: “the ball hit him” rather than “he was hit by the ball” ¨ ¨Tip 3: try to avoid reiterating a point albeit using different words in the same paragraph – an easy mistake we all make for anyone!! ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨On the one hand then, we may wish to avoid producing writing that is so elegant it undermines the mindfulness needed to identify key points ¨ ¨By contrast, we may wish to avoid writing that leads readers to hesitate, stop, and restart continuously, thereby making key points harder to find ¨ ¨Tip 1: Try to avoid repeating words within or across consecutive sentences; use your glossaries to built synonyms ¨ ¨Tip 2: Try to avoid using the same phrases more than once across the whole manuscript, unless you are doing so for emphasis ¨ ¨Tip 3: Try to avoid clusters of very short words or clusters of multisyllabic terms (not just Latinisms, but long words generally) ¨ ¨ ¨ ¨Producing good academic writing can be a challenge for native and non-native speakers alike, not least because it articulates complex ideas ¨ ¨One would be hard pressed to find a student who was not frustrated by bad academic writing, even if they are guilty of writing it themselves ¨ ¨But we might produce better academic writing if we appreciate how difficult it is for people to read academic works in the first place ¨ ¨The adoption of a reader-oriented perspective might lead us to develop three approaches to our writing: precision, economy, and elegance ¨ ¨These may help us produce reader-friendly prose that is extremely accurate, relatively concise, and fairly smooth to read through ¨Date: 15.12.22 ¨ ¨Instructor: Sarka ¨ ¨Topic: Project Presentation Seminar II: Referencing ¨ ¨Outcome: How and why we reference our work. ¨ ¨Preparation: How would you reference your primary and secondary resources? Prepare two examples of each with the assistance of provided faculty referencing style. ¨ ¨