Impactful Academic Writing

By Sandra Daniel

Impactful Academic Writing is a practical guide to the most essential academic writing skills that a student needs. It will direct graduate and undergraduate students from paragraph structuring to writing lengthy assignments through a systematic approach. It contains examples and good advice on how students may demonstrate critical insights in their written work. It includes activities and discussions on a range of disciplines such as ethics, nursing, business, law, and literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Sep 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499013740

Sandra Daniel

Sandra Daniel is an international corporate trainer, university lecturer and writer. She has written several self-help books and is actively involved in training, curriculum and courseware development. Her training programs are highly popular and attended by many participants from many well-established SMEs and MNCs. Daniel Theyagu is a corporate trainer, performance evaluator, motivational speaker and writer. He has trained more than 200000 people from all walks of life from more than 100 countries. Daniel is well known for his humorous and light hearted approach to training whereby he uses parables and metaphors to impart complicated aspects of his training to his participants with ease.

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Copyright © 2014 by Sandra Daniel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/18/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Critical Reading

Chapter 2: Note-Taking And Note-Making

Chapter 3: Preparing To Write

Chapter 4: Drafting Paragraphs

Chapter 5: How To Argue

Chapter 6: Writing A Summary

Chapter 7: Interpreting And Presenting Data

Chapter 8: Synthesis

Chapter 9: How To Write A Research Paper

Chapter 10: Language Conventions

Answers to Activities

PREFACE

This book is written to guide undergraduate students with their academic reading and writing. It is designed for speakers of English and has evolved out of my extensive teaching experience. This book is fast-paced with an overall approach that is systematic. It contains examples, activities and discussions that are useful in helping students understand how to write better.

Impactful Academic Writing is organized into 10 chapters. The first chapter covers ways of reading texts critically and this is followed by the second chapter which develops students note—taking skills. Chapters 3 and 4 touch on drafting and writing effective paragraphs which essentially prepares the way for writing a specific genre in chapter 5. Chapter 5 deals with putting forward evidence in your written assignment that is logical and well-considered.

The chapters on summary and synthesis cover important aspects of academic writing. It helps students demonstrate their comprehension of materials and use other people ideas effectively. Chapter 8 develops skills on writing a description of information in graphical form.

As many students complain that writing a research paper is often a messy experience, the next chapter provides a simple and linear approach to writing such a paper. My aim in the final chapter is to focus on eliminating common grammar mistakes in academic writing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is dedicated to my colleagues whom I’ve worked with over the years in tertiary institutions. This book was initiated from the many motivating and inspiring discussions I shared with them. I would also like to thank my students for giving me the opportunity to bring in new insights on academic writing into the classrooms. Most importantly, I hope they gained much from me as I was able to learn from them.

CHAPTER 1

CRITICAL READING

What does critical reading mean?

The word critical reading means careful understanding of a given subject matter. While reading critically the reader needs to employ certain theories, techniques and procedures for an extensive and detailed analysis of the essay or the article. It is identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the passage at different levels. The reader minutely observes and examines the claims that is put forth by the writer. Critical reading is therefore considered the harbinger of critical writing.

Features of critical reading

There are some key features of reading a text critically. They are:

• Analyze the arguments

• Evaluate the claims

• Investigate the prejudice on the arguments

• Figure out the limitations

• Examine the arguments, opinions mentioned that you support

Critical reading is a process that involves giving and taking from the text. As a reader, you are not just reading to gather information and ideas and to understand whatever is written. On the contrary, you are supposed to analyze and challenge the facts that are presented. Adding your personal opinion by questioning the facts presented by the author is all part of critical reading. Sometimes we have to assume the stance and read to gather the main point of a text. But it is critical reading that allows us to create new ideas from what we read and to become independent and creative learners. It is considered to be the middle path where the reader and the writer meet.

Why critical reading is necessary?

Reading critically helps to understand the text better. It also enhances your ability to evaluate and analyze the materials. Critical reading is necessary as it benefits to understand different authors and different texts. The aim of critical reading is to assess the strengths of the claims made by the author. Critical reading starts only after a number of prior readings. Critical reading skill helps in critical listening as well. Later these skills help in critical writing as well.

Strategies involved in critical reading

Previewing

The word preview means to examine and learn about the text before beginning to critically read it. Previewing a passage gives you the synopsis of the material and helps you to refresh your background knowledge of the topic. To understand the text in greater details it is crucial to question yourself on what you read. Before you start an evaluation of the text, you must prepare a list of questions that you want the answers to. It is necessary for you to analyze the arguments and claims that have been written by the author. Before you understand the claims made, you need to understand the author first.

Author

Reading a text critically requires you to questions the writer’s mastery and motive. You may need to put yourself in the author’s place and see if it fits a certain way of thinking. There is a need to understand author’s purpose and context. The background of the author helps to understand his prejudice and the credibility. By a careful analysis of the author you will be able to understand whether the author is an expert or is doing a new research.

Type of source

The type of reading can tell you about the prejudices of the author. The source can speak a lot about the quality of the work. Sources can be taken from:

• Books

• Websites

• Academic journals

• Periodical articles

If the source is taken form a book, you need to know whether the publisher is an academic publisher or a commercial publisher. If it is a periodical article, is it from a magazine or a newspaper. If it is from a website, then check whether it is from a government website or a commercial website or from some organization. Examining the type of source can give you a bigger picture of the written text.

Audience

Knowing about the target audience can tell you a lot about the text. You must ask yourself questions like, which section of the society does the article cater to? Is it meant for academicians or researchers? Does it target people for a particular industry? Or is it meant for general public? If you are able to figure out the intended audience, your understanding of the subject matter will be clear.

ornament_01.jpg Previewing a book

Activity1.1: To preview a book, what information in these sections help in understanding the contents of it.

Context

The