Category: Academic Writing

Categories
Academic Writing Study skills

Study skills

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note-taking
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active listening
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peer engagement

Having a solid ethic for your academic routine can empower you to stay on top of your assignments.

USE PEN AND PAPER

The tip number one that I share with all my students is to use an old-fashioned pen and paper tool throughout a day. Digital tools are so easily accessible and portable, and they seem to provide everything a student needs to be successful in their studies, but along with laptops and apps, I highly recommend to write down your thoughts on paper. Summarising lectures in your paper notebook can seem slower and less efficient, but, in fact, it aids your memorisation. Don’t worry if your hand-written notes are messy, and they don’t make much sense if you look back at them later. The most important benefit of writing by hand during university lectures and tutorials is to activate your memory. It is also very useful to brainstorm on paper while preparing for your assignments. Writing rough ideas and linking them with arrows will help a student to draw valuable connections between pieces of information, which will result in finding creative solutions for an assignment.

VOICE YOUR CONCERN

Talk to someone. If you are stuck and can’t move on with your assignment, it is critical to grab someone and voice your concern. If your lecturer, tutor or an academic advisor is not available, due to their busy schedule, or perhaps, you don’t feel comfortable talking to them, you don’t get along with them, you can voice your thoughts to your friend, family member or your partner. Prior to talking to them, write down your concern. For example: I am writing an essay about Greta Thunburg, but I can’t find any peer-reviewed literature that would analyse her contribution to the climate change movement. I am really stuck with it, and I need help finding alternative resources either from my university library or online. Do you have any ideas how I can do it? 

Even if your chosen interlocutor can’t help you find a peer-reviewed resource, expressing your needs out loud can give you ideas. There is something magical in saying stuff out loud, especially if this something is very important to you, if it bothers you and makes you anxious. Writing an assignment is a laborious process, and what you want from this process is to be able to set mini milestones. Every time you are faced with a challenge, write down what it entails, and then communicate it to someone. 

STUDY SMART

I recommend watching a series of videos designed to help tertiary students improve their memory skills and listening skills. You can also learn how to organise the time spent on studying. This series of videos is a fantastic resource developed by Long Beach City College that can get you into the smart studying mode. If you are prone to procrastination but you really want to succeed in your academic career, start thinking of using your time effectively.

If you are still stuck and need that extra help, reach out to me by requesting a one-on-one lesson. We will develop a strategy together.

Categories
Academic Writing

Referencing

What’s the point in it?

I feel that a lot of students do not like spending much time on accurately and precisely referencing their assignments, because they don’t see a point in it. If you are a first year university student, and you started reading an article found on Google Scholar or your university online library, the name of an author, and perhaps the content of this article might seem so abstract, so remote from your life. Who is this person writing the article? What is she trying to say? And why do I need to acknowledge her in my essay? The article can be a complete mystery, and referencing it properly can be the last thing the student will have on her mind. I was in the same position myself, when I got in trouble for not referencing properly a dozen of articles I used in my International Relations assignment during my Bachelor degree. Soon enough I learnt how to reference properly, but only much later I understood, what the real reason for acknowledging academic literature was. It is basically a gesture of showing respect to someone who shared their knowledge with you. It is like saying thank you for spending years of research and then putting it online for you. 

Choose a style guide that is readable and relatable

The most important thing I’ve learnt while teaching how to reference is that every student needs to find a document or a website with referencing rules that suits his or her individual preferences. There is a lot of material out there on how to reference, finding a resource that resonates with your needs is the key. 

For example, this is a list of referencing guidelines that worked for me and for some of my students. 

APA

Chicago

Harvard

There are a lot of websites for generating references automatically, but I think it is important to know how to reference from scratch, using original guidelines. Otherwise, it is easy to fall prey to inaccuracies and misleading information that are inevitable online.

Happy referencing!

Categories
Academic Writing Academic writing strategies

How to improve your writing?

The best tip I can give about improving one’s writing is to do proofreading work for someone else. I worked a lot on my own writing skills when I was a student: I had consultations with academic writing advisors, received feedback from my tutors and lecturers. I also asked my friends and family members to proofread my work and give me advice. When it still wasn’t enough, I used online proofreading services to ask for a feedback from experienced tutors. All these methods contributed their bit, but it wasn’t until I started teaching and consulting students on how to improve their writing, when I realised what can really push me to improve. Proofreading someone else’s work taught me how to detach yourself from your own writing, and how to be able to ask the right questions in the right time, which can ultimately lead to finding fresh and sound solutions to overcome common writing mistakes. 

The best way to learn how to write well is to help others write. It might sound contradictory and time-consuming, but it works. Moreover, helping others to write can and will expose you to a range of writing styles that you might not have explored otherwise. Plus, usually, you would allocate a specific time slot to work on someone else’s writing, meaning that it would be in your best interest to find solutions quickly. Writing and rewriting in a quick pace is an essential skill to success. It’s like making super gestural one-minute sketches with charcoal: you feel less responsible for making mistakes and less precious about the final outcome, which surprisingly can give you great final results. 

Give it a go: find a friend or a friend of a friend, who needs help improving their writing, and even if you feel you aren’t good enough as a writer, offering someone your help can be impetus to research new writing styles and structures, plus, working together on a piece of writing is much more fun, especially, if you struggle with it. A sense of shared responsibility can be magical.