6 quick tips about Academic Writing for new undergraduates

Recently, the new BBC channel for business, BBC Capital, published an article stating the biggest writing mistakes new graduates make. The article was based on a research recently published by the Society for Human Resource Management, where the different organizations surveyed stated that there were two crucial skills that new graduates lacked, and they both involved writing, in terms of communication skills, but also in grammar and spelling.

At MIUC we are very aware of this need, above all as we are an International Institution, so we offer compulsory academic writing courses since year 1. As we started our course with the new undergrads last month, here is a quick list of useful tips to survive the first touch with academia so far.

1. Make sure you understand the assignment instructions and the assessment criteria (rubric)

Teachers complain most about students not answering the question given (Bailey 18).

This is, therefore, the most obvious tip, but also the most difficult to achieve, to get yourself actually reading carefully your professor assignment proposal and understanding how they will be graded. Use your assignment instructions as an outline for your essay, it will help to structure your arguments but also it will guide you in order not to forget or skip any key points.

Here is a podcast made by some students in Walden University, in The States. It will help you not to lose any points for not meeting the requirements or unfollowing the instructor’s guidelines for the assignment. Maybe you listen to them more than me!

2. Read to write

In academia, it is unthinkable to generate content if this is not from reading and studying previous texts which will be incorporated to our writing through intertextuality.

Yes, first shocking news, almost everything you are going to write about in your college years, will have to be supported by previous academic references. As I always say to my students, we are walking on the shoulders of giants. This quote from Isaac Newton, If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants, exemplifies very well how academic knowledge is produced, to the extent that Google Scholar adopted this as their motto, as a nod to the scholars who have contributed to their fields over the centuries, providing the foundation for new intellectual achievements.

3. Limit your research topic.

Although our motto says complicate your life, be someone, I would encourage new students in their first year of university, not to complicate their lives choosing topics that are too broad to being researched properly.

Avoid general topics like for example:

“Hunger in the world”

Try to narrow down your topic in terms of location, age/gender group, chronological time, and as many specific characteristics as you may think, so you would come to a much concrete title like this:

“The Continuing Growth of Hunger, Homelessness, and Poverty in America’s Cities: 1987”.

For this example, I only had a quick look in Google Scholar, in order to see what was already researched on world hunger. This takes me to the next advice…

 

 

4. Embrace technology

One of the most controversial topics in the academic world is the impact of technology in Higher Education. The same article that inspired this blog post, warns of the harm that social media has done to college undergraduates’ ability to communicate professionally, arguing that a “social media-style communication lends itself to short, unsupported writing and typically ignores professional writing etiquette.”

Although we could agree with the author in the importance of getting the right tone for academic writing, we could not dismiss social media completely out of our discipline. The impact that web 2.0 tools are having in the student’s personal expression and creativity, as well as the variety and extension of the audience that can be reached through blogs or podcasts for example, is fantastic. You must have a good knowledge of other tools like bibliography citations, mind maps, collaborative docs and curation tools.

5. Take advantage of open-access publishing

Get familiar with sites like Academia.edu, Researchgate or interesting initiatives like CUNY Academic Works or DOAJ ( Directory of Open Access Journals). You will find there unrestricted online access to different academic publications.

Writing in the digital age has this unique challenge of dealing with traditional and important issues like copyright, plagiarism and citation, and at the same time, seeing a big movement like Open Access growing and raising awareness about the importance of making academic research available on the Internet and free of charge, not only to scholars but to the general public.

6. Don’t be repetitive

If you want something to be remembered, you repeat it, over and over again, like in advertising, I’m loving it!

The slight difference in academic writing, is that you need to repeat your main idea, your point, in order to have a clear focus all over the paper, a clear thesis that everyone of your readers will understand, but you need to try to transform that idea constantly, playing around with its presence and avoiding at all time redundancy.

Drawing a parallel with the field of music, we could see good and bad examples of repetition. Think of “Let it go” from Frozen and the 5th symphony of Beethoven. I leave it to your own judgement to decide which example shows a better and a more elaborated use of repetition.

And finally, take your time to read this tweet on the art of writing, and I may suggest that you do it while listening to Beethoven.

 

Sources

“‘Doesn’t Meet Requirements’-Strategies For Following Your Assignment Instructions (Episode 11).” SoundCloud. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

Bailey, Stephen. Academic Writing for International Students of Business. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.

“The Impact Of Digital Tools on Student Writing and How Writing Is Taught in Schools.”Pew Research Center Internet Science Tech RSS. N.p., 2013. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

“What Does Academia_edu’s Success Mean for Open Access? The Data-Driven World of Search Engines and Social Networking.” Impact of Social Sciences. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

“What Does Academia_edu’s Success Mean for Open Access? The Data-Driven World of Search Engines and Social Networking.” Impact of Social Sciences. N.p., 2015. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

“The Biggest Writing Mistakes New Graduates Make.” BBC. Web. 9 Nov. 2015.

“  The Hiring Of 2015 College Graduates  .” The Hiring of 2015 College Graduates. Web. 9 Nov. 2015. Shrm-hiring-college-graduates-2015.aspx

CommsHero, (@CommsHero), The art of writing. Worth a read. 3 November 2015, 10:06 PM. Tweet

Author: Maria Florenzano