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writing and study skills for academic work, research, and projects

writing and study skills for academic work, research, and projects

Preparing Dissertations and Theses

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postgraduate writing skills from start to finish

Many students reach postgraduate studies and have a difficult time producing their dissertations and theses – for two reasons. First, they’ve probably never written such a long piece of work before and second, because they’ve probably never seen one and therefore don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. Bill Allison and Phil Race start off this brief guide to postgraduate writing skills with the first issue which most students are likely to confront – how to choose a research topic.

Preparing Dissertations and Theses This needs to be done with some care, because you can be saddled with your choice for anything up to three years or more. It’s not unknown for some people to become bored by their own subject. Fortunately, the preliminary work of looking at the literature and searching the databases of research, is a lot easier these days since most of this information will be available on line.

Next they explain what’s required in a research project – the ability to identify a problem, analyse it, read the literature, develop a research method, select the data, do the work, draw conclusions, and write up the results following the academic conventions of your subject.

The rest of the book is devoted largely to producing the written product which will be the material outcome of the research. This involves understanding the structure of dissertations and theses – knowing the correct order of their parts. This covers items which students often find difficult, such as how to reduce a thesis which might be anything up to 80-100,000 words long into a succinct 400 word abstract.

The other things which may people find difficult are quotations, referencing systems, and bibliographies. These are all worth understanding as soon as possible, because research which is perfectly successful can easily be referred back for ‘further revisions’ if the referencing is irregular or the bibliography doesn’t follow the specified standard.

Next they cover the process of doing the research itself – the actual work of the project and how to keep track of what you are doing. They stress the importance of writing up your work, organising your files, keeping records, and backing up what you produce – which should be easy now that the price of disk space and storage has fallen.

The last part of the book deals with the really small details of the physical object you will create – the page layout and margins, abbreviations, tables, the size of fonts, line spacing, and everything down to the way the finished pages will be bound.

So that covers just about everything. It’s up to you now to do the necessary work – and then you can collect your degree.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Brian Allison and Phil Race, The Student’s Guide to Preparing Dissertations and Theses, London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2004, pp.100, ISBN: 0415334861

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Reading at University

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reading [and writing] skills for academic work

Students in higher education probably spend more time reading at university than doing anything else – at least in terms of studying. And the same is probably true for their teachers as well. But do we always read as efficiently as we might? This book sets out to explore all aspects of this key technique of reading skills. The Fairbairns (Mr and Mrs) very wisely point out that reading is not just one, but a set of skills – and they encourage choosing your reading approach according to the nature of the task.

Reading skills It is certainly true that many inexperienced students are hampered by the unconscious habit of reading everything at the same speed and with the same degree of attention. They also encourage readers to become more aware of what they are reading, why they are reading, and what is the academic objective of their reading task. They trace the development of reading skills and discuss the pros and cons of different types of reading – such as speed reading, skimming, searching, scanning, and sampling.

There are some useful tips on analysing academic books and reading lists, as well as how to take notes whilst reading. They even include a chapter which explains how to quote and cite references in academic writing; and another called ‘Reading your Own Work’ which is effectively how to edit and proof-read your writing before submitting it for assessment.

All this advice is aimed at undergraduate students – but most of it will be just as useful to other groups, such as trainee teachers who need to unravel some of the mysteries of the learning process at the same time as sharpening their own study skills.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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Gavin J. Fairbairn and Susan A. Fairbairn, Reading at University: A Guide for Students, Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press, 2001, pp.209, ISBN: 033520385X

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Student Writing in Higher Education

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essays on problems and solutions for academic writing

Student Writing in Higher Education is a collection of academic research papers which reflect the work being done in what the editors call the ‘new contexts’ of higher education. By this they mean the writing which goes on in non-traditional subjects such as dance or computer conferencing, as well as the new types of writing such as ‘journals of learning’ and ’empathetic writing’ which are now used in a number of subjects.

Student Writing in Higher EducationThe essays deal with many of the problems faced by typical students – the unspecified audiences for which they are expected to write; the debate about skills-based writing tuition versus ‘writing in context’; and the new problems created by the collapse of traditional subject boundaries.

There is an interesting paper which analyses tutor feedback on students’ written work. This includes some scandalous examples of marking which offer nothing more than marginal ticks and an overall grade. As the authors chillingly observe:

Those tutors who give minimal responses perhaps see the task of reading students’ writing as largely administrative, and/or do not consider students to have the sort of role in the academic community which merits engaging in dialogue with them.”

This chapter should be required reading for departmental heads and anybody with a responsibility for training tutors in marking skills.

A chapter on academic writing in the study of dance throws up the fundamental problem that not all subjects make the same types of intellectual demand. Terpsichoreans are allowed to describe their own practice and reflect upon the Self in a way which would be unthinkable in traditional disciplines. The same seems to be true of ‘Reflective Learning Journals’ in anthropology [which includes the example of a Death Journal!] – though at least these have as a primary function encouraging students to think about interdisciplinary studies and ‘map’ their experiences of learning.

There’s also an interesting chapter on the new use of computer conferencing, with two Open University courses as examples. This throws up the problems of asynchronous and informal academic discourse, as well as the potentially ambiguous role of tutors, who can act as ‘fellow participants’ or as ‘knowledge holders’.

One of the persistent weaknesses of these papers is that they often don’t seem to reach any conclusion or have very much to offer by way of insight. As one contributor observes: ‘I am aware that this chapter has raised questions which have not been answered’. I was also surprised by the amount of heavy signposting – such as a chapter whose final paragraphs begin ‘To conclude this chapter I turn finally to issues of pedagogy…’. The other surprise is that so few – almost none – of the studies actually deal with or quote any of the very subject under consideration – student writing itself.

One of the most interesting chapters is – perhaps strategically – the last, in which Barry Stierer describes the plurality of writing demands in the Open University’s MA in Education. It’s interesting that a careful explanation of the pedagogic requirements of a well-constructed course are more interesting than any amount of strangulated theorising about ‘epistemic modality’ and ‘intrinsic and embodied readings’.

The editors make it clear that they concentrate specifically on the implications of their research for the work of teachers rather than students. In fact this collection will be of most interest to those in the field of educational research striving to generate publications for the next Research Assessment Exercise. But there are also some practical lessons and observations which might actually help those tutors interested in improving students’ writing skills.

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Mary R. Lea and Barry Stierer, Student Writing in Higher Education, Buckinghamshire: Open University Press, 2000, pp. 205, ISBN: 0335204074

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Students Must Write

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writing skills guide for coursework and examinations

Robert Barrass begins this guide Students Must Write with the important observation that students are judged largely on the quality of what they write. It is therefore very much in their interests to sharpen their writing skills for all forms of academic work. He starts from basics, covering taking notes in lectures, and how writing about something helps you to understand and remember it. His advice is punctuated with well-chosen quotations from famous writers, indicating that they struggle too. They write, re-write, plan, edit, scrap drafts, and treat writing as a process. It’s not a one-off action. He analyses examples of slack writing and shows both the weaknesses and how they might be overcome.

Students Must WriteThere’s also a chapter on words – choosing items of vocabulary to make your writing more effective. To support this he adds some wonderfully useful lists of misused words, circumlocutions and malapropisms – but they are somewhat buried inside the chapters when I think they could have been highlighted to greater effect.

There is a particularly good chapter on how to deal with numbers, diagrams, graphs, charts, and tables. This includes such nice points as the order of presenting the slices of a pie chart – clockwise, starting from the largest at noon. [Bet you didn’t know that!]

His tips on exam technique are sound enough – as is his advice on longer pieces of work such as dissertations and reports. He even covers writing letters – applying for that job after you have graduated. And he ends with tips on using word-processors, a few words on punctuation, and a brief guide to spelling and how to overcome some of the common problems.

This is a book for people who want a general stroll through the process of language and writing. It moves from one topic to another in a casual manner. There is a downside and an upside to this approach. The downside is its weakness in terms of organisational rigour. But the upside is that it might make some of the issues of writing less intimidating for the very students to whom this book is addressed.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Robert Barrass, Students Must Write: A Guide to Better Writing in Coursework and Examinations, London: Routledge, third edition, 2005, pp.232, ISBN: 0415358264

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Studying at a Distance

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learning skills for further and higher education

Distance learning is nowadays much more than receiving correspondence course units through the post. Radio and TV broadcasts, video tapes, CD-ROMs, email, online courses, and Web-based conferencing are all common means of learning. This book offers support and learning skills for anybody undertaking this form of education – which goes under lots of different names. Having taught distance learning courses for over thirty years myself, I can confirm that Christine Talbot covers all the important issues. She starts with preparation for studying, showing you how to assess your existing skills and identify what you will need. This also involves becoming aware of the different modes of learning.

Studying at a DistanceNext comes a chapter on E-learning, now rapidly expanding to include submitting electronic assignments, conferencing, and using virtual learning environments. This is becoming a more and more important part of most distance learning courses – for economic as well as technological reasons. She tells you what equipment you will need, how to plan your time, and how to make the best use of the support and resources available to you.

There’s also coverage of the core skills required for any form of course in further or higher education – note-taking, essay writing, and revision and examination skills.

The guide ends appropriately enough with advice on tackling a research project – probably the largest piece of work you will have to undertake below post-graduate level.

This is a short and readable guide which offers a clear explanation of how to prepare for independent study. It will be particularly useful for those people returning to education after a gap of some years.

© Roy Johnson 2010

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Christine Talbot, Studying at a Distance, Maidenhead: Open University Press, third edition 2010, pp.256, ISBN: 0335238068

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Studying Fiction

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guide to the basics of literary analysis – plus short stories

Many adult students have spent most of their lives reading fiction in the form of stories and novels. However, when it comes to making a formal academic study of literature – especially at undergraduate level – it’s hard to find the right words in which to express your understanding of a text. That’s why this book was written. Studying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and the technical terms you will need when making a study of prose fiction.

Studying Fiction It shows you how to apply the elements of literary analysis by explaining them one at a time, and then showing them at work in a series of short stories which are reproduced as part of the book. The materials are carefully graded, so that you start from simpler literary concepts, then work gradually towards more complex issues. The guide contains stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Charles Dickens. All of them are excellent and very entertaining tales in their own right. The guidance notes help you to understand the literary techniques being used in each case.

Eight chapters deal separately with issues such as the basics of character and story; point of view, symbolism, irony, and theme; literary language and ‘appreciation’; the techniques of close reading; the social context of literature; narrators and interpretation; and an explanation of literary terms.

The book works as a form of self-instruction programme. You first of all read the story; then a particular literary concept is explained in relation to the story; a series of questions are posed [with answers] which allow you to test your understanding; and the chapter ends with suggestions for further reading.

OK – this is what’s called an ‘author’s own review’, so I’ve tried to be as unbiased as possible. If anybody else wishes to produce a review, I’ll be happy to add it. Alternatively, you can read somebody else’s review at Amazon here

© Roy Johnson 2000

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Roy Johnson, Studying Fiction, Manchester University Press, 1994, pp.226, ISBN 0719033977

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Succeeding with a Masters Dissertation

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a step-by-step guide to post-graduate writing

Many students find the idea of writing a masters dissertation at postgraduate level a daunting prospect. And that’s quite understandable. They will probably never before have had to produce a work of 10,000 to 15,000 words; they will be uncertain about its content; and they will almost certainly never have seen what a dissertation looks like. John Biggam’s book is a guide to the entire process of developing postgraduate writing skills, from start to finish, and the most useful aspect of his approach is that he breaks the procedure down into separate steps and explains each of them in detail.

Masters Dissertation He starts from what is often the most puzzling stage of all – defining the project. Many students know the topic which interests them most, but turning this into a research proposal can be a long and frustrating process. It’s easy to lose a lot of time changing your mind and pursuing ideas which shift amorphously the very moment you think you have pinned them down.

He offers templates to help solve this problem, outlines the key issues at each stage, and even points to the most common traps that students fall into. This is valuable advice – and it comes from a research supervisor who has seen hundreds and hundreds of examples.

His chapters follow the stages of the process of producing the dissertation itself. How to define the project; making a start with the writing; doing a literature review; choosing the right research methods; dealing with the evidence and producing a conclusion; writing an abstract; and how to present the finished work.

Embedded within all this there are other important issues such as how to create structure, how to define your terms, and how to link one part of your writing to the next so as to create a continuous argument.

He also deals with the issue which many students right up to PhD level find difficult – how to quote from secondary sources and use a referencing system accu rately. He recommends the Harvard system as being popular with both students and tutors alike. Also included is how to conduct both qualitative and quantitative surveys, and what to do with the results when they have been assembled.

One of the suggestions he makes more than once which I thought very useful is that students should make their claims clearly and boldly. Your piece of research may be modestly (and wisely) limited in scope, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t treat it as something important, even if it is only to make your purpose clear to the person reading and assessing it.

He also offers some very good tips for dealing with the oral defence of your work – the viva – and he ends with what many students will probably find the most useful of all – sample extracts of introductions, literature reviews, research methods, project structures, and questionnaires.

Read the advice, follow it, even use the book as a source of reference, and I’m fairly confident that it will help you to produce a masters dissertation that succeeds. Just like it says on the tin.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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John Biggam, Succeeding with your Masters Dissertation, Berkshire: Open University Press, 2008, pp.268, ISBN 0335227198

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Successful Writing for Qualitative Researchers

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guidance on advanced academic writing techniques

Yet another writing guide. Successful Writing for Qualitative Researchers is aimed at post-graduates in the social sciences and education. It covers the process of writing from the first steps in conducting research, through to the production of papers for scholarly journals and full length published books. The emphasis throughout is on work which is non-quantitative – that is, writing which knowingly includes a degree of subjectivity and impressionistic reporting – a side of research Peter Woods describes as ‘ethnography’ and which much of the time seems to come dangerously close to creative writing.

Successful Writing for Qualitative ResearchersHe starts with a chapter describing the problems and pain of writing, with copious illustrations from authors who have found it difficult to make a start and just as hard to keep going. This is intended to reassure those struggling that their experience is not unique. Next he discusses the separate parts of a typical academic article, with illustrations from his own work – though strangely enough, he doesn’t spell out first of all what these parts should be.

On the other hand, a chapter on ‘alternative forms of writing’ [non-standard approaches to academic writing] struck me as more interesting, because it offers practical advice on the manner in which writing projects can be presented. Similarly, the best parts of his comments on editing are those in which he examines specific examples, with plenty of good advice on content editing for bias, ambiguity, weak structure, and even libel – though he has an unfortunate tendency to keep bringing in his own publications as source material. [Readers might keep in mind that in the UK ‘researchers’ are assessed on the number of times their work is cited in published works. This might be one sneaky way of pushing up the score.]

There’s a section on collaborative writing where he describes the benefits and dynamics of working as part of a team – though rather too much of this fell back into personal anecdote for my liking. There are other weakness too. His approach often switches disturbingly between guidance and speculation; the mode of address occasionally wobbles uncertainly between ‘one’ and ‘you’; and his exposition switches from surmise to an analysis built on quotes from other writers.

Too often, his emphasis is on describing problems, rather than showing how to solve them. Sometimes, the subject of consideration in any chapter slithers around alarmingly. Chapter sub-headings fail to clarify the internal hierarchy of contents (though this could be the publisher’s fault) and at one point he even includes a personal anecdote into the middle of a bulleted list. These are not examples of good quality writing.

The chapter which I suspect is most likely to be of interest and use to his audience is the last – ‘Writing for Publication’. In this he provides valuable advice on researching the market, with real-life examples. These include how to cope with rejections and how to learn from examples of readers’ reports – which he quotes. He even includes guidance on submitting book proposals, and on negotiating a contract if you have the good luck to have one accepted (and it is often luck). There are also specimen publishers’ guidelines and a sample book proposal which intending writers, from the field of social sciences and education (and well beyond) would do well to study closely.

So, in a sense, this is a book which gets better as it goes along, though the good advice he offers would be more effective if he had followed his own recommendations on clarity of structure, thematic coherence, and rigorous editing.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Peter Woods, Successful Writing for Qualitative Researchers, London: Routledge, 2nd edition 2005, pp.200, ISBN: 0415355397

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Supervising the Doctorate

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good practice for supporting research projects

Now that supervisor training is compulsory, this practical, no-nonsense handbook is essential reading for both the novice and the experienced higher degree supervisor. But I suspect it will be just as useful for the serious postgraduate research student as well. It is reassuring to know that the book is based on the experiences of a postgraduate research skills workshop run at Cardiff University, and the authors illustrate the procedures and problems with real life examples – all of which ring convincingly true to me.

Supervising the Doctorate They start out by recommending that firm guidelines should be established for the nature and structure of the relationship between supervisor and student. Everything needs to be made explicit, and in my experience students need to be made aware of exactly what they are undertaking. Next comes drawing up some sort of schedule of work which is loose enough to give the student flexibility, but firm enough to prevent wasteful ‘drift’. It’s also essential at the outset to establish if the project is feasible. Can it be done? Are any ethical issues raised?

They then go on to the literature review. How to find the literature; how to read it; and how to write about it, including the all important issue of accurate referencing and citation. If you are a supervisor, they offer some good exercises: if you are a student, this section tells you what you should be doing.

They include advice on what is often the laborious issue of data collection. This includes the interesting phenomenon of using post-doctoral researchers as a bridge between supervisor and student.

There are also personal matters to take into account – isolation, poverty, and low morale- all of which can easily develop in the three years or more of doctoral research. They provide useful and realistic advice on these matters, as well as on what they see as the core issue – developing the student’s sense of judgement and good taste.

Of course for most people the hardest part of doing a PhD is writing up to 100,000 words. It’s not something you do often. Their key advice is good: ‘write early and write often’. And they also offer some useful tips on helping to overcome writer’s block.

Probably the most frightening part is the PhD viva, and since it’s something that only happens once for the candidate, it’s not easy to prepare for. But the supervisor can prepare, and they show some case studies to prove the point.

Finally they offer the bonus of advice for activity beyond the degree – that is, helping successful post-docs to advance their careers through networking, teaching, attending conferences, and publishing their work.

This is a very thorough and a thoroughly decent guide to what is often a long and complex process. It’s written for supervisors, but it’s worth reading, whichever side of the examination process you are on.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Sara Delamont, Paul Atkinson, and Odette Parry, Supervising the Doctorate: a guide to success, Berkshire: Open University Press, 2nd edn, 2004, pp.220, ISBN 0335212638

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Teaching Academic Writing

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a toolkit for writing skills in further and higher education

No matter what subjects students engage with in further and higher education, they will be required to produce written work on which they will be assessed. This could be the formal academic essay, a lab report, a project, a case study, or even a reflective journal. Teaching Academic Writing is designed to assist subject lecturers and writing skills tutors whose job it is to help students develop their written work and grasp the conventions of academic argument and expression.

Teaching Academic Writing The need for this assistance has arisen as larger and larger numbers of students enter F & HE – often from non-traditional backgrounds, and sometimes with `English as a second language. The authors (a group of tutors from the Open University) start off by suggesting that teachers should make explicit the writing tasks they set for students. It can no longer be assumed that students will already know what an academic essay requires them to do – or that they will pick up the idea as they go along.

Next comes making them conscious of the appropriate academic register, as well as eradicating grammatical errors. There’s no quick fix for this: it requires a lot of intensive marking and supportive feedback. But I was surprised they didn’t spot the time-saving device of putting guidance notes on line.

However, their suggestions on pre-writing (notes), brainstorming, and planning should be useful as tools for teaching students that almost no form of successful writing comes fully-formed, straight from the head of the writer.

At a time when modular degrees are becoming more popular, it’s important that students are aware of the differing conventions which obtain in various subjects. These can vary from the ‘hard evidence’ required in sciences to the ‘well-informed opinion’ which is accepted as persuasive argument in the arts. Somewhere in between are the social sciences which attempt to combine the two. Once again, they argue very sensibly that these conventions should be made explicit to students if they are to have any chance of succeeding in their work.

They also show examples of such work and offer exercises which are designed to raise students’ awareness of what’s required. The close examination of a case study in business studies reveals the particular difficulty of writing for two audiences at the same time.

The next chapter deals explicitly with the issue of assessment. Once again the advice is to make the assessment criteria clear to both students and tutors alike. And their advice on providing feedback on assessed work is excellent. It would be good to see the marking pro-formas and guidance notes in more widespread general use.

However, what they don’t take into account is the important factor that making assignments thoroughly is a time-intensive activity, and many tutors can skimp on this part of their duties because they know their work will not be closely monitored. Moreover, since much direct teaching and assignment marking in F & HE is now done by hourly paid post-graduates, they are place in the invidious position of working for the rates of a domestic cleaner, exploiting themselves in order to stay in employment. [This is a subject close to my heart, which I discuss in my own book on Marking Essays.]

They finish with a first rate chapter on academic writing in an electronic environment. This covers all the digital tools available – from word-processors and email, to conferencing and discussion forums, and online writing laboratories (OWLs) and the strategies by which materials located on line can be evaluated for their usefulness.

Tutors at any level of F & HE would do themselves a favour by rehearsing the issues raised in this book. It might be written by what is almost a committee, but it’s got a collective’s combined experience written into it.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Caroline Coffin et al, Teaching Academic Writing, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.175, ISBN 0415261368

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