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

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

Using Statistics

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

gathering, analysing, and presenting data

Many subjects such as psychology and biology have a ‘hidden’ requirement of using statistics which gives many students problems when they realise that they’ve got to tackle them as part of the course. As Gordon Rugg observes in this guide for beginners: ” Many people emerge from their first encounter with stats feeling distinctly bruised, and with a mental image of stats as a bizarre set of meaningless rituals that you have to follow because you’re told to.”

Using StatisticsWhat he’s offering is a sympathetic guide to the basic principles without terrorizing readers with a lot of abstract mathematics and complex equations. It’s intended to provide an overview of statistics, and to explain how statistics fit into the big picture of research, with particular attention to using statistics as a coherent part of research design. He brings off this intention very well by using a simple but clever device: he makes his explanations amusing, with concrete examples all the way.

So concepts such as mean, average, and standard deviation are explained using problems from everyday life, and he also explains why some of the basic statistical methods are necessary for the sake of scientific accuracy. It’s not enough to say that 50% of a sample was positive if you’ve only chosen two or three items to test, for instance.

He goes into measurement theory, showing the variety of ways in which things can be enumerated or calibrated – which is particularly useful for people designing surveys and questionnaires.

He also explains the difference between reliability and validity in statistics, using the example of ‘descriptions of Father Christmas’. These would be very reliable, because everyone will describe him in the same way; but they have zero validity, because he doesn’t actually exist.

There’s an explanation of how data can best be presented using graphs, pie-charts, and scatter diagrams – as well as the ways in which they are commonly misused.

The latter parts of the book, which deal with the presentation of knowledge – patterns, categorization, and probability theory – come almost into the realms of philosophy.

So – the first part of the book deals with measuring and presenting data accurately. This then leads to the more interesting issues of interpretation and knowing what questions can be legitimately asked when trying to assess the significance of any findings – what he calls the ‘So what?’ question.

For this, statistical tests are required. He talks you through how to choose the right type and only goes into maths and calculations when absolutely necessary. All of this is done humanely, by making his primary illustrative examples such things as a game of tiddlywinks and the height at which gorillas sleep in trees.

This is followed by even more improbable examples of limpet racing to illustrate what’s called ‘Parametric Statistics’, and he ends with some useful comments on the latest statistical software which is used for neural networks, data mining, and genetic algorithms.

I’m rather glad that my subject (literary studies) has not yet been invaded by ‘scientific’ theoretical approaches which involve statistics, but for anybody who can’t avoid the subject, this is a very enjoyable introduction.

© Roy Johnson 2007

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Gordon Rugg, Using Statistics: a gentle introduction, Open University Press: Maidenhead, 2007, pp.137, ISBN: 0335222188


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Filed Under: Study skills Tagged With: Data management, Research, Statistics, Study skills, Using Statistics

Writing at University

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

gentle advice to students on academic writing skills

“We believe that writing for your studies and learning for your studies are so integrally related that they cannot be separated from each other. Writing essays is fundamentally about learning.” That’s the credo here, and this book sets out to help students develop academic writing skills at university level. Creme and Lea start out by exploring the problems associated with getting started. That is, how to remove writer’s block by the techniques of practice writing, brainstorming, and generating your own questions.

Academic writing skills They explain why writing is difficult, then they discuss the early approaches to producing an assignment. This involves becoming aware of the protocols of the subject, and the type of assignment. The next step should be a close analysis of the question title, its key terms and any instructions. They offer some excellent worked examples of analysing assignments and showing what’s required, and they also discuss the note-taking, mind-mapping, and various types of reading which should go into any preparation.

The central strategic issue in academic writing skills is matching your own writing techniques to the requirements of the task in hand. You may be a ‘patchwork’ or a ‘grand plan’ type of writer – but how is this strategy to be matched with a project which might require what they call chronological, descriptive, analytic, or evaluative writing? They explore what might be involved in each of these approaches. There are more good examples – along with neat tips, such as the idea that you should develop your skills by assembling a glossary of terms for your subject as you go along.

They also explore one of the issues which many students find difficult – making the transition from everyday personal or subjective writing to developing a more objective mode which adopts the appropriate ‘language of discourse’. They end with tips for editing your work – including the details of grammar and punctuation – which are wisely left to the last.

The newly expanded second edition includes sections on report writing, electronic writing, learning journals, and using the Internet. This is a writing guide for someone who is prepared to sit down and read about the process of writing and who prefers the support of a sympathetic tutor rather than a source of reference or a compendium of rules. It’s the sort of book which holds you by the hand and talks you gently through the issues.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea, Writing at University, 3rd edition, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0335213251


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Writing Essays

July 22, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guide for students in English and the humanities

This is a lively and comprehensive essay-writing manual which is obviously based on solid experience of helping students to improve their skills. Having written a book on the same subject myself [and with the same title!] I was keen to see what he had to say. Richard Turley talks you through the composition of an essay – from introduction to conclusion. This is done by a close examination of real examples, and he shows how writing can be improved by careful editing and re-drafting.

Essay Writing SkillsAll points of his advice are well illustrated, and he clearly knows where students need most help – though I wasn’t so sure about his discussing logic of argument, punctuation, and arrangement of evidence all at the same time. Several issues at once might be difficult for some students to grasp. However, one advantage of this approach is that the reader is brought close to the real process of composition – where several things do have to be considered at once.

He explains how to generate the structure of an essay – by exploring its question – and how to incorporate and use quotations from critics to strengthen your own arguments.

Then he tackles the thorny issues of making links between topics and guiding readers through an argument. I often suggest to students that their intentions should be made obvious without clunky ‘signposting’ of the ‘First I will discuss…’ variety. But the examples he provides are persuasive.

On conclusions, he goes through a series of edits, showing how the expression of ideas can be clarified and improved. He also covers quotations and the conventions of scholarly referencing (which many students find difficult) plus spelling, good style, and presentation.

He finishes with libraries and the use of computers, plus writing essays under exam conditions. Most of his illustrative material is drawn from literature and the humanities – but the advice he gives will be useful for students in most disciplines.

I enjoyed reading this book. The style is lively and often quite amusing. It’s a shame he doesn’t provide a bibliography; but this is one of the few books on study skills which will actually make you laugh.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Richard Marggraf Turley, Writing Essays: A guide for students in English and the humanities, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.145, ISBN: 0415230136


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Writing for Academic Journals

July 11, 2009 by Roy Johnson

getting into print with academic writing

Anyone who wants to get ahead in academic or professional life today knows that it’s a question of publish or perish. This applies to colleges, universities, and even hospital Trusts. Yet writing for publication is one of the many skills which isn’t formally taught. Once beyond undergraduate level, it’s normally assumed that you will pick up the necessary skills as you go along. Writing for Academic Journals seeks to rectify this omission. Rowena Murray is an experienced writer on the subject (author of How to Write a Thesis and How to Survive Your Viva) and she is well aware of the time pressures people are under in their professional lives. What she has to say should be encouraging for those people in ‘new’ universities, people working in disciplines which have only recently been considered academic, and those in professions such as the health service which are under pressure to become more academic.

Writing for Academic Journals She starts out by looking at the psychology of academic writing – questions of confidence, motivation, and skill. She is well aware that there is an enormous amount of competitiveness, envy, and open criticism between departments and disciplines on the subject of who has published and who hasn’t. Next she deals with the important issue of getting to know your target publications. There’s really no way round this: you need to know what they’re looking for, and how they want it presented.

For those who might not have written a scholarly paper before, she shows you how to analyse one and uncover its basic structure and arguments – with a view of course to constructing your own.

Do you want to publish your own articles or research? She likens the process to joining a conversation which has been going on for some time. You must first watch and listen, learn its rules and conventions, then when you have adopted them you might be accepted.

The next part of the book deals with how to find a topic and develop an argument. You can do this by mining your reading notes, expanding a brief presentation, or maybe adapting a chapter from your dissertation or thesis.

She explains several useful strategies to help getting started with writing and overcoming writer’s block. There’s also lots of sound advice on planning, outlining, and the art of writing abstracts.

She shows you how to draft your text and create the appropriate style. This is followed by the process of revision and editing,

There is further encouragement and some practical strategies for finding time in which to write. But by far the most useful is a chapter in which she shows you how to learn from letters of rejection – how to turn the disappointment of facing negative criticism into a positive learning experience.

Although it is aimed at those writing for publication, this book will in fact be useful for anyone who wishes to sharpen their academic writing skills and understand something about the process of preparing a text for its public launching.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Rowena Murray, Writing for Academic Journals, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2nd edition 2009, pp.288, ISBN: 0335234585


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Writing for Scholars

July 12, 2009 by Roy Johnson

A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard

Writing at post-graduate level these days is no joke. Most researchers and untenured lecturers know that they must publish or perish. And writing to order, especially for publication, is difficult when you know your career is at stake. Writing for Scholars offers reassuring guidance to the whole process of producing written papers, projects, and books which will be published to an academic audience. It is aimed precisely at those people who need to get into print in order to promote their careers. Lynn Nygaard has a leisurely, hand-holding style which spells out her advice in slow-moving and measured stages. These start out from a recognition of how difficult writing is at this level, where a scholarly paper might represent months or even years of research.

Writing for ScholarsShe also explains the peer review process for both books and journal articles – but doesn’t take on board the alternative methods of self-archiving and collaborative publishing which Steven Harnad proposed for digital publishing more than a decade ago. Although her focus is quite rightly on the writing process I was surprised that she was so uncritical of academic research and publication practices. She takes it for granted that scholars are somehow entitled to expect research funding from governments, no matter the quality or relevance of what they produce in the way of results. And she seems to me to be completely out of touch with the sort of vainglorious subjectivism which passes for argument in many branches of the humanities. She claims that –

scholars in the humanities must meticulously lay out and justify their logic, in addition to linking their study to the work of others. If they don’t, their work will come across as weak, overly speculative, and not founded on anything substantial. Even if the topic is fascinating or exceptionally timely, journals will not risk publishing an article that lacks sound reasoning.

This is simply not true, as a glance at just about any journal featuring modern literary criticism or cultural theory will show in an instant.

She is well aware that writing is a process, not something that happens in one ‘creative’ burst. There is such a thing as ‘pre-writing’ where we might sort out our preliminary ideas in rough note form. And for regular spells of productive writing, time-management skills are required. She covers all this, and seems to know all the excuses we present to ourselves as an alternative to facing the hard work of generating words on the page.

She’s discussing mainly scientific writing and its need for objectivity, checkable facts and data, and the need for a transparent method. When I think of how flabby much writing is in the humanities, it’s no wonder that subjects such as literary criticism and cultural theory are held in such low regard.

There are plenty of good tips, such as limbering up by free writing or switching off your monitor – and how to get round the problem of the first person pronoun (‘I’) in academic writing.

She spends quite a lot of time on writing for more than one type of audience – though I wonder if any of the scholarly writing she’s talking about is ever really read by anyone outside its specialist audience. We know from hard evidence that most academic articles are read by no more than a handful of people. When was the last time you read a scholarly paper in a discipline other than your own, for instance?

Later chapters deal with some of the most difficult issues in creating a substantial piece of advanced level work – clarifying your own basic argument; giving its exposition structure and persuasive logic; and integrating the presentation of your evidence coherently. There’s even a chapter on making oral presentations of your work, which is a traditional feature of academic life at this level.

But two things about a book pertaining to offer guidance on an academic discipline really amazed me. One – that it quotes no practical examples of scholarly writing which are held up for examination, analysis, or criticism. And two, that it makes no reference at all to any other studies of academic writing, has no bibliography, and makes absolutely no recommendations for further reading. Those are serious shortcomings in a work of this kind.

This will be a reassuring text for aspiring researchers who want to maximise their chances of publication in the long struggle for promotion in the academic world, but for practical writing skills or an insight into the latest developments in academic publishing you will have to go elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Lynn Nygaard, Writing for Scholars: A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard, Norway: Universitetsforlaget, 2008, pp.195, ISBN: 1599946572


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Filed Under: Study skills Tagged With: Academic writing, Scholarly writing, Writing for Scholars, Writing skills

Writing Guides

November 16, 2009 by Roy Johnson

best-selling writing style guides

Writing Guides Doing your Research Project - book jacketDoing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education and Social Science is a best-selling UK guide which covers planning and record-keeping, interviewing, reviewing ‘the literature’, questionnaires, and writing the final report. Even if you are studying a subject other than education or social science, this is a wonderfully helpful guide on organising your ideas and your writing at research level. It’s a model of clarity and good sense. Now in its third edition – and deservedly so. Highly recommended.

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Writing GuidesWriting your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success is a US guide to writing at post-graduate level which uses practical examples, is strong on planning, and offers advice on negotiating the process of research – from making an application to submitting a dissertation. It’s also good on the issue of selecting a research topic and developing it into a feasible project. One of the features which has made this a popular choice is that it offers tips from former students on the problems they have faced in doing research – and how they have overcome them.

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Writing GuidesIf you have any serious intention of preparing text for publication, then Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers is your encyclopedia on typography, style, and presentation. It has become the classic UK guide and major source of reference for all aspects of editing and text-presentation, covering every possible bibliographic detail. It also covers a wide range of subjects – from languages to mathematics and music – as well as offering tips on copyright and preparing text for electronic publication.

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Writing GuidesWriting at University: a guide for students is a popular UK guide to understanding questions, planning assignments, reading and note-taking, and developing arguments. It puts a lot of emphasis on the process which leads up to the act of writing, and tries to show you how to develop more confidence. Different types of writing are discussed, as well as the important skill of matching your writing to the conventions of the discipline you are studying. The approach is like that of a sympathetic counsellor.

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Writing GuidesThe Classic Guide to Better Writing is more-or-less what its title suggests. It’s a best-selling US guide with emphasis on how to generate, plan, and structure your ideas. It also covers basic grammar, good style, and common mistakes. The approach is step-by-step explanations on each topic, plenty of good advice on how to avoid common mistakes, and tips on how to gain a reader’s attention. Suitable for all types of writing, it well deserves its good reputation.

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fowlerIf you need just one book which will answer all your questions on writing – from punctuation to publication – then this is it. The Little, Brown Handbook is an encyclopaedic US guide to all aspects of writing. It includes vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, style, document design, MLA conventions, editing, bibliography, and the Internet. All topics are profusely illustrated and cross-indexed, and some of the longer entries are virtually short essays. It also has self-assessment exercises so that you can check that you have understood the contents of each chapter. The Swiss army penknife of writing guides. Highly recommended.

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New Hart's Rules - Click for details at AmazonHart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford This is a UK classic guide to the finer points of editing and print preparation, spelling and typography. It was first written as the style guide for OUP, but quickly established a reputation well beyond. There’s no hand-holding here. Everything is pared to the bone. the centre of the book deals with ‘difficult’ and irregular spellings. A masterpiece of compression, it is now in its thirty-ninth edition. This is one for professionals rather than student writers.

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Oxford Writers Dictionary - book jacketThe Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors . This is a specialist dictionary for writers, journalists, and text-editors. Unlike most dictionaries, it does not offer explanations of the words meanings. It deals with problematic English and foreign words, offering correct spellings and consistent usage in the OUP house style. By concentrating on difficult cases, it saves you a lot of time. The latest edition also includes American spellings. Strongly recommended.

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The Elements of Style - Click for details at AmazonThe Elements of Style. This is an old favourite – a ‘bare bones’ guidance manual which cuts out everything except the essential answers to the most common writing problems. It covers the elements of good usage, how to write clearly, commonly misued words and expressions, and advice on good style. The emergency first-aid kit of writing guides. It’s very popular, not least because it’s amazingly cheap. Suitable for beginners. There’s an online version available if you do a search – but the cost of a printed version will pay dividends.

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A Manual for Term Papers, Dissertations, and ThesesA Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. This is a modern American classic guidance manual for academic writing. It covers everything from abbreviations and numbers to referencing and page layout. It also includes sections showing how to lay out tables and statistics; lots on bibliographic referencing; and how to deal with public and government documents. The latest edition also includes advice on word-processing.

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Style: Ten LessonsStyle: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. This is a popular guide – particularly amongst creative writing enthusiasts. It offers advice for improving your writing – by putting its emphasis on editing for clarity, creating structure, and keeping the audience in mind. These lessons are useful for all types of writing however. It has plenty of illustrative examples and exercises, an appendix with advice on punctuation, and a good glossary. Recommended.

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Successful Writing for Qualitative ResearchersSuccessful Writing for Qualitative Researchers. This is one for specialist academic writing at post-graduate level. It covers all the stages of creating a scholarly piece of work – from the preparation of a project through to the completion and possible publication of the finished article. Includes sections on style, editing, and collaborative writing. It takes a positive and encouraging tone – which will be welcome to those embarking on such tasks for the first time.

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On Writing WellOn Writing Well. This is a best-selling title, now in its sixth edition. It offers reassuring guidance from an experienced journalist on writing more effectively in a number of genres. He covers interviews, travel writing, memoirs, sport, humour, science and technology, and business writing. The approach is to take a passage and analyse it, showing how and why it works, or where it might be improved. It is particularly good on editing and re-writing.

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© Roy Johnson 2009


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Writing your doctoral dissertation

May 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guide to advanced academic study and writing skills

Do people at doctoral dissertation level need writing guides? Well yes, they do, because a composition of this scope usually presents difficulties most of us have never come across before. After all, we don’t produce 50,000 word research projects just for fun, do we? Rita Brause starts by explaining the differences between a dissertation and a long term paper [UK=coursework essay]. These are important distinctions which are often learned by most students only at the expense of much anguish and re-writing.

Doctoral Dissertation She also stresses just how much anybody will learn during the process of writing a dissertation, which is the sort of insight unlikely to be available to someone approaching this experience for the first time. She analyses practical examples to show the important structural elements of a dissertation, and then goes on to explain the stages in the doctoral process – including making an application, learning the language of institutions, and fulfilling all their technical requirements. These elements need to be taken into account even before the writing begins, and she justifies the attention she gives to them quite convincingly on the grounds that many students who fail to complete their research do so because they had no idea what to expect when they started out.

It is the US system she is describing, which contains the element of working to a committee that is not found in the UK system, but when it comes to the business of writing, all the issues of preparation, organisation, and intellectual stamina are identical.

The heart of the book comes three-quarters way through, where she describes in detail the process of locating and defining a topic, as well as the type of questions you should ask in order to ‘refine’ a topic or turn an observation into a proposal. These are the stages which in my experience of post-graduate teaching cause students most problems. A research proposal which has not been clearly defined is like an intellectual quagmire. No matter how much new material is generated, the student will be sucked ever deeper into the morass by competing priorities and a lack of focus.

There are three short bibliographies on dissertations, the academic world, and research methodology; but what I think might appeal most of all to the intended audience of this writing guide is an interesting collection of tips (some quite daunting) from former doctoral candidates. There’s often nothing quite so convincing as the reports of first-hand experience.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Rita S. Brause, Writing your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success, London: Falmer Press, 2000, pp.163, ISBN: 0750707445


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Filed Under: Study skills Tagged With: Academic writing, Dissertation, PhD, Research, Thesis, Writing skills

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