Strategies to Develop your Writing

1. Strategies to Develop your Writing Íde O’Sullivan Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre

2. Academic-writing workshops • Strategies to develop your writing • Analysing the assignment title and developing a plan • Developing an effective thesis statement. Methods of development and organisation of ideas • Using evidence to support your argument Tuesday, 16-17, CG-054 Regional Writing Centre

3. Writing support: Drop-ins for students • Visit our website (www.ul.ie/rwc) to check out our tutors and make an appointment. • Drop-in to the Writing Centre, C1-065 Mon — 2.30 – 4.30 pm Tues 10 - 12 2 – 4.30 pm Wed 10 - 12 2 – 5 pm Thurs 10 - 12 2 – 5 pm Fri 10 - 12 — Regional Writing Centre

4. Difficulties associated with writing • Anxiety and fear of writing • Lack of confidence and motivation • Cracking the codes of academic writing • Getting started • Lack of guidance, practice and feedback • Misconceptions of writing • Good writing skills are innate X • Think first, then write X Regional Writing Centre

5. Cracking the codes • Analysing the genre/text and modelling • Generate a list of • The most important features of academic writing • Criteria to make your writing more effective • The important conventions in your discipline • What is/is not acceptable in your discipline • Journal guidelines for contributors Regional Writing Centre

6. Discipline-specific conventions • What organisational features/patterns are in evidence? • How are arguments and counterarguments presented and structured? • What types of evidence are important in this discipline? • What stylistic features are prominent? • Is the text cohesive? How does the author achieve such cohesion? • What kind(s) of persuasive devises does the author employ? • Are there noticeable features that can be transferred to other disciplines? Regional Writing Centre

7. Getting started • Writing is a process • Create time and space for writing • Freewriting • Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes • Write in sentences • Do not edit or censor your writing • Prompt • “How I go about writing…” • How do you feel? • Other prompts: • “The aim of this assignment…” Regional Writing Centre

8. Dialogue about writing • Peer-review • Generative writing • The “writing sandwich” (Murray, 2005:85): writing, talking, writing • Writing “buddies” (Murray and Moore, 2006:102) • Engaging in critiques of one another’s work allows you to become effective critics of your own work. Regional Writing Centre

9. Strategies that work for you • Writing is a personal process • Learning diary (Moore and Murphy, 2005:61) • Process journal (Elbow and Belanoff, 2003:19) • When do you feel most/least motivated to write? • What strategies have/have not worked in the past? Regional Writing Centre

10. Strategies that work for you • Write a little bit every day (Moore and Murphy, 2005:117) • “we learn to write through writing” (Hyland, 2002:81) • Writing can be a positive experience • Get stuck in Regional Writing Centre

11. Works cited • Elbow, P. (1998) Writing without Teachers (2nd edition). New York: Oxford University Press. • Elbow, P. and Belanoff, P. (2003) Being a Writer: A Community of Writers Revisited. New York: McGraw-Hill. • Hyland, K. (2002) Teaching and Researching Writing. London: Pearson Education Ltd. • Moore, S. and Murphy, M. (2005) How to be a Student: 100 Great Ideas and Practical Hints for Students Everywhere. UK: Open University Press. • Murray, R. (2005) Writing for Academic Journals. UK: Open University Press. • Murray, R. and Moore, S. (2006) The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach. UK: Open University Press. Regional Writing Centre