As we have already said, this book is designed for you to choose the different sections and activities that seem the most relevant for you, but we do recom- mend that you read it all the way through to get a complete picture of writing at university.
Chapter 2 introduces some important ways of getting started and approach- ing university writing for the first time. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with, and practise, the techniques covered as they will be useful for you to use later on in your studies.
In Chapter 3 we consider what it means to write for different courses. Most
students find that they are being asked to write in a number of different ways during their time at university. This chapter should help you to identify the different course requirements that you will encounter for writing assignments.
Chapter 4 focuses on the importance of analysing the assignment title and addressing the question set. The activities in this chapter are designed for you to apply to any written assignment that you come across while at university.
Chapter 5 looks at reading as an integral part of the writing process and directs you to useful strategies that you can adopt when reading for your assignments. You will also be encouraged to think about yourself as a reader of your own work.
In Chapter 6 we introduce different approaches to planning, shaping and organizing your writing. Activities help you to think about your own planning process and how to find your central idea.
Chapter 7 takes up the subject of developing an argument and how to persuade, and how to take your reader into account in your writing.
Chapter 8 looks at how to draw on and cite different sources in your assignment writing. It also invites you to think about what plagiarism means in academic writing and how to use your sources so that you can avoid it.
Chapter 9 addresses a question that puzzles many students: how do I get myself into this assignment? It looks at different ways of writing academic knowledge and how to move from the personal to the academic. It also suggests strategies for using the first person and writing your own opinions.
By the time you get to Chapter 10 you will be concerned with putting every- thing together and editing and redrafting your work. These issues are dealt with here, in addition to approaches to writing introductions and conclusions.
Chapter 11 looks at the overall sense of your written text and how to make it coherent. Some attention is given to punctuation as one way of making sure that your writing will make sense to the reader. The chapter also suggests ways of building on the feedback that you will get from your tutor.
In Chapter 12 we explore how you could tackle different kinds of writing that you might have to do at university in addition to essays. We also look at issues of writing online.
Chapter 13 looks at learning journals and reflective writing, which help you to take a more personal approach to your learning and deepen your understanding.
Just a final note. This book is about writing for assignments and does not make any direct reference to writing for exams. However, we believe that developing your understanding and experience, through attending to the tasks and strategies in this book, should help you to tackle any of your writing that has to be undertaken under exam conditions.
YOU AND UNIVERSITY WRITING 11
Notes
• It is important to practise different kinds of writing. Try to build up the sense that for most university courses writing is a crucial element and that part of your work as a student is to write.
• Don’t confine your writing to the required assignments. Try to turn yourself into a regular writer who does a bit of some kind of writing every day.
• Take every opportunity to take part in seminars and discussion groups, and try to set up a self-help group to discuss reading and related activities and to review assignments.
• Use the activities in the following chapters as ways of building up your range of writing and reading techniques, and remind yourself that at each stage of preparing an assignment you know more than you think.
• Keep a learning log.
2
Getting started
Bridging a gap: you and university study • Practice writing • Brainstorming • Generating questions
It all seems like another planet.
It’s like learning a new language – you have to start from the beginning again.
I just don’t know where to begin.
In this chapter we will assume that you are about to begin your university study (whether in an area which is new to you or not) and are asking questions about what you will have to do for writing at university. We will explore what is involved in university writing and will suggest some first steps that you can take towards tackling your assignments. Our aim is to help you to be confident in starting out; our message in this chapter is that you need to be courageous, prepared to take risks, and committed enough to keep practising.
We acknowledge that university writing can be difficult but believe that there are ways of approaching it that will build up your confidence and develop your competence. This chapter uses three well-known methods for beginning to write: practice writing (based on a commonly used ‘freewriting’ technique developed by Peter Elbow) to get started with the writing; brainstorming to get down as many ideas as you can as quickly as you can; generating your own questions to think around a topic.
We will suggest that you try out these techniques in different ways and for different purposes, both for getting information and ideas, and for presenting them. The tasks are all designed to help you to get started quickly, so that you
can use what you already know, and find ways of extending and developing your thinking. We hope that you will enjoy trying these ideas, which are about thinking, working and writing confidently.