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Getting to Grips with Academic Writing
Yikes ! I can’t write this assignment! Some students find it difficult to get to grips with academic writing tasks. Whereas they often understand key concepts associated with an assignment or task they find it very difficult to express these in writing. The problem can lead to stress and frustration on all sides as written assessments may not be seen as a fair measure of student learning outcomes. Of course every person is unique and it is not always easy to provide good advice for all situations; that said, I have noticed similarities in the challenges students face and so I hope the advice I provide below can be of…
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Ten Tips for Writing Academic Papers
Completing academic writing assignments is one of the most important skills you will need to develop as a student. This is true regardless of your subject or discipline. Based on my own experience writing and correcting papers and discussions with students I have compiled these ten tips to help you get going. I have used these at the Academic Writing Club we set up in National College of Ireland to support students through the challenges of this process. 1 Read the task Spend time reading and analysing the task you have been assigned. Look for action words such as ‘discuss’, ‘compare’, ‘critique’ and so on. Check if you need to…
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Getting to Grips with Academic Writing
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How to Write a Literature Review for a Dissertation
Writing a Literature Review Writing a dissertation is one of the great learning tasks of college education. However, many students find it a daunting process. One of the first challenges you face is writing a literature review and the purpose of this post is to help you get started with the process, to keep you on track as you proceed and to provide a means of self-reviewing your outputs when you (think you) have completed. Let’s start with a simple set of questions: What constitutes a literature review? What is it used for? and What distinguishes a good literature review from a poor one? As the name implies, a literature review is a review of other people’s…
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Getting to Grips with Academic Writing
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Wikipedia as a source in academic writing
Have you ever heard of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi?Pestalozzi was a Swiss educationalist – he had interesting ideas for progressive education – at the start of the nineteenth century he was advocating an enlightened approach to schooling. Perhaps in a future blog I will further discuss Pestalozzi but the topic I have set out above is Wikipedia and I have introduced Pestalozzi as an example to support a point I wish to make.Could I invite you the reader to open a new tab and look up Pestalozzi in Wikipedia. There you will find an excellent illustrated article containing biographical details and illustrations. It is a good place to start if you…
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Getting to Grips with Academic Writing
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Plagiarism Reframed
Mention plagiarism to any third level academic and you are likely to be greeted with groans and laments.This is one topic that gets into people’s hearts – it leads to animated discussions and hard views. It is unwise to be regarded as soft on the issue. It is annoying, very annoying to be reading something presented as a student’s original work when it dawns on you – this is familiar – or – this is not the same style of writing as expected.Plagiarism is genuinely offensive to many academics – it offends one’s sense of academic integrity and is regarded as a dishonourable practice and a form of cheating.Many also…
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Getting to Grips with Academic Writing
