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There are three important elements to academic writing, critique, interpretation
and cohesion. We'll look at each of these in turn.
First critique. What is it? Engaging with information,
it's about analyzing the message,
questioning it, synthesizing, responding.
Where does it start? With the reading and research.
And it's really important you take good notes.
I recommend colour coding, highlighting things that you want to use in your writing.
What does it consist of? There are two elements.
One, a reporting element where you describe the idea that you're researching,
that you're writing about. And two crucially a response element where you critically
engage with, you react to the research,
the idea. A lot of people do the descriptive part very well.
But a lot of people don't put enough time into the critical engagement part.
And that's what we're focussing on here.
So let's look at a layered paragraph approach.
Take 30 seconds to read through this first part.
What we'll see is, it's a descriptive part of the writing where we're talking
about what Brent found in the study.
Look at the next part, the middle section is the critique part where you can put
in some of your response to what Brent found.
In this case, you're using another author Lee, and Lee makes
note of a limitation to Brent study.
The third part is the solution section.
We are providing another author, James, who talks about what
would have made the study more illustrative, and right the very end
we're providing some positive critique about James study, its pivotal longitudinal
into multi facility, broad scope study.
We're using positive language.
What this gives us is a narrative thread through the writing,
it links one part to the next part in a layered approach, which is
very readable and easy to understand.
What might we critique? Well, there are many things we can look at the method,
assumptions, bias. Sample size is an easy one.
How big or how small, how many people participated in the study?
The claims that the research makes, the applicability of the findings, whether we can
replicate it in other areas of other places of study.
The long term effects are unknown or the gaps,
what the study didn't look at. So identify these things as you
read, make notes of them and colour code these notes so you can
even work up some type of system where you can colour coded things that are really
important to use and the things that you may not use.
Let's look at another layered paragraph approach.
Take some time to read what Chuo found.
Look at the middle section. Read through that and the final section, you'll see a similar
thing going on to the first paragraph sample we looked at, where
we have a description section.
The natural place to start to describe what you're finding.
A critique.
And a solution. Now, crucial difference between this example
and the first example is that the critique this time comes from you.
And the solution comes from you.
So you have choices here in your critique.
You can write the critique through different authors.
Were you state what somebody else has said about the research or
you can make the comment yourself.
Again, this layered approach gives us our narrative thread through the writing.
So let's look at some examples of critique language.
We can have limitation based language, negative critique.
We can have strengths based positive critique.
We can look at synthesizing between different studies, looking at similarity and
difference or agreement and disagreement between authors.
We can look at constructive suggestions.
Solutions. A really, really good
resource for this is the academic phrase bank with a URL on the screen that gives you
a huge bank of this type of language.
We also have particular verbs we use which can suggest or really
give a good message about our critical tone. If we feel neutral, or we
feel that the author feels neutral about something,
we use those words like argues or suggests.
On the other hand, if we feel quite strongly about this will be using words like
stresses, proposes, urges.
There's a good bank of verbs that you can use.
Let's move on to interpretation. What is it?
It's where you comment on the meaning or significance of something.
Why do it? Well, it shows why we've made a point.
Why something is worth writing about.
Why it's important. It moves our writing crucially from simple
description into interpretation and being critical again.
When should we do it? Well, whenever we need to signal significance to the reader.
Let's look at some examples and we can see that the black part of
the sentence is the descriptive part.
And the blue part gives us our interpretive language.
This is significant because, it draws our attention to. Another example.
We can see the language again, which is crucial as, what this points to,
what this suggests that, and what that does, if you look at it carefully
when you're using that language, it's you providing the interpretation.
You're basically saying what I think this points to without saying
I think.
And there's that language again highlighted.
There is a lot of this type of language we can use.
It's vital, it illustrates, this is significant and I really, really strongly recommend
you use this language again.
Two reasons. It moves your writing from descriptive to interpretive and it gives
you a voice and your academic markers
want to see evidence of both of those things.
Finally, cohesion.
What is it? It's the quality of connection and linking between our ideas in our work.
It provides flow and sequence in our writing.
It helps make message clear.
Very crucial. How do we show cohesion?
Well, it's the style of language we use, the signal markers.
Let's look at some examples. We can use linkers, typically, and
which, therefore. We can also use what we call referent links.
Words like this, which relates back to a point before it that the method was successful.
In the second example, the it relates to the focus being on the method, so we don't have
to repeat that phrase, we can use that referent link.
And these are very powerful again because they provide that narrative thread
through the text and links back to things that have been said written
about before.
So let's look at some of the cohesive language we can use to show relationship and
connection in our writing. We use thesis statements.
They give us cohesion at the macro level.
The whole paper level. We can use topic sentences, which give us
cohesion in our sections and though we usually come at the head of paragraphs.
Then we use sentence level, cohesive devices, connectors,
linkers like the ones there, sequences to show sequence in our work.
First. Second. Finally.
And then words like, it,
he, she, the researcher, the paper, referring back to things we've already established.
I want you to take 30 seconds to read through this example.
Have a think about how this writing reads to you.
Is it cohesive? Is it linked?
Is it fluent?
Let's look at the same paragraph, with some crucial differences.
We have linkers serving as joining devices, joining the sentences
together, providing that flow and giving us that relationship.
You can see those linkers, as a result, which show causal relationship,
therefore - causal relationship, and is a linking device.
We also have our importance markers, the ones that show interpretation.
This is important, in light of this.
This highlights that. What this points to and what you can see and
this is the same paragraph as the one before with the linkers is the importance
markers put in, the contents the same,
what this does, it gives us our narrative thread.
It gives us our cohesion and our interpretation.
It makes our writing much more powerful.
So three important elements to academic writing. Critique.
We engage with, and respond to, the ideas. Interpretation.
Where we state significance, we have a voice,
we go beyond description. And cohesion.
We have our narrative, thread, link and flow.
So, how can I get better? How can I improve? Read.
You need to do a lot of reading, both academic and for pleasure.
Look at models. There are plenty online.
Look at these essays online for language, style and structure.
Do not copy them. They're for educative purposes only.
Past papers. Your tutor may give you access to these and
feedback. Listen to what is being said about your writing.
For more tips and resources, search for Academic Skills, Unimelb.
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