The Academic Writer is a brief guide that prepares students for any college writing situation through a solid foundation in rhetorical concepts. By framing the reading and composing processes in terms of the rhetorical situation, Lisa Ede gives students the tools they need to make effective choices. With an emphasis on analysis and synthesis, and making and supporting claims, students learn to master the moves of academic writing across mediums. A new chapter on "Strategies for Multimodal Composing" and advice on writing in a multimodal environment throughout the text help instructors take students into new contexts for reading and composing. New coverage of drafting, editing, and revising, and updated coverage of academic research--including the 2016 MLA guidelines--ensures that students are supported at all stages of the writing process.
Elegant data and ideas deserve elegant expression, argues Helen Sword in this lively guide to academic writing. For scholars frustrated with disciplinary conventions, and for specialists who want to write for a larger audience but are unsure where to begin, here are imaginative, practical, witty pointers that show how to make articles and books a pleasure to read—and to write. Dispelling the myth that you cannot get published without writing wordy, impersonal prose, Sword shows how much journal editors and readers welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Sword’s analysis of more than a thousand peer-reviewed articles across a wide range of fields documents a startling gap between how academics typically describe good writing and the turgid prose they regularly produce. Stylish Academic Writing showcases a range of scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences who write with vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure, and close with examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master.
This book is a bridge to confident academic writing for advanced non-native English users. It emphasizes depth over breadth through mastery of core writing competencies and strategies which apply to most academic disciplines and genres. Tailored to students in EMI programs, the content was piloted and revised during a longitudinal writing study. The innovative approach prepares students to write for the academic community through the dual lenses of Art (developing a writer’s voice through choices in language, style, and topics) and Architecture (mastering norms of academic language, genre, and organization.) The user-friendly text maximizes time for writing practice and production by avoiding lengthy readings. Part 1 builds skills and confidence in writing by focusing on assignments that do not require research. Part 2 applies newly mastered principles, skills, and strategies to research-based writing. Students learn to incorporate thesis, research, and evidence into a process for academic writing by following the AWARE framework (Arranging to write, Writing, Assessing, Revising, and Editing.)
All students and professors need to write, and many struggle to finish their stalled dissertations, journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals. Writing is hard work and can be difficult to wedge into a frenetic academic schedule. In this practical, light-hearted, and encouraging book, Paul Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles, how to improve writing quality, and how to write and publish academic work.
Writing is not just about conveying 'content' but also about the representation of self. (One of the reasons people find writing difficult is that they do not feel comfortable with the 'me' they are portraying in their writing. Academic writing in particular often poses a conflict of identity for students in higher education, because the 'self' which is inscribed in academic discourse feels alien to them.)The main claim of this book is that writing is an act of identity in which people align themselves with socio-culturally shaped subject positions, and thereby play their part in reproducing or challenging dominant practices and discourses, and the values, beliefs and interests which they embody. The first part of the book reviews recent understandings of social identity, of the discoursal construction of identity, of literacy and identity, and of issues of identity in research on academic writing. The main part of the book is based on a collaborative research project about writing and identity with mature-age students, providing: - a case study of one writer's dilemmas over the presentation of self;- a discussion of the way in which writers' life histories shape their presentation of self in writing;- an interview-based study of issues of ownership, and of accommodation and resistance to conventions for the presentation of self;- linguistic analysis of the ways in which multiple, often contradictory, interests, values, beliefs and practices are inscribed in discourse conventions, which set up a range of possibilities for self-hood for writers.The book ends with implications of the study for research on writing and identity, and for the learning and teaching of academic writing.The book will be of interest to students and researchers in the fields of social identity, literacy, discourse analysis, rhetoric and composition studies, and to all those concerned to understand what is involved in academic writing in order to provide wider access to higher education.
How to transform a thesis into a publishable work that can engage audiences beyond the academic committee. When a dissertation crosses my desk, I usually want to grab it by its metaphorical lapels and give it a good shake. “You know something!” I would say if it could hear me. “Now tell it to us in language we can understand!” Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees. At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience—a committee or advisors—to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. He also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work. With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, he reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision—a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add “author” to their curriculum vitae.
This ebook has been updated to provide you with the latest guidance on documenting sources in MLA style and follows the guidelines set forth in the MLA Handbook, 9th edition (April 2021). The Academic Writer is a brief, affordable guide that’s the ideal introduction to college writing.
This book addresses key features of the methodology involved in business and management academic writing. Characterizing academic writing as part of research, science and the knowledge generation process, it focuses on its three main aspects: understanding existing research, documenting and sharing the results of the acquired knowledge, and acknowledging the use of other people's ideas and works in the documentation. Written in lucid language, the authors use various examples of good as well as defective writing to help students understand the concepts.
This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. With its unique focus on source-based writing and writing across the curriculum, the third edition of The Academic Writer’s Handbook contains all the features of a traditional handbook combined with the tools students need in order to read, write, and conduct research in the disciplines.
