As you begin your college career at your preferred, you will want to pause to think about ways to strengthen your academic writing. There are certainly lots of ways to do this, and each of you will have a different relationship to writing. Some of you will feel that this is a strength of yours to be further strengthened, and some of you will feel it's a weakness that you know you need to work on.
Whatever your experience, there is no doubt that you will need to take writing at the college level seriously, simply because every course will require you to write a great deal. As soon as you start your first class, you will be required to start writing immediately in your Learning Journal, Discussion Forums, Assignments, and Peer Assessments.
So let's begin to think about academic writing systematically. Here are the 8 questions to review every time you sit down to write. They are guiding principles for you as you begin your studies during college days, and our hope is that you will use them so often that you end up knowing them intrinsically and instinctually; until then treat this like a checklist to review before you start writing.
- Do I understand the assignment?
It may seem obvious, but always review the instructions for your writing assignment once, twice, or even three times to be sure you understand what you're supposed to do.
- Have you completed all the readings that you are required to read?
Reading always comes before writing. It's the 'official' unofficial rule! If you're trying to do it in the reverse order, think again, especially if you are supposed to comment on an article or reading and have not yet done the reading.
- Is there anything about the reading or assignment that I just really do not get/understand?
It's hard to write when you are not sure you understand the reading and/or the assignment instructions; if that's the case, you should ask a classmate or your Course Instructor for assistance. The best place to ask a question to all your classmates is in the Course Forum. If your college or university doesn't have that, you can ask your Course Instructor through email, short messages, viber, whatsapp, and other communication means. But be courteous ang polite when asking your instructors/ professors.
- Do I know what I want to say?
If you sit down to write and don't know what you want to say, you usually end up sitting for some time and write without any direction at all, or writing in circles.
Better to stop and pause to think before you start writing. Many people like to think aloud as if they are having a conversation with themselves. You may ask yourself, "Okay, what is the assignment again, and what are my own ideas about the topic? What other ideas have been introduced to us this week in the reading or in previous weeks?”
Talk it out; think before you start writing to try to pull together your thoughts into some kind of coherent way; it doesn't have to be super coherent, but you should know what you're trying to say, more or less.
- Do I have enough time to let whatever I have just written 'sit' for a bit? That is, have you left enough time to edit what you wrote?
Usually, when we write, the writing is rough and needs some fine-tuning and polishing. Or perhaps your thoughts are just not fully formed and you just need some further time to rework your ideas.
Time away from your writing is always best. If you write a draft and even just walk away for an hour and come back, usually you can see some obvious ways to edit and clarify what you have earlier written.
So going away and coming back to your writing is the number 1 writing tip we can recommend to you. This is why writing at the last minute is not a great approach; usually, your best editing comes after you've stepped away from what you've written for even just a little while.
And you'll always want to edit anything you submit, at least a few times, until it seems ready.
- Have I successfully quoted or paraphrased ideas that are not my own, and given credit where credit is due?
If you're not sure whether you may be in violation of your University's Code of Academic Integrity, go back and check before you submit anything. You should surely be able to know if what you've written doesn't seem like your own writing, and/or you've used other ideas without citing the references.
Golden Rule: If your paper does not sound like you, it means you have been using too much of the writing of others and inserted it into your document. Sometimes we do that because we've got a reading in front of us and the way the other person has written it sounds so great. But stop immediately and go back; delete their words and write them in your voice/words and with your own explanation, and be sure to quote anything you want to directly quote from a text using the standard APA Style.
And then run your paper through an online plagiarism checker. You can visit Paper Rater or Unicheck.
- Have I referenced the articles/websites/books etc in my paper?
Most universities follow the APA Style. Other universities use MLA and CMS writing & referencing format. If you're not sure how to cite the source in your paper, refer to the OWL (Online Writing Lab) Citation Chart below from Purdue University.
- Have I proofread the entire document before submitting my assignment?
This is key and please don't skip the proofreading step.
We recommend, if you can, to read your paper aloud to hear if your sentences make sense to you. This process will help you be sure that what you want to submit is really what you want to submit. This may seem obvious, but doing one last 'once-over' of the document should never be skipped and so often is. Some people call this step 'dotting their i's and crossing their t's which is just another way of saying that you should make sure everything looks just right.
So to be sure everything you write is really sharp and proofread; read through everything one last time before submitting your work.
CONCLUSION
Being in a student's life, whether it's undergraduate or graduate school, is really a great experience as you are becoming a responsible person and giving credit to whom and where it is due. Avoid plagiarism and give citations to the original authors and creators.
So good luck on your first-ever substantial writing!
REFERENCE:
Learning Guide Unit 2, Becoming the Confident Writer You Want to Be (2021), University of the People. https://my.uopeople.edu/mod/book/view.php?id=256890&chapterid=293164
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