Hello! This blog is a response to an assigned task by Megha Trivedi ma’am. It deals with the Mechanics of Writing. This blog is based on the recorded video lectures by Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay and Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya. It deals with my learning from the videos.
MECHANICS OF WRITING
What is the mechanics of writing?
Writing is the process of creating written communication using a writing implement, such as a pen or pencil, and a writing surface, such as paper or a computer screen. The mechanism of writing involves the physical movements of the hand and fingers to form letters, symbols, and words on the writing surface. There is also a cognitive aspect to the mechanism of writing, which involves generating ideas, organizing them in a logical order, and expressing them in language.
The difference in academic and non-academic writing skills
1. Academic Writing:
Academic writing refers to a piece of writing which focuses on a specific academic subject/topic. Through academic writing, the writer intends to prove a theory or viewpoint in one way or the other. Mainly academic writings are based on academic findings and academic research and is intended for a scholarly audience. The writer can explain a specific subject matter by providing his/her own point of view. It includes scholarly essays, research papers, dissertations, etc.
2. Non-Academic Writing:
Non-Academic writing refers to a piece of writing which focuses on a general topic rather than any academic topic. It is not intended for an academic audience. It is intended for a lay audience or the mass public. Nonacademic writing focuses on lay audiences or the mass public. These types of articles are mostly personal, impressionistic, emotional, or subjective in nature. It includes magazine articles, personal or business letters, novels, websites, text messages, etc. are some examples of nonacademic writing.
Dr. Kalyan Chattopadhyay talked in the Ph.D. coursework session on Academic Writing. He talked about the importance of linguistic markers to identify formal and informal writing and shared his views on Critical Writing.
One can easily understand the difference between formal and informal language by comparing the Language used in text messages in everyday life and the organized language in the book. Basically, to know whether the write-up is formal or informal we need to know the pitches of the write-up. A story pitch is a succinct way of explaining what your story is about, what makes it right for the person you are pitching it to, and why it will sell.
Features of academic/ formal writing:
- Formal vocabulary
- Cautious language- not stating clearly
- Objective language
- More use of passive voice
- Use of questions
- references/ citations
- Objective, formal- Your research will be assessed by professors like me
- Subjective, informal- I will assess your research.
Academic writing is divided into paragraphs that are hooked with each other, the paras are divided into topical sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding para/ sentences; does not have topic sentences but concludes everything.
Academic writing uses signaling expressions/ linguistic markers which are True, as a result, however, although, because of, etc. it needs to be used significantly and cautiously because it gives a turn to the arguments.
Academic writing is writing critically. Writing critically means making the best use of the material one has consulted, it involves careful thinking, analysis, comparison, and decision-making. It involves questioning the arguments done by the seminal critics. Research writing is establishing one’s own idea otherwise it is a jumble of ideas.
A talk by Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya was delivered in Ph.D. Coursework is divided into two parts. In this first part, he talked about the basics of Academic Writing for the specific purpose of Research in English Studies.
A basic principle of the way of writing is to question and understand What not to do? What can be done? What are the useful Web tools and the case study?
One can create a paper full of formal writing, and Jargon. Alan Sokal showed that people are writing extremely theoretically using a lot of jargon and they don't read a lot because of difficult language. He published a paper Transgressing the boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics which was only a meaningless combination of jargon and was accepted and peer-reviewed. The same was repeated in Serbia; they made a source of false arguments with Ron Jeremy and Michae Jackson.
The picture of academic writing we see is extremely complex, and formalized, and uses jargon and technical terms. It has its own structure but it does not necessarily mean that it should be understandable only to academicians.
The publication Scale: Not so harmless
Siddharth Mukherjee in The Emperor of the Maladies claims that the first cure for breast cancer came from South Africa. The Doctor gave a surgery that claimed to cure more than 20 patients. Later the doubts were raised and realized that in most cases it relapsed. It was later known that it was fake and in meantime, many women lost their lives. Academic writing can have great consequences, especially in the case of data forging and imagining data, making arguments about what does not exist.
Few takeaways-
- Writing has material effects: Data forging can lead to loss
- Avoid massive jargonization
- Research and publication ethics
- Carefully choose topic
Writing tips:
- Writing an introduction of at least
- Create an indexed literature review: whether you use it in your work or not
- Be sure of the triangulated methods (looking at the same sets of data from various approaches)
- Do not repeat the same arguments
- Use available digital tools
- Follow the literature: do an act of writing something new
Making a choice in selecting authentic journals for publication. Web of Science and Scopus are the good ones and one can check out the authentic journals at the UGC Care website, and one can get the Journal rank in it.
Some digital tools for reference management
- Zotero
- Mendeley
- MS Word
- Language help
- Grammarly
- OWL (Online Writing Lab)
- Reverso
- Excelsior Online writing lab
Plagiarism
Types
- Verbatim or rephrasing without acknowledgments
- Inappropriate collaboration
- Other assistance with acknowledgments
- Cheating
- Duplication
- Research fabrication and falsification
- Using computer networks for false attribution
In this second part, he talked about the mechanics of Academic Writing for the specific purpose of Research in English Studies.
Formulating propositions/ Defining- stating or defining some things and on it, the whole thesis/ dissertation is based. Its linguistic structure in
Key term + verb (be)/ is defined as/ Can be defined/ may be defined as/ is often defined as + [in] which/ that/ where/ when + Defining features.
We are not stating the truth we always state what we think is true. We should write in a way that we are not claiming anything. It's an important framework that guides us through our write-up.
Genre: classification (Swales’ CARS model)
Definition
↓
Purpose
↓
Justification
↓
Literature Review
↓
Method
↓
Argument
↓
Conclusion
Classification of academic writing is a very important step.
Organizing ideas
Paraphrasing
- It's really important in academic writing.
- Avoid repeating yourself. words/ ideas/sentences.
- Avoid quoting someone else exactly
- Change your vocabulary
- Develop Your own ‘Voice’ in your writing
Introduction
The rational points- why are doing this research? Why this literature is important? how are you interested in that research? What is your position in that research? What is a personal point of interest?
- The thesis statement/ the topic sentence- what the research is about supported by other evidence. The sentence provides an idea of what research is about.
- Contextualizing material- what is another kind of research done around this area?
- A statement to gain the reader's interest.
- A basic definition.
Noun Phrases and nominalizations
Defining the noun which we have used in spite of it can be said in the simplest language.
Noun phrases help you to expand your ideas.
Stance
- Our personal point of view. Try to provide a point of view in a sentence.
- The internet and the WWW have provided a new medium of culture, generally labeled cyberculture, because it exists in cyberspace.
- Generally- I think it is a general acceptance and there might be other points also. One clears their points that he agrees on the major definitions but also agrees that there are other points.
- Apparently- it creates a point of view that at least from literature this is the aids.
- It may be argued/ Arguably.- one completely agrees with
Hedging language
The phenomenon of keeping the window open for other possibilities, ideas, and instances is called hedging. Modal verbs like can, may, and verbs like seem, appear, etc helps not to give absolute facts and keep the voice uncertain.
My way of classifying- This way of classifying
Passivization
The process of changing a verb or sentence into the passive: The subject of the sentence is hard to identify because of passivization. The research included transitive verbs that allow the passivization
Structure of arguments.
I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting
[words- 1559
Images- 4
Videos- 3]
No comments:
Post a Comment