Academic Writing

Over the break between subjects I decided to improve my writing skills by participating in a course offered by CSU entitled SSS022 Writing at University. I have found it very helpful and here are some of the points I have learnt:

After receiving an email back from Joyce, I realise that a thesis statement does not need to be controversial! It is just a statement on what you think of the topic. The focus should then be on the task works "describe" and "explain''.
It is a valuable learning process, which I hope I can implement in this assignment 3 and in the following assignments to come.
Reflecting on Module 2, I now have a better understanding of "critical" thinking and writing.  Critical thinking is much more successful if it has some strength, and, by gaining access to the evidence, being able to evaluate it, you find that you have the substance to support your ideas convincingly when you write.  Germov (2000) maintains that:

The tertiary essay has to do more than simply describe a topic: it's not just a summary of your reading; you are required to critically question or analyse your material.  Being critical doesn't mean criticising just for the sake of criticising something.  In academic work, being critical means making an objective assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the theories and research findings that are relevant to your essay topic.  Such an approach is sometimes called critical analysis. (pp. 36-37)

How can you learn to do critical analysis?? As stated in this module a good way to answer a question is to continually ask yourself how each piece of research, theory, evidence, concept, definition or criticism that you come across in your reading fits in with what you already know about the topic. I feel this is a type of cross referencing, picking out the similar thoughts/ideas from a number of authors you have read. It gives the point more authenticity if it is supported by a collection of authors.  Analysing is important to establish common points and points that conflict .
 Going back to Learning Activity 2.7: Task Word Analysis, I think this is a good way to analyse and unpack an assignment question. The use of the framework below could be very useful.

Topic =
Focus =
Task =
Limitations =
A great site to look at as a guide to essay writing is:
 http://www.csu.edu.au/division/studserv/my-studies/learning/guides/essay/intro which contains the summary below:
Your thesis is a statement, not another question and sits in the introduction.
An introduction containing these features might look like this:


I will definitely be using these skills in my future assignments!