Academic Writing 101 – Part 2 – “What should I write about?”

Professor John Caine
SUNY, Suffolk Community College

Academic Writing 101 Part 2

 

One question I can guarantee every writing teacher has been asked is,

“What should I write about?”

This question often means students are having a hard time with focus and clarity not just subject material. Students ask the question, but what they often mean is, “How do I start?” Indeed, this has been the key question for the most well-known writers. Lewis Carroll offers us the obvious answer in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked. 
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

How many English teachers have been tempted to quote these lines?

Academic writing is all about focus and clarity, so the question demands an answer, and the answer is a major component of well-written papers. The answer is, “May I see your outline, please?” This one question often brings students to the realization that academic writing is like making a nice dinner not a quick (text) snack.

If we’ve gotten to the writing section of the course, then we have already taught students various outline techniques, whether clustering, free-writing, or some other method. We teach them the process of creating an outline and then assume they will just naturally use the process, but do they? Academic writing can be a frightful procedure for many students. They view the procedure as if they were walking through a minefield filled with corrections (Bang), edits (Boom), and rewrites (Ouch).

Here is where so many instructors shine and inspire. Instead of land mines, they turn the landscape into a garden. Corrections become pleasant additions, rewrites become new ways to express and retell. Each edit brings rewards and satisfaction in learning to master a new language. And there is mutual joy in sharing this growth.

Most students are naturally anxious to do well, but they are unaware how this arduous process will affect their lives in the long term for employment applications, résumés, employment interviews, and much more. Asking students for an outline helps them to slow down and begin to focus. Now they must go back to their notes and choose a method to create an outline, knowing you will ask again. Does it matter if they use a formal or informal outline? For me it depends on the subject and depth of the subject. Some essays may require a formal outline simply because of the complexity of the subject, but most essays need only an informal one. But they must have an outline.

Here is where the academic process starts for students. “What should I write about?” becomes a mantra of focus and clarity. They will produce an outline using one of the methods they’ve been taught. As the outline forms, their focus sets and their clarity becomes sharp. Focus and clarity lets them answer their own question, “What should I write about?” They now have a topic, and with a topic they can develop a topic sentence, and that will lead them to a coherent paragraph. I’ve got goose bumps!

About the Author

John Caine is the author of several books, (Waldo and the Wackos, The Story of Pig and Giraffe, La Historia de Cerdo y Jirafa, My Name Sir?, In the Time of Big Trains, 4:56) short stories and poetry. He teaches English where he currently lives on Long Island, NY with his family

 

Academic Writing 101

Academic Writing 101

Professor John Caine
SUNY, Suffolk Community College

For many students, the first time they communicate in actual academic writing is in their first semester of college. There, for the first time, students understand that what they had been writing was a very “forgiven” form of academic writing, nurtured by kind instructors. Now, in an ultra-competitive college environment, they are expected, in fact required, to display and excel in the only acceptable form of higher education writing. This is often difficult and frustrating for both students and instructors. But there are ways to make the transition easier.

Teaching students to become fluent academic writers can be a challenge. As educators, we know that good readers are much more likely to become good writers. Introducing students to well-written examples before teaching academic writing helps them understand the process and how to use academic writing for various purposes. Academic writing comes in many forms: rhetorical, logical, argumentative, and the dreaded essay, to name a few. Helping students discover and understand better writing begins with helping them discover and understand how to be better readers. And let’s face it — better writing means less red ink and more sighs of relief. The transition is often easier for good readers because they usually have a wider vocabulary and better context awareness, draw on background knowledge, recognize sentence structure, and understand why they are reading. These skills seem obvious, but they are lacking in, and are even foreign to, many readers.

Approximately one in six individuals cannot do what you are doing now — read. Of those able to read, many do not do so on a regular basis predominately because of lack of opportunity. This means that exposure to academic written examples may be lacking.

We want students to have strong, well-organized papers, and that means helping them understand reading, speaking, grammar, and writing in academic terms. Sometimes asking students to speak in logical, fluent sentences is a good way to have them begin the process of writing in fluent, logical sentences. The end result of academic writing is to teach, to help us understand something better than we did before, or to add insight into previously studied material. Information is wonderful, but what is more important is how we can use the information in practical ways. If the information is not presented in a fluent, logical sequence, it is useless.

People read what they are interested in, so let your students experience and benefit from appropriate material that engages their imagination, interest, and learning style. Elicit and introduce new vocabulary, idioms, and collocations so that hearing and using them becomes part of students’ background knowledge. Then ask them to relate the information orally before writing. Give them a purpose for their writing. This means asking them to read with a motive for writing. Is it to refute, to inform, to incite? If their motive is clear, their writing will probably be clear. Have them analyze word structure and usage. Is the writing straightforward or rambling? As students listen to themselves speaking, most of them will self-correct and realize there is a better way to express ideas, phrases, or facts. And the beautiful part is that they will love the process so that it becomes standard practice.

These generalizations get us started. In the following articles, we will examine specific examples to help students understand, apply, and master academic writing.

References

http://schoolimprovement.com

http://ThoughtCo.com

About the Author

John Caine is the author of several books, (Waldo and the Wackos, The Story of Pig and Giraffe, La Historia de Cerdo y Jirafa, My Name Sir?, In the Time of Big Trains, 4:56) short stories and poetry. He teaches English where he currently lives on Long Island, NY with his family

Teaching Consonant Blends, Digraphs, and Trigraphs

John_Caine
Professor John Caine
SUNY, Suffolk Community College

More than any other request, my students ask me to help them with pronunciation and vocabulary. After my first few semesters, I realized that a key factor in helping them was to start with consonant blends.

A consonant blend (also called a consonant cluster) is a group of two or three consonants in words that makes a distinct consonant sound, such as bl, br, cl, cr, dr, fl, fr, gl, gr, pl, pr, qu, sc, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw, tr, and tw, We can group these into “l” and “r” blends, which are the most frequent and convenient to categorize.

A digraph is a single sound, or phoneme, that is represented by two letters. A trigraph is a phoneme that consists of three letters.

Consonant digraphs include ch, ck, gh, kn, mb, ng, ph, sh, th, wh, and wr. Some of these create a new sound, as in ch, sh, and th. Some, however, are just different spellings for already familiar sounds. Some consonants have “silent partners”: for example gh is a different spelling for “f” and mb is “m” while wr is still the “r” sound.

Sometimes reframing the concept in familiar terms lowers the affective filter encouraging self-scaffolding. Our goal is to encourage students to use the language they’re learning, and making the language fun to use is a great way to do that. Blends are fairly straightforward because they keep their phonemic structure. But sometimes helping students to vocalize these blends can be daunting. Teaching decoding helps them recognize and form new words.

But, there are so many blends and digraphs in English. Where to begin? Ah, the one reliable go-to connection for teaching—food. This is something familiar, something students can relate to, and something they can practice using since they come in contact with these items every day. Continue reading