Writing workshop on 26 march
Posted by Julia Hobson on March 27, 2009
In this workshop people divided into two groups:those who wanted to focus on reading and those who wanted to focus on writing.
Reading strategies:
Again this was focused on thinking about and developing a template for making notes as we plough through the reading. These templates can be polished and improved upon as the meaning and significance of the research develops but the easy one to begin with is:
Biblographical details
key words
summary para
analysis of article paragraph
application to my research question paragraph
and drawing this as a chart does seem to help!
The other template to have in front of you as you read is the one that assists you to capture the key components of the writing style of the author that you wold like to emulate.
As you read through the text mark it up for the structure of the argument by identifying when a paragraph is working as an explanation or expansion of a key point; when a paragraph is working as evidence to support the argumennt and when a paragraph is illustrating the argument or conclusion by giving an example. This can be noted quickly withput stopping the flow of your reading and then later look back and see if you particularly like the way the author has placed these paragraphs in realtion to their main argument. Would you like to use a similar approach in your writing?
Also as you read have a highlighter that you have designated as just for transition words and mark these as you go. Are these useful words and phrases for you to work with in your writing? Do you tend to over rely on just a few transition words ?
Here are some transition words and phrases.
Besides For example As
Furthermore For instance Because
In addition In particular
Indeed Particularly Due to
In fact Specifically For
Moreover To demonstrate For the reason that
Second…Third…,etc. To illustrate Since
Accordingly Although
In hope that Finally However
In order to Consequently In comparison
So Hence In contrast
So that So Likewise
With this in mind Therefore Nevertheless
Thus On the other hand
Similarly Whereas Yet
These note making strategies are useful to help us to read for both content knowledge and improved writing skils.
