 Welcome to our introduction to academic writing. This is provided for you by the Language and Learning Support Unit within Library Services. Charles Darwin University acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we're meeting and pays respect to elders both past and present and extends that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. When it comes to effective writing, there are five key principles that you should consider. Remember that you can stop the video at any time to check the meaning of words and then continue when you're ready. The first of the five principles is clarity. This refers to the idea that your writing should not provide an obstacle or barrier to the reader understanding it. Busy lecturers will appreciate it if your writing is clear and to the point. Coherence, the second of the five C's of writing, refers to the logical flow of the text. Each sentence in an ideal paragraph would logically build on the content of the previous sentence and the overall flow can be improved by the use of various coherence devices such as linking words and the use of reference. Conciseness is important for university students because in all assignments a word count limit is provided by the lecturer. So it's important that you are able to write enough information without being above the word count or significantly below the word count. The fourth of our five C's of effective writing refers to completeness and this is linked to the previous one because this means that you need all of the relevant information to fulfill the task requirements and nothing more. The final C of the five C's of effective writing refers to correctness. At university this is two types of correctness. One of them could be considered the factual correctness of the content that you include and of course that would refer also to the use of citations to ensure that they are accurate. But the second form of correctness refers to the mechanics of writing such as grammar and punctuation. Be aware that although the marking criteria may not have a large percentage of points available for grammatical accuracy, if your writing is sloppy or full of errors this will give a poor impression to your lecturer and they will be less inclined to be generous with their marks. Here is a summary of some of the concepts that we've just been discussing and remember you can always stop the video if you need more time to understand the points. Now let's think of an example essay question that we can use to apply the five C's of effective writing. Here is a sample question. What factors contribute to success at university? Think about this question and note down some ideas. For the purposes of this example we are pretending that the assignment is 1500 words. Now that you've had time to think of some ideas perhaps they match some of the ideas that we've got on the slide. Time management is of course useful at university using resources effectively such as the library and any support services. It's also important to understand your personal learning style for example what time of the day do you study best and how loud can background music or noise be before it stops you from concentrating. Of course motivation is always an important factor in any endeavor. When you're new to the university understanding how the different university systems work can help lead to student success and finally of course asking for help when you need it and knowing where to find it. There are lots of other factors but we're going to choose one of these factors and write a sample paragraph. For the purposes of this presentation we're going to focus on motivation. Stop the video for a few seconds before you move on and think about why motivation is a factor contributing to success at university. Here is a sample paragraph. The first thing to remember is that all writing can be improved in one way or another. There's no such thing as the perfect text. Read this paragraph and think about some of the things that you like about the paragraph and perhaps some of the things that you think you would change if it was your paragraph. And when you're ready move on to the next slide. In this slide we have colour coded the paragraph to make it clear that the different sentences have a specific role or purpose. The first sentence is in yellow. This is our topic sentence. The topic sentence introduces the specific subtopic that will be discussed in the paragraph. The topic sentence does not have to be the first sentence in a paragraph. However a busy lecturer who might be marking several dozen or possibly hundreds of assignments will be very grateful that a student develops a very direct style of writing. And so it's a good idea to simply put the topic sentence at the beginning to ensure the reader knows what the subtopic is going to be. However this yellow sentence does two jobs. At the beginning of the sentence it introduces the subtopic of motivation but at the end of the sentence it links the subtopic back to the overall assignment. Remember the overall assignment is what are the factors that contribute to student success. So by writing all university students this student has reminded the lecturer about the general topic as well as the specific subtopic for this paragraph. Next we have two sentences in green. The first sentence is in the form of a typical definition. Some assignments will require the student to give a definition of a key term. Some assignments will not force the student to do that. It's important to remember that this is a choice that we make. The second sentence is considered a clarification sentence because it focuses on an educational context. This reminds the reader that we're talking about university and not motivation for business people or sports people. It's possible to keep both of these green sentences and it's also acceptable to choose one over the other. It is a matter of writer choice. The blue section which takes up the majority of the paragraph is developing the concept. This is the main part of the paragraph where the idea of motivation for students is developed and this is where the learner or the student demonstrates his or her understanding of what they have studied in the unit. It's important to note that the majority of the paragraph should perform the function of developing the idea. The sentence in pink is an example of a supporting sentence. Of course it could just be blue like the previous section because supporting sentences and developing the topic are the same thing. The final sentence in grey functions as a concluding sentence. It brings the paragraph to a close. I can describe the structure of this paragraph as a linear paragraph structure. This simply means that each sentence logically leads on from the previous sentence and it's written in a very clear structure. The colour coding refers to the following. Number one, introduce the topic in yellow. Number two, define or clarify your topic other green sentences. Number three, developing the topic or elaborating on the topic are the blue sentences. Number four, as an example of a supporting sentence we put it in pink but remember it does the same job. Developing the topic and supporting the topic is the same thing. And then finally we have got a sentence that concludes the topic. It is not necessary to have a concluding sentence in every paragraph. The writer should make a choice or make a decision about when it is appropriate. For example, it might not be appropriate to have a concluding sentence if the paragraph is very, very short because the reader still can remember the main points very easily. So you may make the decision that you'll only use a concluding sentence if the paragraph is very long or the argument is complex or the topic is complicated and you think that it would be helpful to help the reader with a quick summary at the end. But remember the concluding sentence is optional. In addition to working on our clarity to be an effective writer at the university we also want to know about different coherence strategies. Coherence and clarity are two of the five C's of effective writing. Let's have a look at a few more strategies. Remember you can always stop the video or go back if you need more time or you need to review the content. Coherence strategy number one we've already looked at. Use a clear paragraph structure. In the example we have described it as linear paragraph structure because one sentence logically builds to the next. Other strategies that we can use to improve our coherence are reducing our dependence on simple linkers. Simple linkers are words like also, so, then and next. It's important to note that we will find simple linkers in academic texts and we may not find as many as we expect. At the same time as reducing our dependence on simple linkers we may want to increase our range of more sophisticated linkers such as consequently as a result and therefore. Points four and five are changing one word to a phrase. In the first example using a noun phrase instead of saying first or second and finally you can use the first issue, the first factor, the first challenge, the first point. This is helpful for variety in your writing. Time phrases replace words like then. So instead of saying the word then we can use a phrase. For example after this was completed we went home. It's a more sophisticated way of saying then we went home. Point six, the words this, that, these and those are sometimes known as referents. That's because they refer to a previous idea. They can be very helpful to improve your coherence of your writing by linking sentences together. Number seven, unity of voice. This phrase means if you start using a plural and for example in the paragraph we use the word students it's generally considered good style to keep using plural all the way through. What that means is it can be considered poor style to keep switching from singular to plural. And finally coherence strategy number eight, repetition of keywords. Repeating the keyword can be a powerful device to keep the reader engaged with the main point that you are developing. However, if you repeat the keyword in every sentence that could become monotonous and repetitive. The general advice that we give is if you want to use your keyword try to use it every second line rather than every line. Here is the sample paragraph again but this time we've highlighted some of the coherence strategies described on the previous slide. Now remember you can always stop the video or go back if you need to review the content. The words in yellow, motivation, motivated, motivator are examples of the strategy of repeating the keyword. Notice that the keyword is not repeated every single line because that would become monotonous for the reader. We try to use the keyword every second line or every other line and remember that if you have to use the keyword again you could change the part of speech from noun to adjective or noun to verb as a way of avoiding the problem of too much repetition. In green we can see the word students. This is referring to the strategy of unity of voice. Remember that it's considered good style if you start with a plural to be consistent and use a plural all the way through. So we've got the word students and for variety we're using the word the pronoun they instead. The two words in blue, this and these are examples of one of the coherence strategies from the previous slide, the use of referents. And finally the words in grey also in other words and in contrast are examples of linking words. Note that the number of simple linking words is limited. That's because if we use a combination of the coherence strategies we do not need to over depend on simple linkers. In our short presentation today we have reviewed the principles of effective writing. We've thought about what are our personal strengths and weaknesses. We've brainstormed some ideas for an essay and developed one of those ideas into a paragraph and we've analysed the paragraph in terms of its structure and coherence. You can find a range of other forms of support available to students if you visit our homepage which is provided on the slide here and of course you can drop us a line at our email address and with your language and learning support at cdu.edu.au. Thank you for your time and good luck with the semester.