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Kick Off Your Summer Writing

Íde O’Sullivan, Senior Educational Developer, Centre for Transformative Learning (CTL), Lawrence Cleary, Director Regional Writing Centre, University of Limerick (RWCUL)

www.ul.ie/rwc

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Workshop Outline

Dissertation Writing

Writing and Research Output Plan

Effective Research and Writing Strategy

Peer Relationships to Support Scholarship

Staying Motivated

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Freewriting/Writing to Prompts

Where are you now with your research and writing? Do you have a long way to go or are you nearly over the line? What are your top three concerns?

Write non-stop for five minutes
Write in sentences, not bullets
Do not edit or censor your writing—your writing is private
Feel free to post where you’re at (early—still trying to nail down my research question/middle—can articulate my question, but still developing the argument/late stages—I can articulate my argument, but I’m trying to express it in a way that is appropriate to the audience) and your top concern in the chat tool.

Writing to prompts is a strategy for generating text and ideas. Sometimes, those ideas end up in your dissertation or thesis; sometimes, they help you identify what you still need to know or still need to know how to articulate; what might be a better way to organise the argument; what is not working in your research and or writing process; what the obstacles are that prevent you from reaching your research and writing goals; what you have discovered about your writing situation that you were previously unaware of, etc.

I.e., writing prompts can inform your processes, your understanding of the writing situation and the effectiveness of your current strategies for overcoming obstacles.

Freewriting is free. Writers begin with a prompt, but feel free to deviate if the deviation leads to more valuable insights. Generative writing is more focused. Freewriting is a great way to get the onrush of ideas down on paper before they disappear. Generative writing would more likely result in something—a description or explanation or rebuttal or summary, etc.—that would be incorporated into your dissertation or thesis.

In both cases, the writer limits the amount of time they spend on the prompt—five or ten minutes. In both cases, the writer should not be deterred by grammaticality or mechanics, but just let the ideas/words spill out, straight from your cerebral cortex to your paper. Revision can come later, but if the ideas never make it to the page, there’ll be nothing to revise, so let your ideas spill out.

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What do good writers think about?

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Writing a Thesis: The context

The expectation is that there will be a contribution to the field of knowledge on a problem that is relevant in your field.
The context is an academic one, so the pillars of academic integrity have to be maintained: Honesty, Trust, Fairness, Respect, Responsibility and Courage
Theses are typically marked by their planned and organised structure, their complexity, formality, precision, objectivity, explicitness, accuracy, hedging and responsible reporting of sources.
Theses tend toward criticality and high order cognitive processing

The first assertion is true of PhD candidates but not so for students in Masters programmes. For Masters-level students, the goal might be merely to validate what is already known, possibly testing it in a new context or testing a hypothesis to see if the results cohere with what is already known. For a PhD candidate, moving the discourse forward is an imperative.

Of course, both Masters and PhD research and writing must maintain academic integrity. This has consequences most obviously in terms of the accurate reporting of other’s findings and opinions, including accurately citing and referencing sources, but it also impacts on how we argue. Academic integrity requires that we are fair and respectful. We are fair in that we are not dismissive of the findings of others but demonstrate weaknesses in the methodology, for instance, or the interpretation of the findings of those with whom we disagree. We are not disrespectful in doing so, but rational. We take account of the competing data or theories when arguing our case. We do not merely dismiss them without reason, and we provide the reasons.

We have to be careful when talking about ‘academic writing’. I am of the position that there is no such thing. There are various academic communities who all discourse in ways that are peculiar to them, those ways often reflecting the values of the community. For instance, people in the Humanities tend to hedge much more often than people in the Sciences. The Sciences strive to establish certainties in our natural world; whereas, in the Humanties, a sound case relies on the preponderance of the evidence, much of which is both possible and probability, but not certain.

In academic contexts, we are expected to challenge accepted norms, testing them to assure their soundness and/or validity. We are critical in our approach. And because we strive to be explicit, we need to demonstrate the depth of what we know: listing, explaining, demonstrating, analysing, synthesising and evaluating.

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The thesis is a long text

The writer needs strategies for organising all of the information required in order to make the case.

Logical order
Argumentative framework (not to be confused with theoretical/conceptual framework)
Genre conventions

Software knowledge:

Word Templates
Latex Templates
Knowledge of how to use Word tools
Excel for planning or organising data
Endnote, Mendeley, Zotero

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What is a good PhD Thesis?

University of Reading
University of Limerick

Thesis Specifications
Examination Procedures

The examiners’ report must comment on the following areas:

The overall standard and quality of research in the thesis
The original contribution the thesis makes to knowledge and scholarship
The writing style and overall presentation of the thesis
The ability of the student to defend the research in the oral examination
The nature of the amendments and/or corrections required
Conclusion and award recommendation

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What is your plan for the summer?

Time and Space?
What do you hope to have done by the end of June?
What do you hope to have completed by the end of July? August?
Where do you work best? When do you work best?
Do you have a routine?
What are some obstacles to your progress? (please, name some obstacles in the chat)

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Plan Smartly

use a specific set of criteria to help ensure that objectives are clearly defined and attainable within a certain timeframe

Specifically: :What needs to be accomplished? What steps need to be taken to achieve it?

Measurable: quantify your goals—’going to write for two hours, then break for lunch.’ Going to complete first draft of section 2.5.4.

Attainable: is your objective something you can reasonably accomplish within the timeframe you’ve allowed for?

Relevant: Why are you setting the goal that you’re setting? How does achieving that goal fit into the grand scheme of things?

Time bound: How much time are you giving yourself? Is it a reasonable amount of time give the task? Or should you reduce the size of the task?

Nothing is more de-motivating than setting yourself up for failure by designing failure into your plan.

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Gantt charts?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rolexpv/44397139534/in/dateposted-public/

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Writing is messy: forgive yourself

A plan is a living document.

Things do not always go to plan
Plans evolve
Directions change
Priorities change
Everything is provisional—go with the flow

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Effective Research and Writing Strategies

Articulate your thesis in one sentence
The thesis states a problem to be investigated, typically in the form of a

Claim🡪Defence
Question🡪Answer
Problem🡪Solution
Hypothesis🡪Test🡪Affirmation or Negation

The thesis promises to do one of two things, either:

Take a position on a point of contestation
Fill a gap in the field of knowledge

The thesis statement organises the entire paper. It is something that should be returned to again and again throughout the process until it accurately forecasts, for both you and the reader, the organisation of the paper.

Theses statements can be in the form of a claim that you will defend or a question that you will answer a problem to which you will seek a solution or a hypothesis that you will affirm or negate. They are usually a single sentence—possibly one long, complex sentence, but nevertheless, a single sentence.

There may be sub-questions the answers to which may inform how you defend or answer or solve or affirm/negate, but the main question is the compass and sextant by which you steer through your dissertation or thesis.

Typically, academic research wishes to either take a position on a contested issue or to understand something that is not well understood by the scholars in your field.

Naturally, these issues are relevant. They are being investigated currently in the literature in your field.

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Strategies for organising or progressing your thesis

Swale’s Creating a Research Space [C.A.R.S.] Model
Rowena Murray’s Page 98 paper (slides 29 and 30)
Brown’s 8 questions

These are resources that might be helpful in organising your dissertation or thesis.

Swales is a linguist who first proposed rhetorical moves in typified genres such as research papers. His Create a Research Space model proposes three moves that are typical in Social Science research papers, but you don’t need to be a linguist to figure out what kinds of moves are typical in introductions in your discipline’s research papers, dissertations and PhD monographs.

Rowena Murray’s Page 98 paper asks you to complete a set of sentences in 250 words to get a picture of your paper.

Similarly, Brown’s 8 questions.

Both are used to reflect on the bigger picture, Brown’s 8 Questions often used to draft abstracts.

Murray is a Rhetoric and Composition scholar. The Page 98 paper comes from the first edition of her How to Write a Thesis. Brown comes to us from industry, his article ‘Write Right First Time’ published in Literati Newsline by MCB University Press, Brisbane and UK.

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Peer Relationships to progress the thesis

Dialogue about writing
Getting feedback on writing
The “writing sandwich” (Murray, 2005:85): writing, talking, writing
Writing “buddies” (Murray and Moore, 2006:102)
“The Writing Consultation” (Murray, Thow, Moore and Murphy 2008)
Peer Writing Tutors in the RWC
Writers’ groups
PhD Writers’ Week

Remember the Social Strategies in the RWC Framework for Talking about Writing?

Here we have a list of social strategies for improving ourselves as writers.

Just talking about your paper to others helps. When you explain it to others, you explain it to yourself and, when you think about it, is a good way of preparing for an oral defence.

Getting feedback is tricky. You want positive, formative feedback, not feedback that is not relevant to where you are in your process or, worse, demotivating strategy that is critical of you as a researcher or writer.

I’ve listed sources for the next three kinds of collaborative learning/social writing strategies.

The RWC tries to keep tabs on current groups. Inquire at writingcentre@ul.ie if you are interested in joining a group. Don’t forget, joining a group is to make a commitment to the group.

Finally, the RWC hosts three PhD Writers’ Weeks per year. Watch for our ads.

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Motivation

Stay positive: you can do this! (though your brain may hurt for a while)
Incorporate others into your process (significant others, children, dog…)
Plan for beer time!
Regroup when you feel overwhelmed—reassess where you are in relation to what you want to know and break bigger tasks down into a set of smaller, more manageable tasks.
Remember to turn negative thoughts on their heads!

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Reflection: Understanding your relationship with writing for academic assessment of publication

Writing would be so much more enjoyable and less daunting for me if …

What are the things that I do to make writing happen?

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