ACADEMIC WRITING AT ROYAL ROADS UNIVERSITY

Hello and welcome to the instruction of Academic Writing and my name is Theresa Bell and I am the Royal Roads

Writing Centre Coordinator.

For the next little while I am going to give you an overview of what is expected in Academic Writing at Royal

Roads and to try and demystify. Where I would like to start is the title of my presentation.

Academic writing: It’s a skill, not an art (Slide 1)

I think for a lot of people the prospect of academic writing is quite intimidating as it feels like it is something

that you were born with being able to write academically or you weren’t. I firmly believe that academic writing

is a skill and skills are things that can be learned through practise and learning more about it and the more you

do it the better you are at it. That is my approach to academic writing and working with you and looking at what

are the necessary skills to academic writing and how can I get you those skills.

As I go through my presentation I am going to be breaking down a bit for you those different skill sets and trying

to make it a bit more approachable for you.

The other things I want to touch on with the first slide is the cartoon which comes from a deep appreciation for

the cartoon strip but also talking about how Kalvin is hoping for a point for the originality in his writing. When

you are thinking about writing academically there tend to be fewer opportunities to be looking for points for

originality. Your professors are looking for structure and focused content in your writing. If you feel comfortable

with knowing what those elements are then work those rules when you are writing. That is when you can play

and work with your writing.

For a lot of students the intimidation of thinking about writing academically comes with experience of reading

some of the writing that is out there. Unfortunately some of the worst cases of academic writing tend to be very

dense and difficult to understand. They use a lot of vocabulary and jargon is such that people don’t understand

and not a way that normal as to how people normally speak. Often the point of the document is trying to show

off how much the author knows rather than actually communicating with the audience. The best case scenario

of academic writing is the communication between the author and the reader wherein the author makes it as

easy as possible for the reader to understand based solely on what is available in the document and exactly

what the author is thinking. If you can think of academic writing not as something where you have to sound

totally different from the way you would naturally speak but rather it is the type of writing that you would like to

read.

Academic writing at RRU (Slide 2)

The information that you see on this slide is my breakout of what academic writing involves at RRU. First of all:

Provides an in-depth, evidence-based analysis of a topic

- Demonstrates your critical thinking on the topic

When you are talking about the goal of academic writing this is it. This is what your Professors are looking for

and that you achieve it in your work. This is what you need to make it work. The reason I have underlined

“your” is because sometimes students are tempted to spend most of the space in their paper talking about what

other people think; whereas the point is to make it your thinking on the subject. My interest in reading your

document is to see what you think. If you can come from that position then it puts you in a position of

expertise. One of the things I hear from students is that “ I don’t know what to say on this topic, I am new to

this and I don’t know what to say”. I can certainly understand that perspective but if you come at it from the

thought that you are the one that is the expert then if you come with that and no one knows that except you

and if you come from that perspective, meaning this is what I think, then it puts you in a more confident position

as far as how you can perceive the paper. Another thing to keep in mind is if you are aiming in the paper to

communicate what you think on the subject then that really means that you need to make sure that you have

provided all the information and you are not thinking and assuming what the reader may and may not already

know.

Is clear, concise, and easy to understand

- Avoids assumptions of reader knowledge/experience

What this means is you are going to use a clear and concise style that is going to be easy to understand. If you

are immersed in the subject and when you are going to sit down and write about it, it is likely that you are going

to take for granted that your audience understands the same connection that you do. You are going to think

that your instructor taught it to me and that is what I need to do. Yes, that is true but more often than not, what

your instructor is looking for is how you would you explain the subject to someone who is completely unfamiliar

to it. It is lay person on the topic and therefore you need to make all the necessary explanations. They don’t

want to see how you wrote the paper for an expert but rather how you would write the paper for someone who

is uninformed on the subject. Look at your audience that way, someone who is from the general academic

audience who is capable of understanding but who doesn’t have the same knowledge that you do. That can

really help you identify the areas where you need to put in explanations that you might otherwise leave out if

you were speaking to someone who is an expert. This again comes into the piece of making sure that your

writing is easy to understand. If you think about academic paper being an active communication, that active

communication is only going to be successful if your reader can easily understand what you are talking about. If

your reader has to struggle over what it is you are trying to say to him or her then that act of communication has

fallen apart. So, by making sure that you are providing a step by step, point by point direction for your paper

where you start the introduction and start moving through the body paragraphs and through to your conclusion

do that in a way so that someone who has never thought about the subject before can pick up the paper and

follow along with what you are talking about. That is what is going to make that paper successful and easy to

understand. As far as the style being clear and concise and making sure your sentence structure is easy to

understand, sometimes the temptation for people to write very lengthy sentences thinking that a longer

complicated sentence sounds more academic. I would argue that it is actually the reverse because it is very easy

to take a complicated idea and explain it in a complicated way, it is not difficult. What is the challenge is, is to

take the complicated idea and explain it in a simple way. That is really what your instructors are looking for is

how you could explain this complicated ideas in a way that is easy for the general person to understand. One

way to do that is to make sure you have clear language and clearly understood sentences. So, if having an overly

wordy lengthy sentence in your document that is just showing that you can write a long sentence. It is not

achieving the goal of what you are communication to your reader.

Conciseness – What I would like to talk about there is what I call economy of language. What I mean is that you

are only using exactly the number of words necessary to explain your idea, fewer not more. This is something

you will learn as you become more skilled as you move through your program but it doesn’t make your

academic writing better to make it wordier. All that does is give extra words, particularly if you are using typed

word count, take up valuable words that you could be using in your document. Focus in on exactly what you

need to communication and what are the words necessary to do that and make sure that you are potentially

getting the “best bang for your buck”.

Avoid the temptation of “shiny” words, ie…..a word that has a lot of syllables and causes the person to go to a

dictionary to find out what the word means. Those words when you are writing an academic paper can flirt with

you because they look really great, sound fantastic and can be kind of exciting because maybe it is just a new

word for you. Shiny words are great but the challenge with them is that most people wouldn’t understand the

word. If you use that word in your writing, all you are doing is showing off your vocabulary. You are not actually

trying to communicate with your reader is a way that is going to make it easier for that person to understand

what you are talking about.

Here is an example. Classic example that I see all the time in student writing is that students like to use the word

“utilize” instead of the word “use”. Use is a perfectly good word, everybody understands what it means, gets

the message across, it is a great word. “Utilize” says exactly the same thing but is a more complex word. Again it

is one of those shiny words that sits over in the margin and flirts with you. So if you can think about it in your

word choice, what is the word that most people would understand, that is the word you want to use.

Demonstrates the outcomes for the assignment

Your paper should demonstrate the outcomes because this is very easy to keep track of. If you are sitting

writing your paper and you are doing it for a while and then you get a flash of inspiration. Those ideas are really

exciting and it is tempting to start typing away and capturing that idea. The difficulty is that our brains don’t give

us inspiration in the moment when it is most appropriate for how we are going to apply that inspiration. We

just get inspired whenever it comes along. If you don’t kind of check in and make sure that that inspiration fits in

to that particular part of the document that you were working with when it came to you. That inspiration can

very quickly turn into a tangent that takes you way off course in the document. Certainly I have heard stories of

students who went off on a tangent and didn’t really find out until after the paper had been graded that in fact

that tangent did not demonstrate the outcomes of the assignment. The instructor could only mark the section

of the paper that did grab the outcome. The mark of the grade suffered somewhat because the instructor

couldn’t look at the entire document. I encourage you when you are writing to post your outcomes for the

assignment you are working on somewhere when you are writing so you can quickly glance up at it and see if

you are still on track. It is so much easier to catch yourself in the process of writing and bring yourself back to

where you need to be in the document than spend a whole lot of time and effort and energy writing up a bunch

of paragraphs and then realize that actually you have deviated off course and somehow you have to find your

way back or you have to do a lot of rewriting. By posting your outcomes, you can glance up to see if you are still

on track and if you are then you can keep on going. If you are not then it gives you that quick check in to see

that you need to get back on track.

Consistently and correctly follows the APA style rules

Most of the grading of papers at Royal Roads University follow the APA style rules and you are expected to

follow those rules. There are lots of resources on the Writing website that will help you and I am also willing to

answer questions as well. I am not going to be covering APA style on this presentation.

I encourage you to think about how you can communicate effectively with your reader. That is the goal and not

to create a document that might sound “academic” but rather how you can best convey your message so your

reader understands it.

We are now going to focus on the some of the papers that you might find yourself writing during the program. I

have broken these down into 4 different types of papers but you won’t always be writing only one kind you

might be asked to do a combination of these types.

The first one is:

Personal/Reflective Papers (Slide 3)

- Focus is on your thoughts and experiences

What this paper does is make you think about your own experience and often apply that

to some of the information theories, context, frameworks, that sort of things that you

are doing on a course. Rather than just talking about your experience your instructor is

asking you to think about your experience and within some kind of framework.

- Use the first person voice

You can use the first person voice. Obviously it would be weird to talk about your

experience without being able to say I did, my experience, etc.

- Usually less formal than a standard research paper

The structure and style of a personal reflective paper usually is somewhat less formal

than a standard research paper so it may take more the tone of a more formal journal

entry versus your very formal structured research paper.

Moving up on the scale of formality:

Expository Papers (Slide 4)

- Informs or introduces your reader to a subject

- Expository paper explains things to your reader

All you are doing is presenting information to your reader. You are not taking a position

you are just telling your reader what he or she need to know in order to gain an

understanding of the topic.

- Doesn’t argue a position but rather explains the issue

Argumentative Papers (Slide 5)

- Basically this is when you are trying to convince someone of a position like a covering letter for a

job competition, job application, request for funding, research proposal, grant proposal anything

where you are try to convince someone is academic writing. What you are doing in your papers

for school is you are taking a position then supporting that position using research evidence

giving weight to what you are talking about.

- Synonyms:

These are words that you may see in an assignment description and if you do you will

know that what you are being asked to do is write an argumentative paper. Often

assignment descriptions will say argue a position but sometimes other language will be

used. That is why I gave you samples.

Analytical Paper (Slide 6)

- This is a compare and contrast examination. You are going to be looking at some sort of

problem or issue and looking at both sides of it and doing the compare and contrast.

- The difference between an analytical and an argumentative paper is that the analytical paper is

just saying here are how things are similar or different. The argumentative paper is saying here

are how things are similar and different and which one is better and here’s why.

- When you get into writing something like a major research paper or a thesis I would say that

those types of papers are actually a combination of analytical and argumentative papers.

- Sometimes these things blend into one another when you are doing more than one type of

paper.

The common thread through all of these types of papers is you are being asked to demonstrate your critical

thinking. The quality of academic writing is essentially the goal of academic writing is for you to

demonstrate your critical thinking on the subject.

The good news is that you are probably a very good critical thinker and the reason why I can say that is

because any time you make a decision you are using your critical thinking skills if you come at your decision

from a thoughtful kind of way.

What is critical thinking? (Slide 7)

As you can see from the definition on this slide, any time that you are looking at a problem, issue or

situation where you look at all aspects of that issue and then come to a reasonable decision that is critical

thinking. What is probably a bit different for you though is that you might not have been asked to

demonstrate it before.

Critical thinking is where – here is the problem, here is the solution and here is how I know it is the best

idea, or here is how I know that to be true. It is showing your thinking process to how you came to a

solution.

Oreo Cookie Approach (Slide 8)

This is what I would expect to see in your standard academic body paragraph, not an introduction or

conclusion because they have different purposes. As far as a body paragraph is concerned I would expect to

see some version of this cookie model in each body paragraph. You start out at the top level of the cookie

as your claim or your assertion. What are you arguing or idea that you are presenting in the paragraph.

Then supporting that argument is your research evidence. Your research evidence comes from other

scholars’ work; what are your facts that you are bringing to say here is how I know this is true. One of the

things that I would like you to notice is that your research evidence does not lead off, it is always going to be

that you are presenting your claim first. This comes back to what I was saying at the beginning of this

presentation is that the point of the academic paper is to show off your thinking. If you start off a paragraph

with someone else’s words you are not really giving your reader the opportunity to understand what you

think or how the focus you are taking in this paragraph because you are immediately bringing their attention

to someone else’s ideas. The research evidence comes in and supports the claim.

The final piece of the cookie is your demonstration of your critical thinking skills and that comes into claim

as the analysis of the connection between the evidence and the claim. Basically what you are doing here is

you are answering “so what?” or the “why should I care?” This piece is what I find students most often miss

in their writing. The reason for that is because when a student is writing a paper or if they get to this bottom

piece, often for that student it is so obvious how the research evidence supports the claim because that

student is completely immersed in the subject. It almost seems like they are talking down to their audience

if they get into this explanation. The thing is that unless you explain to me exactly how you are thinking you

can’t guarantee that I am going to understand your thinking process. Every person brings a different

understanding and a different approach to things when they read a piece of writing and depending on your

cultural background, your family of origin, and how you grew up, your education, your geographical location

are all factors that play into how do you understand information. Unless you, as the author, spell out for me

how you are connecting the research evidence to the claim, you are assuming that I am going to make the

same connections that you are. As soon as that happens you are leaving a gap open for misunderstanding.

When people talk about the flow in the document flowing well really what that means is that the document

is very easy for the reader to follow along with. At no point in the reading process does the reader attention

get taken away from the message being communicated. Where flow tends to break down is when someone

is reading the document and something distracts them. That could be a typo or perhaps some sort of

grammatical error but it can also be when the author hasn’t sufficiently explained something, so the reader’s

attention is taken off of what the author is saying and instead is brought back to “I wonder what he meant

by that”. If you think back to what I said about the goal of your writing is for you to show what you think

and what you know. If your reader’s attention has to come back to “what do I know in order to understand

what this author is telling me, that is a break down. That means that your effort in communicating hasn’t

happened as well as what you would have liked. Anything that you can do to keep your reader’s attention

focussed on “what are you saying” versus “how are you saying it” it is going to make the flow of the paper

that much better. Making sure that you provide this analysis to the connection between the evidence and

the claim, explain your thinking process, it is really going to go a long way toward achieving that.

Creating a Document Plan (Slide 9)

The number one thing I recommended to you to help you achieve all of this is to make sure you invest the

time before you start to write is to create a document plan. A document plan can mean outline, a concept

map, a posted note on a wall, notes on a whiteboard, it can so many different forms. Everyone’s approach

to a document plan is probably going to be a little bit different because each person individually approaches

getting information in a different way. It is really how you best approach information in order to understand

where you are going with a document and creating the document and creating that skill set to put in the

document.

The points I have on the slide are a sales pitch for why I think creating a document plan is so important.

Helps you stay on track

- One of the challenges students often face is when writing a longer document you are not

just sitting down and quickly writing something. It is something that you are writing over

days, or weeks and it is very easy to get off track if you haven’t first thought out where you

need to go with the document. The analogy that I like to use for this is, if you were planning

a road trip and you know the destination, you know when you have to get there, how you

have to get there; if you don’t plan ahead of time the route that you are going to take it is

very easy for you to get lost. If you get lost then you don’t arrive how you need to or when

you need to. Having a document plan it helps you to stay on track because at any point in

the writing process you can refer back to the document plan and say “yes I am on track and

know where I am going next” or you can discover that you have gotten a little off track and

you have to come back.

Identifies missing research

- If you plan out your entire document and coming back to thinking about the Oreo Cookie

Approach, if you plan out each body paragraph how you are accounting for your claim, your

research evidence and your analysis of connection between evidence and claim. It is going

to be very clear before you start to write if you are missing any necessary research

evidence. Why I think that is important is because if you are flipping back and forth

between writing the document and researching eventually your brain will probably get a bit

cranky with you. Our brains are not designed to do more than one task at a time very well.

Studies show that while we all like to think we are fabulous multi taskers, multi-tasking does

not work all that well. When you are asking the brain to do research and write at the same

time, those are two totally different activities. Research is all about going out reading

information, evaluating it, developing and understanding of the relationship between the

information presented within the different pieces of research and bringing those to bear on

the subject that you are writing about versus writing on the topic. It is all about taking

those ideas and expressing them in a way that someone else can understand. If you are

asking your brain to do two very different things at the same time it just doesn’t work. That

is when writer’s block starts to come in and people get really frustrated. If you can find a

way ahead of time to plan out where do you need research evidence and have you

accounted for it then you are setting yourself up for much more successful writing

experience.

Identifies jumps in logic/assumptions of understanding before you start to write

- It is important that you aren’t making jumps in logic/assumptions but sometimes it is hard

to assess those. What a document plan can do for you is when you have everything laid out

in a way that you can show it to somebody else, then show it to a lay person, someone who

is prepared to give you constructive criticism on what you have done and ask that person to

either:

(a) tell you about the paper you have written; or

(b) identify if there are any places in the plan that they don’t understand how you

got to one point to the next.

If the viewer comes back and tells you about a paper that you have never heard of there is

a pretty good indication that there is a problem. Also if they come back and say they didn’t

understand this but I really don’t understand how you are getting from this point to this

point. This is a red flag for you. You probably made an assumption of what your reader is

going to know so that is a good place for you to come back and build out that section to

make sure that you are accounting for that step by step process of leading someone

through your thinking.

Helps prevent writer’s block

- It happens to everybody. If it happens to you it is not any kind of indication of your overall

ability. There are lots of different ways of addressing writer’s block. One of the things that

you could do is have a conversation with one of your colleagues and ask them how they get

over writer’s block. I am sure you will get lots of great suggestions.

- The three things that I would encourage you to do if you get into a situation of writer’s block

is:

Get up and move around and get your blood circulating again and give your brain re

oxygenated, give your sub conscience a chance to wrestle with the problem for you

while you go off and do something active whether that is playing with the kids, take

the dog for a walk, going for a run, just getting up and doing something active. This

allows your sub conscience to wrestle with the problem for you. You will probably

find when you get back to your chair you will have the answer you need.

Talk your paper out with somebody else who is prepared to be an active listener and

ask you questions and in the process of doing that and essentially what you are

doing is teaching your paper to somebody else. There is no better way to make sure

that you understand the subject than if you have to teach it to somebody else. If

the process of explaining of what you are writing about you get to the bit that blocks

you probably what is going to happen is that even if you are still feeling stuck, the

audience or the person you are speaking to will start asking you questions, what

does that mean, where are you going with that, why is that important. In answering

the questions you are likely to be refocused as to what your central message is. In

doing that you are probably going to get through that block. Talking to someone is

also very important. As far as how the document plan helps to prevent writer’s

block the great thing about having a solid plan is that you don’t have to write the

document all in one sitting and you don’t have to write it sequentially. That means

that if you are stuck on paragraph 4 you can go and write paragraph 7 and then go

back to paragraph 2, then go back to paragraph 4 once the block has moved. That

means that if you are procrastinating and feeling some time stress you can still work

on the document and you are still moving forward and you are going to arrive at

your destination when you are supposed to get there. It is not adding in there that

extra stress of “oh no I don’t know how I am going to get this done”. This will likely

only increase your writer’s block. By having a plan it gives you that flexibility to

move around within the document and write the pieces as you are able to think

about it.

Choose topic and brainstorm ideas (Slide 10)

This is a brainstorming exercise on Royal Roads University. What do I know about Royal Roads

University? Brainstorming exercise is important because in order for you to identify what you don’t

know and therefore need to do research on makes you think about what you really know. Students

often under estimate on how much they know. What I encourage you to think about is if you have done

reading, you have had conversations, perhaps you have done postings online, you’ve lived a life. You

have this collection of information that can already help to inform you on the subject. By thinking about

that first can also put you in a place of being a little bit more confident about how you are approaching

this paper because you come at it and say “well I may not know everything I need to know but I do know

something and I can start from that point”.

You can see here that I have put together a few ideas on RRU.

Next Slide (Slide 11)

On this slide you can see I just went until my brain was done and that is really what brainstorming is all

about. You just dump it all out on the page, this isn’t a time to be vetting it or to be thinking about how

all of this fits together. That comes a bit later on. You can see here that some of the ideas I came up

with might be irrelevant or appropriate to an academic paper; a lot of them aren’t. That is okay

because you never know how ideas are going to connect to one another. For example, I have ghosts on

the page. We reportedly have ghosts in our Castle on Campus all of who date from the time of the

Dunsmuir family who originally built the Hatley Castle and created Hatley Park. If I looked at ghosts and

thought it was a stupid idea I immediately discard it I might be missing out on the opportunity. When I

think about our ghosts I know that they are supposed to be James Dunsmuir Sr. who built the Castle, his

wife Laura, their youngest son James Dunsmuir Jr. and he was killed on the ship Titania and there is also

a serving maid. Those ghosts provide a lot of connections there of the Dunsmuir family who are

obviously a huge part of our history. I also have a connection to our military which also has a connection

with RRU as it was the Royal Roads Military College before it become the RRU. So if I dismiss the ghosts

then I might miss out on the connections.

When you are brainstorming give your brain a lot of room to play because your brain might come up

with connections you might not otherwise think of.

So I have done all my brainstorming and I have all these ideas now I need to figure out what I am going

to do with them. This is where your thesis statement comes into play.

Determine thesis statement (Slide 12)

The thesis statement is one or two sentences that provides the direction of what you intend to cover in

the paper.

- Should be specific because it outlines the parameters of the study.

o Why this is important is for your reader reading this statement can help whether or not

he or she want to read your paper. For you as the author it sets out your intention of

what you need to do for the document. Anything that happens within the document

has to somehow reflect back to that thesis statement.

- e.g., Royal Roads University is unique amongst post-secondary institutions on Vancouver Island

because of its history, Hatley Park, wildlife, and educational programs.

o The importance of the thesis statement being specific is that if your thesis statement is

too broad it is very difficult where to start. For example, I said RRU is unique. When I

am going to write my paper, I essentially have to prove how RRU is unique everywhere

amongst all universities anywhere. This is huge and makes it very difficult to where to

start.

o Often when students are either stuck or getting started doing their paper, quite often I

will suggest that they go back and look at their thesis statement and decide whether or

not you can be more specific in what you are talking about. You can see here I said

“unique” but I have qualified what I am comparing it to. I said it was unique amongst

post-secondary institutions, that is one qualifier; on Vancouver Island, that is another

qualifier; and then because of its history, Hatley Park, wildlife, and educational

programs. When I am going to write the paper I know that that is what I have to prove.

Anything outside of that really isn’t relevant to the particular paper. It sets me up

exactly as to what I need to do.

Edit and theme ideas (Slide 13)

With that thesis statement in mind I can come back to the brainstorming exercise and see that I have

changed my middle bubble to “Royal Roads University is unique” and I have looked at the ideas that I

came up with and I started to edit out the ones that I don’t think are appropriate and I have also started

to feed them with colors so that you can see what connections I am making. I have started to build

those four sections of history, Hatley Park, wildlife and educational programs.

Group Ideas (Slide 14)

This is the same as the previous but is organized in a different way. It really doesn’t matter how you

approach this. All it matters is that it works for you.

Create the plan (Slide 15)

This is the beginning of my plan. You can see in the center I have Royal Roads University is unique, that

is my tethering point. I haven’t represented post-secondary institutions on Vancouver Island but I have

represented Educational Programs, History, Hatley Park and Wildlife within the plan. You can see off

each one of those I have the ideas that I brainstormed. What I would like you to notice in the top right

corner there is information that I didn’t have in my brainstorming. What that represents is that I have

gone out and done some research. I knew that we had unique ecosystems in the forest but didn’t

know what plants were in them. I went out and found that we had wetland and that within the

wetlands we have lilies, skunk cabbage and trilliums and that those three plants help define what a

wetland is. I thought that was important information.

What this allows you to do is start off with the framework and as you start doing more research you can

represent that research in your plan.

The dotted lines on the paper from the skunk cabbage goes down into gardens. Also there is a dotted

line between hiking paths and wildlife. For me what those dotted lines represent how I am connecting

sections or paragraphs etc. that I am doing within this document.

The complexity or length of this document would depend on how much information I am representing

in each one of these sections. For example, the dotted line between skunk cabbage and gardens says to

me that I am going to make the connection between the unique ecosystems and gardens when talking

about the skunk cabbage because we have skunk cabbage in our gardens.

Now that I have that transition planned out I know that I am not going to lose my reader in the gap

between those two sections because I figured out how I am going to bridge the gap and show my reader

how they connect.

Similarly how I am going to connect Hatley Park to Wildlife I will talk about our hiking paths to talking

about our Wildlife. For example, I could say that if a visitor is enjoying one of many walking paths there

are 565 acres that make up the RRU campus and of course you may encounter some wildlife.

Again, I have planned that transition so I make sure that the reader doesn’t get lost in the gap of me

assuming that the reader understands how I have joined the two but not actually spelling it out for

them.

Linear outline (Slide 16)

This is similar to the five paragraph system you learned in school. The only thing difference is that your

documents become more complex. Instead of a paper having five paragraphs you may have written shorter

papers or you could be writing lengthy papers where your Introduction is not just one paragraph but it has many

paragraphs. You may have sections with paragraphs and not just a series of paragraphs.

The intention as far as what each of these things does in the document stays the same.

Introduction – say what you’re going to say

o Point your way to the reader as to where you are going to go within it

Then you are going to do body paragraphs and demonstrating within the document and that is where your oreo

cookies come into play.

Main point A

o – oreo cookie

Main point B

o – oreo cookie

Main point C

o – oreo cookie

Conclusion

o Then you are going to say your conclusion. This is a good time to say what you have learned and

why it is important.

o Think of your conclusion as your last opportunity to make an impression on your reader. What

message do you want your reader to walk away with after finishing reading the paper? That is

the information that needs to be provided in the conclusion.

Summary

To go back to where we started we were talking about the kind of writing that you are going to be doing during

your program and looking at the qualities of Academic Writing. You are going to be doing an in-depth evidence

based analysis of the topic to demonstrate your critical thinking of the topic; that is the goal. The means by how

you are going to achieve this is by using clear, concise and easy to understand style. Avoid assumptions of

reader knowledge and experience. You are going to demonstrate the outcomes of the assignment and finally be

consistent and correctly follow the APA style rules.

Each one of those is a skill.

At the very beginning of this presentation I talked about the fact that skills can be learned through gaining

information and practice. If at any time in your program you would like help with learning those skills I hope you

will get in touch.

Finally, contact the Writing Centre. If you have any questions here is how you can get in touch with me. I

certainly will welcome your questions so feel free to get in touch either through the website for my email

address or phone numbers. Whatever works best for you I am more than willing to help answer your questions.

Good luck with your writing

http://library.royalroads.cawriting-centre

Email Address: writingcentre@royalroads.ca

(250) 391-2600, ext. 4353/-1800-788-8028