Co-ordinated by Anthea Garman

Overview

This course runs in parallel with the postgraduate coursework in 2020. It is intended to enable postgraduate students to:

• Familiarise themselves with the range of academic practices of thinking, talking, reading, writing and research which take place within the humanities and social sciences.
• Learn how to develop a practice of such thinking, talking, reading, writing and research in ways that empower them to operate as emerging members of the media studies community in South Africa.
• Learn how to operate as independent researchers who can develop research questions and research projects.

Times: Weekly sessions from 11am on Tuesdays for Masters students and 11am on Wednesday for Honours students. Sessions will be 60, 90 or 120 mins depending on time needed during terms 1, 2 and 3.

The terrain we will cover in this course:

Writing as more than “write up”

• Writing as learning, thinking, researching and discovering (read Laurel Richardson’s “Writing: A Method of Inquiry” in The Handbook of Qualitative Research edited by Denzin and Lincoln and Janet Emig“Writing as a Mode of Learning”).

• Writing in academia: genre, register, voice, authority, style, evidence (Murray and Moore “Defining and understanding academic writing” in the Handbook of Academic Writing).
• The writing-thinking relationship; the writing-reading relationship; the writing-writing relationship.
• Developing a writing practice, Read Connie D Griffin To Tell the Truth and Richards and Miller Doing Academic Writing in Education.

Writing as a process: from pre-text to proto text to provisional text to committed text

Read Richards and Miller chapters (3 to 6) from Invention to Drafting to Revision to Editing.

• Pre-text is the exploratory and generative stage (Fulwiler – notes, lists, mind maps, rough drafts, etc). It needs to be messy!!

           Exercise: Drawing to learn (using Ridley and Rogers Drawing to Learn: Arts & Humanities).

• Proto-text – publish to yourself (Fulwiler – tell yourself what you’re thinking)

           Exercise: Loop writing – why do I care? What do I believe? What do I already know? This is the stage in which MEANING is established (form and polish come later)

• Provisional text – drafting (Fulwiler, more exploration and back and forth) – this is about purpose, direction, developing argument, writing arc, beginning, middle and end. This is the point in which you start to write with a reader/audience in mind, you start to imagine the conversation and responses.
• Committed text – editing, refining, conscious of audience, style, voice, precision, diction, referencing, documentation, evidence

           Use Fulwiler’s editing points:

1. Edit for yourself: make sure the voice, beliefs and language are yours – represent yourself honestly
2. Read aloud: listen for rhythm, sense-making, argument, persuasion with evidence
3. Attend to the sentences – pay attention to precision, word use, terminology and language
4. Titles and subtitles
6. Does this communicate? Is it precise, pointed, persuasive?

So what to do when you get stuck? Return to the stage of writing for oneself – that usually reminds one of purpose and message.

AT this point we have to talk ORGANISATION of your materials!

• Filing, naming
• Note-taking and journaling
• Papers and electronic materials
• Where you store your own committed texts
• How you develop systems that work efficiently for searching and for further use

The writing-thinking relationship

Writing is thinking, writing is learning

“Thinking is an action” – bell hooks (Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, 2010). “Critical writing is active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends.” (Dewey).

What is “critical” thinking? What is critique? (Read Warner, M. (2004). Critical or Uncritical. In J. Gallop (Ed.), Polemic: Critical or Uncritical (pp. 13–38)

The writing-reading relationship: reading in academia and for other purposes

• Reading with and against the grain (Stoler, A. L. (2008). Along the Archival Grain. Princeton: Princeton University Press)
• Reading depths, reading surfaces (est, S., & Marcus, S. (2009). Surface Reading: An Introduction. Representations, 108(1), 1–21. http://doi.org/10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1 and Nuttall, S. (2012). The Rise of the Surface: Emerging Questions for Reading and Criticism. In A. Van der Vlies (Ed.), Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa (pp. 408–421). Johannesburg: Wits University Press)

What is “authoritative”?

• Being authoritative means having a voice/ a position.
• Being authoritative means demonstrating mastery over a field.
• Being authoritative means knowing who is who in a field and knowing who the ‘chiefs’ are.
• Being authoritative means being able to defend your approach from attack – doing this means anticipating where critique will come from (what are the weaknesses in my position? What are the alternatives to the position I take?)

Reading as a research method: track the author(s)’ moves

• Reading for data
• Reading for sources
• Reading for style
• Reading for method
• Reading for structure

Rhetorical analysis: ethos, logos and pathos

• Logical fallacies
• Generalisations
• Either/or reasoning
• Non sequiturs
• Straw men
• Causal relationships (paying attention to sequencing)

Summarising with purpose:

• Describe the author’s purpose (or thesis)
• Map the argument
• Key examples/points
• Restate the conclusion (in your own words)

The writing-listening relationship: What is a research question?

(Read Anne Lamott Brocolli)

Exercise: Moving from topic to Question with three questions

From practical problem to research question

Exercise: 1. Practical problem, 2. Research question, 3. Research problem, 4. Research answer

What is an argument? Shapes of argument (using Toulmin)

Claims, Supports and Warrants

Exercise: evaluate claims, supports and warrants

Being persuasive:

Evaluate whether your purpose is to explain, report, describe, define or persuade. Persuasive language demands particular tools (Fulwiler A Personal Approach to Writing). Persuasion rests on content (evidence) and coherence (structure and form) and the writer’s credentials (are you credible on the page?)

Claims, reasons and evidence – plan your argument

(From Booth, Colomb and Williams The Craft of Research).

Exercise: Using small pieces of paper map the main claim, the reasons, the sub-reasons and the evidence for each. Try out orders and groupings to test the relative weight and importance of them.

Being precise with language:

(Read Helen Sword The Writer’s Diet)

Exercise: Play academic Pictionary (from Ridley Drawing to Learn Brighton U)

• Plenary brainstorm –common academic words and phrases?
• In small groups: invent ways to represent these concepts visually (15 minutes)
• Discussion –what do your chosen images/metaphors reveal about implicit meanings and assumptions?
• Invent a symbol for one of these words that students might use as shorthand in their notes (5 minutes )

The sentence is your friend

(Read Mark Tredinnick, https://longformjournalism.wordpress.com/2014/08/06/a-sentence-is-a-morning-walked-through-some-place-on-earth-it-is-an-act-and-a-piece-of-creation/

Read Fulwiler page 192 on sentences

Writing introductions and conclusions

(Read Booth, Colomb and Williams. Ch 16 in The Craft of Research 2008).

Exercise: Pamela Nicholl’s Three Questions

Understanding contexts: real world context, theoretical context. World 1 and World 2.

Exercise: 1. Tell the story, 2. Focus on key feelings, 3. New insights gained while telling the story to others, 4. What questions does the telling raise? 5. Specific ideas you can take from this

Exercise: Walk the talk

Working with literature reviews

OWL Purdue handout and Vincent and Munyuki.

Working with style

(Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing and Zachary Foster’s 14 tips): titles, hooks, telling stories, being human, being concrete, varying verbs – writing in active voice and sweat the details, (http://theconversation.com/seven-sectrets-of-stylish-academic-writing-7025) and https://www.timeshighereducation.com/comment/how-not-to-write-fourteen-tips-for-aspiring-humanities-academics

Style tips:

• Active rather than passive voice.
• Few words is always better.
• Avoid throat clearing phrases.
• Look out for repetition of pet words and phrases.
• Actively work to show connections.
• Concrete/abstract – use concrete details to give body to abstractions.
• Usually avoid metaphors

Developing a voice of your own with authority

(Read Richards and Miller chapter 7 Integrating the Personal and Professional)

Keeping a research journal (http://postgradenvironments.com/2017/09/11/keeping-research-journal/). Read Fulwiler chapter on voice/s:

• Speak when you are afraid. You grow fastest when you take the most risks, slowest when you remain safe. For me as an undergraduate,speaking out loud in class was as risky as anything I had ever done, but until I tested my voice and my beliefs in the arena of the class, I really didn’t know who I was, what I stood for, or what I could stand for.The more you test your oral voice, literally, the more your written voice will develop.
• Keep a log or journal. These are safer places in which to take risks than classrooms, so take advantage of that as often as you can.The more you explore who you are in your journal, the more easily you will be able to assert that identity both out loud and in your more formal writing. Use your journal to rehearse your public self.
• Share your writing with others. Sharing is another form of risk taking, of being willing to see how others perceive you. Asking friends, roommates, classmates, and teachers to respond to your writing in general, to your voice in particular, helps you see how your voice affects others, which in turn allows you to tinker with it for this or that effect. If you hear good things back about your writing, you will be most likely to do more writing; if you hear bad things,you won’t write. Pick your sharing audience carefully!
• Notice other people’s voices. One of the best means of growing in every direction at once is simply reading. The more you read, the more other voices you learn about. Read and notice how others convey this or that impression.Take reading notes in your journal to capture what you found. Notice the writers who make you keep reading and notice those who put you to sleep, and try to determine why.
• Practice other people’s voices. One of the best of the old-fashioned composition exercises was copying, word for word, the style of someone else. One day you copy a passage from Virginia Woolf, the next day you try Thomas Wolfe, then Tom Wolfe, then you try to determine which is which and why. These exercises also help you notice what features characterize your own writing.
• Show, don’t editorialize, generalize, or summarize. Practice projecting your voice without telling your reader that’s what you’re doing. Work so hard at noticing and describing and recreating that you don’t need to explain in any obvious way what you think, believe, and value. Place your observations, overhearings, and discoveries so judiciously in your text that they make your point and project your voice in tacit rather than explicit ways.

Exercise: Create an autoethnography (read Tessa Muncey) in separate sentences.

Exercise: I remember (Denis Hirson)

Exercise: Pantoum with multiple voices 

Talking to an audience, entering an already-existing knowledge conversation.

References for this course

Emig, Janet. 1977. Writing as a mode of learning. College Composition and Communication. 28(2): 122-128.

Fulwiler, Toby. 2002. College Writing: A Personal Approach to Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers.

Griffin, Connie. To Tell the Truth.

Murray, Rowena and Moore, Sarah. The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach. 2006. Berkshire: Open University Press.

Richards, Janet C and Miller, Sharon K. 2005. Doing Academic Writing in Education. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Richardson, Laurel and Adams St Pierre, Elizabeth. Writing: A Method of Inquiry.

Sword, Helen. 2015. The Writer’s Diet. Auckland: Auckland University Press.

Sword, Helen. 2012. Stylish Academic Writing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Warner, M. 2004. Critical or Uncritical. In J. Gallop (Ed.), Polemic: Critical or Uncritical: 13–38.

Resources for this course

https://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/

Last Modified: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 11:28:50 SAST