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Writing is thinking

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Professor Louise Vincent presented a seminar on Academic writing in the Politics department. Honours and Masters Students attended the session. The seminar was full of information and writing exercises in between. Prof. Vincent put forward the idea that ‘writing is thinking’ – a process of discovering our ideas rather than merely presenting our ideas -- and asked everyone to commit themselves to writing for at least 15 minutes a day. Rather than ‘binge writing’, participants were encouraged to adopt a regular, habitual approach to writing.

Prof. Vincent also spoke on Literature Reviews providing examples of previously submitted Literature Reviews. Using electronic tools it is possible to ‘aggressively attack’ the literature in ten days in order to establish the ‘gap’ for your study.

Look at writing as a process. Begin by writing for yourself (the writing of discovery) and then write for others (multiple drafts).

Editing comes right at the end. Editing is important but don’t edit early on. The initial phase of writing should be focused on meaning-making not polishing the product.

Prof encourages students to ask for the feedback that they want when they ask for someone’s opinion on their writing. For example, ‘Dear supervisor, please don’t worry about the grammar or spelling in this chapter – I’d like you to tell me if the meaning is coming across clearly and if you think that my theoretical constructs are being used accurately in the analysis’.

Prof. argued that all of academic writing is about making and supporting claims. ‘Use a highlighter to identify every place in a piece of writing where you are making a claim. Then ask yourself: have I supported the claim? Unsupported claims must be removed or supported. No other option!’