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Guide to Academic Writing in Linguistics

In the working world, writing is vitally important, especially as you take up leadership or management positions.  During your career, you will write reports, memos, proposals, assessments, reviews and speeches.  

To prepare you for these challenges, writing is also an integral part of university life.  We use writing as a tool to explore new ideas.  We write to express ourselves, our thoughts and our identities.  We write to demonstrate to others what we know.  We write to allow others to travel with us on intellectual journeys.  In fact, almost everything we do involves writing in some way or other.

For these reasons it is important to come to terms with the basics of expressing yourself in writing and our department is well equipped to help you achieve this through our Writing Support Programme where we use essays, tutors, peer reviews and drafting processes to improve your writing.  

However, since writing is so important to academic identities and is so closely linked to our creative capacities, it is extremely important to learn how to acknowledge the work of others.  This is called "referencing".  It is also important to learn how NOT to steal other people's ideas and words.  This crime is called "plagiarism" and there are very strict penalties for students who persist in representing themselves dishonestly through writing.

The department's Guide to Academic Writing in Linguistics contains important information about how to set out assignments and referencing, as well as the department's Plagiarism Protocol.  Click the link below to download a copy:

Guide to Academic Writing in Linguistics

The department's Plagiarism Protocol is an interpretation of the Rhodes University Plagiarism Policy, which you can also download here:

Rhodes Plagiarism Policy

Last Modified: Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:27:00 SAST