Do you worry about the effectiveness of your writing style?
As emerging scholars, perfecting the craft of writing is an essential component of developing as graduate students, and yet resources for honing these skills are largely under utilized.
Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program, led this session in an effort to communicate helpful rules, skills, and resources that are available to graduate students interested in further developing their writing style.
https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM
My takeaways:
1. This course is not about writing rules 3:04
2. Stop thinking about rules and start thinking about readers 3:55
3. The problems that domain experts have in their writing 4:00
4. Domain experts use writing to help themselves with thinking 4:51, if they don't do it this way, they can't think to the level they need
5. The challenge: the way that experts do their writing (to help with their thinking) is different to the way that readers can understand 6:53
6. The consequences 8:10 - 1. readers need to slow down and re-read many times 2. readers can't understand or misunderstand 3. readers give up
7. Readers read things that are valuable to them 11:52
8. Writings need to be clear, organized, persuasive and VALUABLE 13:45
9. Valuable to the readers of a research area (not everybody in the world) 15:20
10. An example of comparing two writings 17:16
11. Writing is not about communicating your ideas, it is about changing readers' ideas 21:24
12. Nothing will be accepted as knowledge or understanding until it has been challenged by people who have the competence to challenge 23:24, this determines the readers of our writing
13. A piece of writing is important, not because it is new and original; It is because it has value to some readers 25:16
14. What does the world of knowledge look like 28:00
15. Every research communities have their own code to communicate VALUE 31:30
16. Why does it take 5-6 years to get a PhD? 34:30 50% of the time is used to know the readers in the field
17. Using these words to show that you are aware of the research communities: widely, accepted, and reported 35:24
18. Flow/transition words can help to make writing preservative and organized: and, but, because, unless, nonetheless, however, although, etc. 36:00
19. Do things under the code of the communities 42:00
20. Another example 44:25
21. The function of a piece of writing is to move a research area forward, not to be preserved for 500 years 46:54
22. Writing is not about to express what is in our head, it is about changing other people's thoughts 48:50
23. The instability words that create tension/challenge: anomaly, inconsistent, but, however, although 54:00
24. Bad writing style: backgroud+thesis 55:07 and a better style: problem+solution 56:18
25. Learn the language code from the target publications 1:01:30
26. Literature review is used to enrich the problem 1:02:50
27. Problem vs background 1:06:47
28. Gap in the knowledge is dangerous 1:08:45
29. Identify the right readers (research communities) is important, but it could be difficult for interdisciplinary research 1:11:57
Prof Larry,
This is commendable job you have done! writing is not about rules, its about thinking process!
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