Write Better At Work

Academic writing: What can I add to the experts’ discussion?

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Scholars at the Sorbonne
Scholars at the Sorbonne

The basic principles of academic writing are simple:

Back up what you say.

Give credit to your sources.

In academic writing, your opinion is only as good as your reasons. Don’t you have a right to your opinion? Of course. Can you expect anyone to agree  if you don’t give good reasons? Not really. The more your readers know about a topic, the more important it will be to show that you have read and considered what others have said about the topic.

Your writing will be more convincing if you use evidence from other authors to back up your opinion. The challenge is to balance your original ideas with the evidence.

For example, let’s say that you’re writing about procrastination. You read an article in which Ferrari identifies three types of procrastinators. Arousal types get a thrill from beating a deadline. Avoiders put off doing things that might make others think badly of them. Decisional procrastinators postpone making a decision until they have enough information to feel confident they are making a good choice.

If you just summarize Ferrari’s three types, you won’t get much credit for original thought. What can you add? You might argue that each type procrastinates for different reasons. Therefore, each type needs to use different time management strategies to overcome procrastination. Now you’ve taken an idea from a source and applied it to solve a problem: how can people stop procrastinating? The answer depends on what type of procrastinator you are.

Another approach is to compare Ferrari’s definition of procrastination with other experts’ definitions, such those from Steel or Cao. Comparison requires analysis, which is a form of higher-order thinking. The more you use higher-order thinking, the more original your ideas will be.

Another way to be original is to make a judgment. Is what this author says really true? Could this idea actually be put into practice?

Combining ideas from several sources, or synthesis, is another type of original thinking. To explain how police should treat mentally ill suspects, you might draw on ideas from the fields of criminal justice and psychology.

For more about higher-order thinking, see Bloom’s taxonomy. For more examples of how to use sources to support your ideas, see this writing tutorial.

APA Resources

The Basics of APA Style
This tutorial is one of several free resources from the American Psychological Association. You’ll also find Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and model papers at APAstyle.org.

APA Documentation Guide
This handbook from the University of Wisconsin-Madison includes a clear explanation of how to create parenthetical citations and reference list entries.

APA Without Agony (PPT)
Many questions graduate students have about APA-style documentation are covered in this introduction.

APAchecklist_6th_edition (.doc)

APAtemplate_6th_edition (.doc)

Recommended APA Resources (.doc)

“Pick up an oar”: a metaphor for academic writing

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Writing and rowing have never really been linked in my mind. But John Warner connects them when he introduces freshmen to college writing. On the first day of class, he tells students that each of them is a “unique intelligence” and that taking comp will show them how to apply that intelligence to everything they learn. He then challenges them:

“Your role here, rather than to prove to me that you can pay attention in class and write stuff down to later regurgitate it in the form of a quiz or essay, is to pick up an oar and start helping us row the ship and the world at large towards greater enlightenment.”

Most students have probably never seen themselves as producers of knowledge. Some are too overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge there is to consume. Others have never thought about where knowledge comes from. They take scholars’ findings on faith, not realizing that an academic discipline is the product of individuals who wrestle with problems, propose solutions, critique others’ solutions and revise their own based on new findings and new insights. Some of those insights come from being proved wrong, either because ideas or methods don’t work as expected or because debate exposes flawed logic or inadequate evidence.

Knowledge is produced by people. It is neither fixed nor infallible. If students don’t know that, they have a hard time understanding the difference between cutting-and-pasting and using sources to support their own opinions.

Of course, beginning academic writers have yet to master a discipline. That’s why picking up an oar is an effective metaphor. Like thinking and writing, rowing is work. The work is done by individuals, but progress is the result of a collaborative effort. Freshman writers are not expected to set the pace or steer the ship. However, if they want to move ahead, they have to do more than sit on the bench.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

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Sir Isaac Newton, born close to 400 years ago, is still a contender for the title of Greatest Scientist Who Ever Lived. Best known for his thinking on gravity, he made advances in many fields, including physics, mathematics, astronomy, and optics.

Newton knew that he had developed powerful new theories and tools. Yet he thought of himself as part of a long scientific tradition. “If I have seen further,” he wrote to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

“Standing on the shoulders of giants” is a good metaphor for working with sources. How do we master a subject? First, we learn from experts who have already done work on the subject. They show us how to define terms, weigh evidence, and solve problems in our field. In the process of becoming expert, we may test, dispute, or expand others’ ideas. However, our insights and methods are not developed in a vacuum, and crediting those who  influence our thinking is part of the work of any academic paper.

Locating and citing sources gets us to the giant’s shoulders. The temptation is to stop there. However, from a giant’s shoulders we see a new, wider perspective. Our job now is not to exult in the height we have achieved, but to see even further.

See farther than the giants? That thought can be a bit intimidating. However, as Newton recognized, knowledge is meant to be used. To find what you can add to a body of knowledge, imitate his scientific approach: question, observe, and develop new insights.

Ask: Have the giants left a question unanswered? What do you observe when you try to apply one of their ideas? How might their ideas, combined with your experience, suggest a new solution or more effective method?

First, learn all you can from the experts in your field. Then challenge yourself: What do you see from your giants’ shoulders?