Coming Out of the Cave: Playing with Reflexive Writing

Academic Writing, Creative writing, Graduate student writers, Inspiration and motivation, Make writing social, Voice, Writers writing about writing

By Luke Lavender

“How MUCH my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at

bottom!” – Kafka, Investigations of a Dog

Clack go the keys; your mouse moves across the screen, in a lazy manner, hovering over the text you have managed to write and pour out. Your brain is weary, your eyes are adjusting—right, let’s see what we have managed to put into the world. Oh, no, what I am I saying here, how does Trump relate to this, am I really claiming THAT!? Wait, is that it? How did I get here, what was I saying, where was my writing going—is there no going back, I want to find what I was meaning to say before I lose myself in this cave.

Lost, lost, lost; our writing is screaming to say something, but it’s lost, I am lost in my writing. These feelings abound, as an undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, as someone who simply is trying to speak to others. I’m sure we’ve all been here before, in that dark cave where what you are saying does not connect to what you mean, where you, your words and speech, are not in dialogue with your thinking, your intention—how does it happen, does it always have to be this way, can I not be myself in my writing?

It is not uncommon that we are told to avoid you, the subject of you, the subject of personal subjects in writing.  As we ‘refine’ what we say, we find it common to try and escape ourselves in that process; we are told to write an argument, but make sure it is the argument that speaks, that you are not yourself in your text. In fact, in a certain way, is our writing not writing about avoiding that subject, the subject that we are? Sometimes, these lessons are personal and conscious—feedback asking us to not be so personal, to distance the writing from ourselves, to make sure that the writing speaks for itself—sadly, it is also an unconscious process; for many of us, writing operates through what Butler calls, in Excitable Speech, a “logic of censorship” that makes speaking, writing and dialogue, possible. Paradoxically, we are told to censor and write without ourselves, but why?

Formally the reasons abound, the father of them, is objectivity; “Academic writing should be objective… the language of academic writing should therefore be impersonal, and should not include personal pronouns, emotional language or informal speech”. For many this is all well and good, by eliminating use of the ‘I’ or yourself in the writing, we can escape bias, the tainted world of experience, and actually come into knowledge, true knowledge, knowledge that exists irrespective of a subject, a ‘you’, who does the thinking. Allegedly this leads to greater clarity, clearer reasoning, and more transparent writing; but does it? Is this all it does?

It seems sensible that objectivity removes us from what we say, so sensible that we miss the wider circle we find ourselves in: being objective requires being opaque to yourself in the writing, to not be reflective about what you think, let alone what you write. In this circle, we lose a grasp of the edges of our writing, it turns from being a cave into becoming a tomb; the writing becomes dark, you can’t find your way around it, let alone, get out of it—we find ourselves trapped into writing objectively and destined to find ourselves as mummified within hieroglyphics that we can’t even decipher. What a sad fate for objective knowledge, for objective writing, for an objective author; is this truly our destiny, can I not, myself, start understanding what I want to say? How, in a word, do we come to know the edges of ourselves, our writing, and what we are saying through writing itself? Should writing not be the means by which we not only illuminate our minds, but, fundamentally, learn about the thoughts that we have? Should writing not be about becoming aware of the thoughts we have and how to express them?

What could be a more perfect recipe for getting lost than the reflex to not be you in your writing, to write without yourself in the process? This is a concern that dogs the philosopher Raymond Geuss in the book “Philosophy and Real Politics”; the tendency of our philosophy, thinking, and, ultimately, writing is to lead us away from ourselves, to shut the doors on thinking about how your writing speaks to others, but also, reflects yourself. No wonder then, that, Mihaela Mihai calls for “responsible” and “responsive” theorising, a practice of being responsive to the realities of the world, and yourself in that world. Can we not take a stand and ask for a turn towards responsible and responsive writing? And what would it entail? A writing that, in its very existence, is reflexive, knows the edges of what it says, what it thinks, and what it thinks it says in contrast to what it actually says; a writing that is not entombed in objectivity, but open to itself. It is about making writing an exercise in reflection.

Are we not lost souls because we think our writing is transparent when it is actually opaque? Are we not in this cave because the way we are taught to write, academically, leads us away from being reflexive with what we say, and from knowing the limits of writing, from ourselves, on the page? So, as we turn to outside help, to others to help us say what we think and be transparent, perhaps we can try and recognise the vitality of being responsible and responsive as we write; in other words, of writing reflexively. This may happen in small steps, but perhaps we can collectively practice this lost language of ourselves in writing: journal, explore, and, above all, write about ourselves. We must play with our writing; so play, like I am in this very post, in this very writing. It doesn’t have to be objective, but it has to talk about you—give it a go with me, maybe we can find get out of the cave and find our paths together?

This first step—of turning writing into a reflexive exercise about reflecting on yourself, your thoughts, your limits—is exactly what we need if we want to know who we are and what we are saying when we put pen to paper, finger to key, and expose our writing-self to the world. So, let us not avoid the subject within writing, let us reflect on how to write reflexively. I for one, am tired of being lost in my own work.

About the Author:
Luke Lavender

Hey, I’m Luke, a masters student in Political Science with a Concentration in Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at the University of Victoria; I am working to work out what I am actually working on. I completed my undergraduate in the UK with a year abroad of study in Munich, Germany. Now, I find myself acting as the Teaching Assistant Consultant for Political Science, an International Teaching Consultant, and as a Graduate Student Tutor at the Centre for Academic Communication.

Blog Writing Practices – UVic’s Centre for Academic Communications

Blogs and blogging, Centre for Academic Communication, Graduate student writers

Blogs are becoming a standard medium for knowledge dissemination in an accessible and rather informal way. Such publications utilize accessible and informative language, speaking to a diverse yet targeted audience. This post describes how blogs that the CAC publishes are to be written, in a way that demonstrates the tips we provide and the practices we recommend our contributors follow.

Introductions and Openers

Like most text that you write, the first paragraph is very important in setting the tone and the purpose of the piece. For blog posts in particular, the first couple of sentences are the most important: along with tone and purpose, they set the theme and guide your reader as to whether or not this post answers their inquiries. While the openers for your blog are expected to be grabbing, they still need to be direct in presenting the key information. From there, continue to provide context and essential details on the topic. Move on from the introduction as soon as you have established your theme, purpose/argument, and the necessary context.

Concision and Brevity

Concision is key in writing blog posts. Your readers are looking for information that can be deciphered efficiently, perhaps even through skimming. Lay out the information as concisely as possible, using sentences of short to moderate lengths. Make sure that your sentences are engaging and vary in length though, so that the piece has rhythm and flows smoothly. Use anecdotes and personal experience wisely: where it drives the point home or clarifies it, is necessary to capture the reader, or is the actual topic of the post.

Further, lists and bullet points are your friends in a blog post. Where necessary, this practice provides a visual structure for readers’ attention, as well as a quick-to-read and easy-to-digest display of information.

Sections and Headers

Use sections and headers; these focus your reader’s attention and gives them a visual map of the post and which part they need to read. Given that some of your readers will be skimming the post, organizing it into sections with clear and descriptive headers will guide them towards the content of interest. A satisfied reader will come back for more, so if you are building an audience/following, make sure you attend to their expectations.

Purpose and Themes

Be aware of your purpose from the very beginning and make it clear to the readers. Make sure that by the end of the post, you have achieved your purpose. Know your themes and commit to them; avoid getting distracted by and/or distracting your reader with unnecessary information. You may find formatting helpful to highlight key terms and statements; where need be, bold the important word or sentence, but make sure not to overdo it.

General Notes:

  • If discussing a personal experience, avoid rants and focus on takeaways (Raising awareness, providing tips, etc.)
  • Be aware of the diversity of your audience, which includes backgrounds (social, cultural, religious) and academic standing (undergraduates, graduates, faculty)
  • Use language conscientiously. Our blog is a writing blog for building community; as authors, lead by example
  • Be respectful and professional, even if informal
  • Finally, be open to conversations pre and post publication. The editors of the blog go through a selection process and will get in touch with the authors for edits and revisions. Readers might wish to contact the authors to further the conversation, so consider providing contact information with your bio note.

Why Grammar Matters in Academia

Academic Writing, EAL graduate students, Grammar and punctuation, Grammar checkers, Learning

By Hossein Ghanbari (Odivi)

Whether it is a prescriptive or descriptive approach, grammar has proved to be an indispensable part of language learning and acquisition. Grammar is defined as a set of forms/rules for how words are put together to form phrases, clauses, and meaning in a language. For instance, in an English sentence, the subject usually comes first, followed by the verb and the object while it is subject, object, and verb in a Japanese sentence. Thus, having a knowledge of grammar helps build clear and comprehensible sentences.

When I started my journey as a learner of English, I bet my teachers did not even consider not emphasizing the importance of making grammatical structures. They would rather go to great extents to make sure their students had followed the rules to craft grammatical sentences, the prescriptive approach of grammar teaching. It must have been an achievement on their part when we had learned “simple present” and “simple past” tenses, to name a few. On the other hand, it is also believed that grammar should be learned and taught as it is used by its native speakers, the descriptive approach of grammar teaching. As the proponents of each approach advocate their favourite philosophy of grammar, I would like to slightly change the discussion and state that these two approaches are different and should be kept that way.

Prescriptive grammarians present various reasons about the importance of grammar in learning and teaching languages. So, it is typical to hear that grammar shows how to make comprehensible and acceptable sentences and bad grammar could mean lack of a proper education. Having said that, learning and following grammar is not always easy. This resonates with many writers who write for academic purposes as they must follow the rubrics of academic writing; formal and grammatical sentences. Descriptivist grammarians, on the other hand, argue in favour of learning a language based on how it is used. They focus on how a language is and how it is used by a native speaker of that language, and not how they should go about producing that. In other words, they describe how it is and not how it should be.

In my personal life, I would travel to the touristy area in my hometown and would look for a willing tourist to speak with me so that I could improve my “Spoken English.” It was then that I appreciated how different these two variations of English are, spoken and written/formal English. That is because my tourist friends seemed reluctant to follow the rules of English grammar as much as I expected them to. What should I have done? Should I put on my wise glasses and reminded them of their grammar errors and mistakes? Well, guess what? I did not!

With that being said, I would like to say that although no variation of a language is better than the other, some of these other forms are not used in academia, unless for specific reasons. As university graduates and students, we have heard that writing grammatically is important because grammar helps writers to write comprehensibly and be assessed accordingly. I mean, anyone in academia can attest to the times they had to write and re-write their work to make sure it follows the grammatical rules. However, what if no one follows the rigid set of rules for pluralizing nouns in English, for instance. One of the consequences of that would be an array of different forms crafted at the whim of their authors, which at the same time may confuse and fail readers to follow their authors’ messages. At the same time, one may wonder what the point of writing would be if no one could read your mind because you wished to voluntarily walk away from the writing rules. Thus, rules in general and grammar rules in particular provide guidance for readers to follow your thoughts and respond to them appropriately.

To wrap up, I would like to reiterate that there are two distinct approaches toward teaching and learning grammar, prescriptive and descriptive. While proponents of these two philosophies advocate their approach of choice, perhaps they should consider looking away from this dichotomy to see the differences of each approach and the appropriate contexts in which they are accepted.

About the Author:

Hi. My name is Odivi. I recently graduated from my PhD in Educational Studies here at the University of Victoria. My dissertation topic was on the concept of success in language revitalization program for the W̱ŚÁNEĆ community. Before that, I wrote my MA thesis on the study of moves and steps in Farsi and English Academic Recommendation Letters.

I am passionate about language teaching, language revitalization, and writing. Before I came to Canada, I had been living in Turkey and Iran, where I taught TEFL/TESOL to non-native speakers of English. Here at the CAC, I help students with their sentence structure, paragraph development, and grammar.

A beam of light, a mirror, or an axe: Writing as self-discovery

Cognition and writing, Cognitive process and writing, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Inspiration and motivation, Motivation, Posts by Emily, Reading, Writers writing about writing, Writing resources

By Emily Arvay

Image credit: North News & Pictures Ltd. Creative Commons Licence.

“The well of inspiration is a hole that leads downwards” (Atwood, 176).

Margaret Atwood and Hélène Cixous suggest that all writing is motivated by a compulsion to explore the deepest parts of ourselves. Both authors argue that writing serves to illuminate “an underworld” to draw unacknowledged or unexamined insights back into the light (Atwood, xxiv). Whereas Cixous compares writing to plunging deep into the earth or ocean (5), Atwood compares writing to entering a dark labyrinth or cave with no opening:

“Obstruction, obscurity, emptiness, disorientation, often combined with a struggle or path or journey – an inability to see one’s way forward but a feeling that there [is] a way forward, and that the act of going forward eventually [brings] about the conditions for vision.” (xxii-xxiii)

For Atwood, writing is midwifed in darkness through which inspiration appears as a flash of light (176). Simply put, writers who enter this underworld serve to illuminate that which is already present but unseen.

For Atwood and Cixous, the process of reading shares many of the same properties as writing: a reader enters a text from a place of darkness, unsure of where that text may take them, and temporarily loses then regains their sense of self in the process. As Cixous describes, to be a reader is “to lose a world and to discover that there is more than one world, and that the world isn’t what we think” (10). Ultimately, both authors acknowledge that writing-as-self-discovery is not an easy process – that any attempt to write with integrity is “an exercise that requires us to be stronger than ourselves” (Cixous, 42). It is perhaps for this reason that Kafka once compared writing to “an axe” to break “the frozen sea inside us” (as cited in Cixous, 17). Whether understood as a beam of light, a mirror, or an axe, Atwood, Cixous, and Kafka teach us that the process of writing, however imperfect, may gift the writer with the means to ascend towards a more luminous, expansive, or magnanimous awareness of self.

Works Referenced

Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

About the author:

Emily Arvay completed her PhD at the University of Victoria in 2019 with her thesis “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism.”  Since then, she has worked as a Learning Strategist and EAL Specialist at the University of Victoria. She is currently conducting further research on the intersections between literary metamodernism and contemporary climate fictions.

 

 

 

Summer bummer and working to white noise

Academic Writing, Deadlines, Distractions, Environment, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Inspiration and motivation, Posts by Emily, Procrastination, procrastination, Productivity, Time management, Writing resources

By Emily Arvay

© University of Victoria

As the weather warms, it can be increasingly tempting to cast off thesis or dissertation work in favour of a strawberry gelato, or pick-up baseball, or a fluffy beach book. Ironically, it is often during the summer months that graduate students find themselves bogged down with preparing for major field exams, thesis or dissertation writing, or condensed language-requirement courses. For many, the intensity of graduate work during the summer months might mean having to forgo that picnic in the park or rousing beach bonfire. One tactic for warding off such tempting distractions is to pretend, at least temporarily, that summer doesn’t exist. To drown out the squeals of children leaping through sprinklers, you might try losing yourself to the quiet din of a busy library, steady rainfall of a winter storm, or smoothing balm of furniture music. Rather than bemoaning those mint mojitos you’re missing out on, you might try embracing your newfound status as a den-dwelling troglodyte by closing those curtains, silencing those devices, and riding out that tsunami of graduate schoolwork with this ten-hour loop of rainy-day jazz. Although it won’t be easy, you might approach your thesis or dissertation project as you would a sandy band-aid: by pushing through the short-term pain of getting those drafted chapters off to your supervisory committee as quickly as possible. Then, once sent, you can treat yourself to a much-deserved break. Long-awaited, that beach-side lemonade will taste all-the-sweeter.

About the author:

Emily Arvay completed her PhD at the University of Victoria in 2019 with her thesis “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism.”  Since then she has worked as a Learning Strategist and EAL Specialist at the University of Victoria. She is currently conducting further research on the intersections between literary metamodernism and contemporary climate fictions.

Need to get on track? There’s an app for that

Deadlines, Dissertation writing, Distractions, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Make writing social, Motivation, Posts by Madeline, Procrastination, procrastination, Productivity, Time management

By Madeline Walker

Our last post was way back in March. I was going to write about some time management and productivity apps and tools to complement Emily’s wonderful post, but fittingly, I procrastinated about that. And here it is, the end of May, and I am finally tackling this task! I think I need one of these apps. . .

My colleagues  at the Centre for Academic Communication told me about some productivity tools and apps they use or have had recommended to them. Today, I am checking out a few.

Some apps are about sticking to the task at hand by shutting out distractions. If you are a Mac user, this free application, SelfControl, will “let you block your own access to distracting websites.” The skull image scared me a little—I might die if I can’t  access my mail for half an hour!

SelfControl app

Calmly Writer and Forest apps also give you the “distraction-free” writing experience; as with many of these apps, you can get a free trial then will have to pay.

Kaveh swears by the kitchen timer: “I find the simple technique of dividing your working time to rotating minutes for work and a break (at a ratio of 5:1 or 4:1) the most effective. If a kitchen timer does the magic for you, then you can call it the Pomodoro Technique (but it doesn’t have to be). You can simply use any timer.”

Are you a list maker? You might like Toodledo, a listing app that helps you organize life and work. The claim is that it will “increase your productivity,” providing a place to “write long notes, make custom lists, create structure outlines and track your habits.”

Finally, two intriguing apps have to do with making commitments in order to increase your productivity.

stickk is a “commitment platform with the tools to help you achieve your goals.” When you sign up with stickk, you make a  commitment contract, for example, I will write five times a week for 12 weeks. The makers claim the difference between having a goal to achieving that goal is to make a binding agreement with yourself.  Additionally, you can put money on the line by committing to pay a certain amount if you do NOT reach your goal. They even suggest promising to donate to an organization with values antithetical to your own in order to motivate you to stick to your commitment. I thought of promising $100 to the National Rifle Association if I fail to meet my goal of walking four times a week, but then I backed out.

With the app called focusmate, you sign up to be part of a “community of doers.” You arrange to work in tandem silence with a “live peer accountability partner” for 50 minutes of distraction-free writing (or some other task), up to three times a week. The app claims that it can help you eliminate procrastination and commit to “blasting excuses and get important work done.” When you are accountable to another person, you show up.

Sounds a bit like our Graduate Writing Room, 2-4 PST Wednesday afternoons: Join us and get ‘er done:

https://uvic.zoom.us/j/84862607742

Do you have any great productivity and time management apps you’d like to share in the comments? We’d love to hear from you.

https://selfcontrolapp.com

https://francescocirillo.com/pages/pomodoro-technique

https://www.calmlywriter.com

https://www.forestapp.cc

https://www.toodledo.com/

https://www.stickk.com/

https://www.focusmate.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too much to do and not enough time?

Academic Writing, Anxiety, Centre for Academic Communication, Deadlines, Distractions, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Inspiration and motivation, Mental health, Motivation, Organization/ Order, Planning, Posts by Emily, Procrastination, procrastination, Productivity, Stress, Time management

By Emily Arvay

 

Q: Why is time management so hard?

A: There are many different reasons for why time management is hard. Lots of students might wait until things are already off the rails to think about time-management. And when you are in triage mode and putting out fires, taking the time to create a time-management plan can seem counter-productive. Also, students sometimes create vague or unreasonable time-management plans that set them up for failure. So within a week of setting up their plan, they are already behind and then just abandon the plan.

Often, time-management plans are unworkable because the student has neglected to really think through and spatialize their course requirements in enough detail. Frequently, students already in a state of panic about missed assignments and late penalties might find it challenging to think through complex processes in a step-by-step way due to elevated cortisol levels that often come with anxiety, not to mention sleep deprivation from pulling successive all-nighters.

Ironically, one of the great benefits of building a reasonable time-management plan is that it can greatly reduce that sense of panic by restoring to students a sense of control over their lives – once the plan is in place, a student need only review the items for a single day, hold those items in mind, and let go of the rest. So, to use a metaphor, instead of staring at the top of a mountain wondering how can I possibly climb that, a student need only look to the closest tree and hike to that point.

More importantly, having a good plan in place can prevent burnout because it enables students to give themselves guilt-free permission to set school-related activities aside. If you have ticked all of your to-do boxes for the morning, you can go for that walk to the ocean. Or, if you have completed the task you needed to do after dinner, you can binge-watch whatever new series you enjoy without feeling that you are somehow not doing enough.

One added perk that comes with good time-management plans is that students often find interpersonal tensions related to poor well-being or the perception of overvaluing school at the expense of significant relationships really improves, which can generate a supportive and motivating feedback loop.

But setting aside the impact of stress, anxiety, sleep deprivation, and interpersonal strain, more commonly students may not give much reflective thought to how much time it takes to complete different tasks and then do the math to see what that process looks like when spatialized.

 That is, not many students time themselves to see how long it might take to read one page of a challenging but not overly difficult academic article, or how long it might take to write 250 words of an essay. So, in underappreciating how long certain tasks might take, students also can set themselves up for failure in terms of time-management.

Most often, when I ask to see how students are presently managing their time, what I see spatialized are assignment deadlines, marked in an agenda or on their computer calendar, or on the whiteboard. What I most often see are a string of dates for submission: something along the lines of submit English research paper today at midnight and that’s it. Or a student may dedicate large coloured squares of time to different subjects: on Mondays, there might be a large blue square for Math in the morning and then a large green square for Biology after lunch, but without any indication of what particular tasks are intended to be completed during those intervals.

What is notably absent from most time-management plans are the most important elements: catch up times and necessary activities such as buying groceries, eating, sleeping, getting exercise, socializing, doing things that make you feel good about your life.

Also, sometimes what students “label” poor time-management might actually be something else, such as procrastination due to perfectionism, or writer’s block due to a fear of failure seeded by familial expectation, or a sense of dread created by overly-critical thoughts, or poor self-discipline from a lack of intrinsic motivation or greater sense of academic purpose.

So for students who find it difficult to stick with an otherwise reasonable and well thought out time-management plan, it might be worthwhile to give some thought to what, in particular, is behind poor time-management. In those moments when a plan is abandoned, it might be worthwhile to draw greater awareness to what kinds of thoughts or feelings might be surfacing to prevent the completion of that task? If the underlying issue is perfectionism, or fear of failure, or lack of purpose, there are related strategies students might use to overcome those challenges too.

 Q: What are some effective strategies?

A: To create a time-management plan with enough detail, I would forgo sticky notes, or those tiny paper planners, or even a white board in favour of a some type of electronic planner, if possible. This strategy often allows students to squeeze in more information, cut and paste items efficiently, and even automate important reminders. But really, use whatever system will work, since there is no point in generating a time-management plan that is not regularly consulted and, for some people, the physical reminder of a white board is key.

I would recommend that students build comprehensive time-management plans in the first week of the term when they have access to all of their course syllabi. First, I would recommend coding in necessary items, such as meal times, ideal start and stop times, times for exercising, times for commuting to work, times for enjoying hobbies, times to enjoy friend or family commitments. Perhaps you might decide to take each Saturday off to recoup from school?

Then code in major deadlines, noting the weight/value of each, time they are due, preferred method of submission. Then spatialize, working backwards from the deadline, all the tasks required to complete that assignment. So if the assignment is a seven page research paper requiring you to cite ten academic sources, code in the time to write each of those seven pages, time to create your outline for writing, time to collate notes and quotes from selected sources, time to read those ten sources, time to locate and upload or print those sources. Once this process is complete, time also to book an appointment with a CAC tutor, and time to integrate their feedback into your final draft before submitting that assignment.

I would do the same process for each major assignment, leaving in one hour of catch up time for each hour of time worked so that if things really start to slip sideways, if there is an unexpected illness or extenuating life circumstance that pose a setback, there is still plenty of wiggle-room left to shift items around.

Likewise, I would ask each student to give some thought to how long they can reasonably focus. Some students prefer to work for two-hour intervals without interruption followed by a long break. Some students find they focus best in 25 minute intervals with 5-10 minute breaks. Some students do their best work early in the morning, with their first cup of coffee. Some students work best after dinner into the wee hours of the night. Regardless of whether you are an early bird or night owl, you might give some thought to what time of day you tend to sustain greatest focus, think most clearly, and can produce your best work. If you can identify that time, I would complete your most challenging task then.Likewise, you might give some thought to the hours of your day that you tend to feel more foggy or sluggish (for many this is right after eating a large meal, or right before bed) so you might want to devote your easiest work to those periods of time?

You might also think about ways you might incentivize the completion of hard tasks. Perhaps you might go for a run, then sit down to complete a hard task. Or perhaps you might complete the hard task knowing that, once completed, you can reward yourself by listening to your favourite song, or watching comedy on Youtube, or eating a bowl of ice-cream.

Q: What should a student do when they simply DON’T have enough time?

A: If you find yourself in triage mode, it might be wise to adopt a “good enough” mentality that is dispassionately strategic. To this end, you might consider….

  • Which assignments are worth the least? Which readings do you NOT have to read? Which feed into assignments? Which readings can you skim?
  • Read the abstract and headings. Read only the intro and conclusion and forget the middle. Read topic sentences. Read phrases that are italicised or in bold. Read (peer-reviewed) reviews of that work to obtain a scholarly synopsis (rather than online cliff notes, etc).
  • Tag team with a trusted classmate. You read one article and they read the second; you share with each other what you have learned.
  • Ask instructors for extensions as soon as you realize you are in an impossible time crunch. Avoid asking for extensions on the day of your assignment deadline. Keep your email to your instructor simple and straightforward. Include your full name, course section, and V number. You do not need to explain why you are requesting an extension beyond using a phrase such as “difficult extenuating circumstances.” Suggest an alternative deadline, one that gives you more time than you need to avoid having to ask for an extension on your extension! Thank your instructor for their time and consideration.

 For more time-management strategies, you might listen to this podcast.

 About the author

To show the author's faceEmily Arvay completed her PhD at the University of Victoria in 2019 with her thesis “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism.”  Since then she has worked as a Learning Strategist and EAL Specialist at the University of Victoria. She is currently conducting further research on the intersections between literary metamodernism and contemporary climate fictions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enliven your writing in 2021

Academic Writing, Blogs and blogging, Posts by Madeline, Writing resources

Welcome back. I hope you had a good break. We all needed a rest after an exhausting and challenging semester in the midst of a pandemic.  Would you like to join me in starting 2021 with a resolution to exhume “zombie nouns” from your writing? In this humorous video, Helen Sword contends that when we turn other parts of speech (verbs, adjectives) into nouns by adding a suffix, we create “zombie nouns” or nominalizations that suck the life out of our writing, making it more abstract and difficult to read.

I’ll take Sword’s example: “The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency towards pomposity and abstraction” contains seven nominalizations and doesn’t leave us with a clear idea of who is doing what. Several of the bolded words started as lively verbs (proliferate, form, indicate, tend) and others started as adjectives (pompous, abstract), but they life drained from each of them with the added suffixes, which added unnecessary complexity.

Reanimated, this sentence becomes “Writers who overload their sentences with nominalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract.” Note that a human (the writer) was added for clarity. So much better!

Sword also created The Writer’s Diet, a tool that measures words and constructions that weaken writing, for example be-verbs and zombie nouns. I tested a paragraph of a recently published article*, and zombie nouns were off the chart! Academics tend to use many nominalizations. Indeed, you may think of nominalizations as a required feature of  formal writing, and perhaps you’ve even added nominalizations to make your writing sound more “academic.” But as Sword says, nominalizations obscure meaning, and you want to communicate important ideas and research as transparently as possible. I invite you to join me in analyzing your writing this year to see if you can enliven and clarify your sentences by reducing nominalizations.

screen shot of the writers diet website testing an excerpt of flabby prose

Resources:

Sword’s tool and video are a good place to start. You can add the Writer’s Diet app to your Microsoft Word program for free. Another resource on this topic is  OWL’s page on nominalizations.

Write for us! 

Would you like to write for the blog?  We welcome ideas and blog posts from graduate students, staff members, and instructors. Please send your query or post to Madeline Walker, Editor, at cacpc@uvic.ca

Before you write, please consider the following:

We love content relevant to academic communication (reading, writing, presenting) and graduate students. We value

    • a unique point of view,
    • posts reflecting the diversity of UVic students,
    • stories that illustrate difficulties and vulnerabilities,
    • posts with practical tips and ideas,
    • fresh topics,
    • humour,
    • content specific to UVic,
    • and motivating and inspirational themes.

Posts should be between 250-750 words and may be edited for clarity, grammar, and punctuation.

If your post is accepted for publication, please provide a good-quality jpeg photo of yourself (not a selfie) and a short (2-3 sentence) biography.

* This is the recently published article where I obtained the excerpt: Nils Dahl, Alex Ross & Paul Ong (2020) Self-Neglect in Older Populations: A Description and Analysis of Current Approaches, Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 32:6, 537-558, DOI: 10.1080/08959420.2018.1500858

 

Learning how to write through storytelling

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, EAL graduate students, Education, International graduate students, Tutoring

By Hossein Ghanbari Odivi

I was born into a crowded family. Up until I turned 6, we had been living in a village in the southeastern part of our country where we cultivated our land and looked after our flock. The only language I knew was Bakhtiari, which is different from Farsi, the lingua franca of Iran.

I remember waking up to this beautiful country morning and based on my recollection of previous days, I thought I’d have lots of fun on that day as well. However, that was a short-lived wish as I was told to pack up as we were moving house to Ahvaz, which turned to be my birthplace! I had no recollection of the city whatsoever. However, I learned that Ahvaz is the capital of the oil-rich Khuzestan province, and it proved itself to be a lively city for sure. Cars and people were everywhere in abundance. I was mesmerized by the unknown.

After we had moved in and settled down, I was told that I was going to school along with my elder brothers. Little did I know about schools and homework. At school, I heard different languages that later on were deciphered to me as Farsi and Arabic. At the time, a considerable percentage of the population in Ahvaz was Arabic speakers. In other words, it was expected to hear Arabic at school as many of my schoolmates were Iranian Arabs who would interact with each other in Arabic. Just like many other places in the world, where education is conducted in a certain language, classes were taught in the standard Farsi, which was all Greek to me. However, as I found myself in this new context, I had to adapt and adopt, which fruited in my learning Farsi.

With this little synopsis of my background, I aim to say that it takes effort and persistence to master new endeavours. In my personal life, writing in an academic setting was hard for me. Although I am a teacher and am in love with reading, I found academic writing a challenge as I did not know how to approach it appropriately. That is why I always make sure that my students know about essay structure and paragraph development. As long as we start from there, the rest will be easier to do.

Similar to stories that have a setting, theme, and a central message, academic writing also has its own framework. Thus, to write acceptably in an academic setting, one should follow the rubrics of academic writing. That is how I learned to write in an academic context. I learned that every academic essay should have an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

To write an introduction, one should break the ice to the reader with enough and not too much information. When the ice is broken and the reader’s attention is directed toward the message that the writer intends to convey, it is time to present a thesis statement. See? It is a fancy word for the central meaning in your essay. Your thesis statement is the main argument that you are presenting for or against another argument and in the form of some paragraphs, called body paragraphs. Each body paragraph has a topic sentence or a central meaning. These central messages help develop the argument in the thesis statement from one or two angles in a structured fashion. Every topic sentence is supported by sentences, which are explanations, other writers’ ideas, and references to previous findings on the topic. These sentences are connected through transition words. When the writer feels they have made an acceptable argument on the topic, they draw a conclusion, which is the final section in an academic essay. A conclusion is a brief recount of the thesis and the highlights of the arguments made throughout the essay.

With that being said, I believe the takeaway of this short anecdote-essay is, just like the time I adapted myself to my new life as a child and adopted its new rules to usher myself around, academic writing can and will bring you joy when you learn to adapt and apply its rules. It is at that time that  you will feel at home.

Thank you,

Odivi

Odivi is a tutor at the Centre for Academic Communication. You can book an appointment with Odivi at https://uvic.mywconline.com/

Odivi is a Ph.D. student in Education at UVic with a concentration in Indigenous Language Revitalization. He is also a certified English Teacher in Canada. He wrote his MA thesis on the study of moves and steps in Farsi and English Academic Recommendation Letters. Odivi taught English in Iran for 12 years. Before he came to Canada, he lived in Turkey where he taught English and IELTS to Turkish and international students.

 

 

Let’s write together this fall

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Dissertation writing, Distance students, EAL graduate students, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Inspiration and motivation, International graduate students, Make writing social, Mental health, Motivation, Posts by Madeline, Procrastination, Productivity, Time management, Web-based writing groups, Writing groups, Writing resources

Welcome new graduate students and welcome back returning students!

Writing is a big part of your work as a graduate student. Frequently we write alone, and that can feel isolating. Now that we are keeping our physical distance from one another, this sense of isolation can be profound. A great way to break out of isolation and kick-start your writing is to connect with your peers and write together and/or share your writing. Wendy Belcher, editor, teacher, and the author of Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, is a proponent of making your writing social, whether through involvement in a writing group or with a writing partner. Writing with others can allay writer’s block and other forms of anxiety, make you more productive, and help you feel connected to others.

If you’d like to start your own writing group, The Thesis Whisperer has some tips on how to start your own “Shut up and write” group (you can modify to create online or socially distanced meetings).  Another resource—this one developed here at UVic—is The Thesis Writing Starter Kit, which can also be modified for online meetings.

If starting a writing group isn’t your thing, or if you simply want a pre-made writing group, why not join our virtual writing room on Wednesday afternoons? It’s a great way to set and accomplish small goals while writing in the (virtual) company of others. No registration required, just drop in on Wednesday afternoons between 2 and 4 p.m. (September 9-December 4). You can come in for all or part of the session. A tutor from the Centre for Academic Communication will be there to answer any questions and facilitate.

 Zoom link: https://uvic.zoom.us/j/91672624091 

We look forward to seeing you!