Category Archives: Tutoring

Long Distance (Tutoring) Relationships at the CAC

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Distance students, Feedback, Posts by Gillian, Tutoring

By Gillian Saunders

Gillian Saunders, EAL specialist and distance tutor at the CAC

“Are you a distance student”? If you’ve been on the CAC’s tutorial booking site, WCONLINE, in the past year, you might have noticed this question on the landing page. The CAC has been offering distance help for a few years now, but the procedure for booking has changed a bit recently, and “real time,” or “synchronous” options are also now available: you can now “meet” with a tutor via phone, Skype, or WCONLINE’s online meeting space. I’ve been the main distance tutor for over two years now, and it’s been an interesting journey and one of the most rewarding parts of my work at the CAC. What follows is a few details about distance tutoring, my experiences as the distance tutor, and some specific information on how the distance tutoring works.

When I was offered the opportunity to take over the Centre for Academic Communication’s distance tutoring two years ago, I didn’t hesitate. Working in my pajamas?! Yes, please! The number of students in distance programs is constantly growing, and I wanted to try a few new things. We decided to keep the twc@uvic.ca email account that we were currently using for quick questions and returning feedback, but moved bookings to https://uvic.mywconline.com/, and set up a schedule for synchronous meetings. At present, UVic is one of only a handful of Canadian universities to offer real-time options for distance tutoring.

In spite of common perceptions that email interactions with distance tutors are one-sided and limited in what they can accomplish, I’ve found mostly the opposite. Distance tutoring does, in some very useful ways, actually exceed some of the limitations of face-to-face sessions. With any of the real-time distance options, and also with the written feedback option, students have a record of their interaction with the tutor, whether it’s the chat interaction in WCONLINE or a recording of a phone or Skype conversation. I can recommend links to helpful resources and websites, and these can easily be revisited later at the student’s convenience.

Although we do try to limit the distance appointments to students who really can’t make it to campus to see one of our tutors in person, we feel strongly that academic communication support should be accessible to all, for whatever reason. Are you on co-op? Working during CAC hours? Have small children at home? Distance tutoring is here for you. There is also evidence that distance tutoring may be especially useful for students with writing anxiety or disabilities. Distance tutoring makes both the writer and the tutor “invisible,” to a certain extent. Perhaps there are some cases when it’s best to focus on the writing itself – to take the focus off the writer altogether and work on the product instead. I have worked with students with physical and mental health issues, learning disabilities, and vision impairment, and students calling from rural Alberta in the parking lot of a motel. I’ve also received writing from students that is intensely personal. Maybe you’d rather not work on a personal reflection piece about your experience with depression or sexual abuse with someone face-to-face? Distance tutoring is here for you, too.

If you do need to use our distance tutoring options, there are a couple of things you can do to get the most out of your session. First, if you’re requesting written feedback, picture a human on the receiving end of your appointment. Talk to me! You can use the comments function to ask questions in the margins of your work. Some common questions that might be easily resolved this way include, “Is this sentence too long?” “Do I need a transition here?” and “Does this information fit better in this paragraph or the previous one?” Next, include whatever instructions or guidelines you might have, and any relevant background that I might need in order to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. If you only need help with one section, highlight that section, or let me know that you haven’t written the introduction yet, so that I don’t wonder where that is. If you’ve received any previous feedback from an instructor and you’re working on improving a specific aspect of your writing, that’s useful to know, too. Keep in mind that appointments are meant to last as long as our face-to-face options: that’s 30 minutes for one slot, or 60 for two that are booked together.

Finally, give yourself enough time to make revisions and possibly get a second round of feedback, if necessary. Many students find it useful to get some written feedback first, make revisions, and then follow up with a phone or Skype appointment to get clarification, ask questions, and confirm revisions. If your assignment is due Friday, you’ll need to submit it by Tuesday afternoon in order to be guaranteed written feedback by the end of the day on Thursday. Don’t wait until the last minute! Revisions often take longer than you think they will. Remember that we’re not an editing or proofreading service, so no changes will be made for you. That doesn’t help you become a better writer or a more effective editor of your own work.

At the end of last term, I asked some of UVic’s distance students about their experiences using our distance services, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Although most indicated that they would rather meet in person if this were possible, they also thought they had been able to get what they needed from the distance tutoring options. After having helped almost 200 students via our online tutoring options over the last year, up from almost 140 in the previous year, I can only imagine and hope that the number of distance tutoring users will continue to grow. Face-to-face and distance tutoring have the same goal of helping students to become better writers. Both methods can achieve this goal, I believe, if they are managed thoughtfully and used with a good understanding of their possibilities and limitations.

If you have any questions or concerns about distance tutoring and what it can do for you, please email twc@uvic.ca.

Distance Tutoring at the CAC is user friendly!

 

The abstract is “an argument, writ small”

Abstracts, Academic Writing, Blogs and blogging, Centre for Academic Communication, Dissertation writing, EAL graduate students, Graduate student writers, International graduate students, Structure, Tutoring, Writing process, Writing resources

By Madeline Walker

The word abstract is a bit confusing.  When I looked up this word in the dictionary, I found the first definition is for the adjective, to do with “thought rather than matter, or in theory rather than practice; not tangible or concrete.” Thus an abstract concept, such as love, good, or evil, has no physical referent. The noun definition is “a summary of or statement of the contents of a book.” When you write an abstract for an article, thesis, or conference, you are “abstracting” (a rarely used verb form of the word, meaning to extract or pull out) some key bits from the whole. Yet contrary to the adjectival meaning of the word (non-concrete), it’s a good idea not to be too “abstract” when writing your abstract! An abstract abstract is likely to be ineffective because your goal is to deliver a clear picture of your research in your reader’s mind, and abstract language won’t do that. When you have only a few words to say a great deal, you had better be as concrete as possible in order to deliver your purpose to the reader directly.

I am a big fan of Thomson and Kamler’s four-move abstract described in Detox Your Writing: Strategies for Doctoral Researchers (available as an e-book in our library). Their model works well for all types of abstracts, and it can also be used to kick-start your writing. Thomson and Kamler write that the abstract is not a summary—it’s actually an “argument, writ small,” and it must contain your central argument in abstracted form.  You might say, “Well mine is a computer science article—I don’t really have an argument.”  I imagine T & K would respond that any piece of academic writing can be abstracted into an argument. You are trying to persuade the reader that your computer science finding/development/algorithm contributes to the research/makes a difference in some way. And that’s an argument. Here are Thomson and Kamler’s moves; please refer to the chapter “Learning to argue” (pp. 83–106) in Detox Your Writing for more information and samples of ineffective/effective abstracts.

LOCATE: this means placing your paper in the context of the discipline community and the field in general. Larger issues and debates are named and potentially problematized. In naming the location, you are creating a warrant for your contribution and its significance, as well as informing an international community of its relevance outside of its specific place of origin.

FOCUS: this means identifying the particular questions, issues or kinds of problems that your paper will explore, examine and/or investigate.

REPORT: this means outlining the research, sample and/or method of analysis in order to assure readers that your paper is credible and trustworthy, as well as the major findings that are pertinent to the argument to be made.

ARGUE: this means opening out the specific argument through offering an analysis. This will move beyond description and may well include a theorisation in order to explain findings. It may offer speculations, but will always have a point of view and take a stance. It returns to the opening Locate in order to demonstrate the specific contribution that was promised at the outset. (Thomson & Kamler, 2016, p. 92)

The authors encourage you to keep writing and rewriting your abstract throughout the broader writing process; each time, you will  refine it further. Try preparing a draft abstract of your article/thesis, regardless of the stage you are at. You’ll be surprised at how it focuses your writing and cements your motivation.  I’ve had more than one student tell me it worked to get them writing again after a dry spell.

Call for graduate student blog post writers!

A huge thank you to all of our student writers so far this year: Kaveh Tagharobi, Russell Campbell, Kate Ehle, Marta Bashovski, Cindy Quan, Jonathan Faerber, and Arash Isapour.  Your writing resonated with so many of your fellow graduate students. Thank you for taking the time to craft wonderful posts and share your experience.

We need more student writers for the 2017/2018 academic year, so please consider writing for us.  We need students from different disciplines and backgrounds and at various stages of study to volunteer to write for the blog. Your topic can be anything related to academic communication and graduate students; see the guidelines here. If you feel uncertain that your writing skills are sufficient to the task, please make an appointment with me cdrcac@uvic.ca  I’ll be happy to coach you on how to improve your draft until we are both happy with it.  As Peter Elbow says, “Everybody can write.”

Additionally, we need some specific topics covered this year, and perhaps one of these attracts you:

  • The “thesis by publication” or article-based dissertation. This model, popular in the sciences and social sciences, requires that you write three or more “publishable” articles (plus weave them into a whole with intro/conclusion). Although the book-length dissertation is still with us, the article-based version is definitely a trend in our university, and I’d love somebody to write about it. Are you a student who is following this model or considering it?
  • Writing in different disciplines. Perhaps you are writing an interdisciplinary thesis, dissertation, or article and you need to negotiate with supervisors from various faculties. How’s that going for you? We would love to hear from you if you’ve had this experience or you have written in different disciplines (say, you did your MA or MSc in one area and are doing your PhD in a different one).  What have you learned about disciplinary differences in writing?
  • Communicating with your supervisor.  Okay, this may seem elementary, but some of us have struggled for hours to craft communication with supervisors or other professors.  EAL students unfamiliar with the Canadian university context may find this especially difficult. Would you like to write about this challenge and some strategies that have worked for you?

Don’t want to write, but want to read about something in particular? Please email me to suggest a specific blog post topic: cdrcac@uvic.ca.

We are taking a break for August, and the next post will be published in mid-September. Happy summer everybody, and thank you for reading the blog.

 

 

 

First diary entry of “The Little Prince” who just arrived in Victoria from his far home planet

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, EAL graduate students, Graduate student writers, International graduate students, Reading, Theatre history, Tutoring, Vocabulary, Writing resources

By Arash Isapour

New Ph.D. student Arash Isapour arrived in Victoria only six months ago.

The moment I received my admission letter from UVic, I experienced a weird feeling of anxiety, which was a combination of happiness and stress. Right off the bat, I can continue my educational career at the Ph.D. level, but at the same time, this Ph.D. fella felt the duty to come to grips with his academic flaws which are gathered under one title: language.

As a Theatre History student, I am aware that everything I’m dealing with is under the shadow of my English language abilities, including academic and literary writing, reading (not just journals or mathematical articles), speaking (not just at parties or for dating but for being a part of the interaction in a methodology class), and listening (not to Roger Waters’ new album but to a fast speaking English professor whose tongue takes you to the 18th century). And by the way, language is not just language, it is considered as a conveyor of culture.

As you can see, during my first days at UVic, I encountered all the aforementioned challenges at the same time with not even an epsilon of exaggeration. It was not just at the university but everywhere else I went. The neighborhood I am living in looks like a Hobbit village (Oak Bay). Not only were the people smiling at me but also the dogs. In public places, from groceries to banks, from standing at bus stops to sitting in non-stopping buses, people started conversations, and what I gave back was a smile, pretending as if I deeply got what they said, but I did not. The interesting thing was that they were not surprised by seeing me speak like a Martian, in other words like E.T. So, unexpectedly, I saw myself plunged into all these states. My first class was a methodology course in which the sweet, energetic professor wanted us to read books and essays by critical thinkers from Frye to Nietzsche, from Freud to Kristeva, from Hegel to Marx (my beloved), from McLuhan to Fredric Jameson (The reader killer, even for English speaking folks). I not only had to read and grasp all these frameworks but also had to discuss my opinions on them in class, each session. For the first days, the phrase “HOLY SMOKES” kept playing in my mind. I started recording the prof’s voice in class and tried to talk during class, despite the fact that I knew most of my words would make no damn sense, and those people were really looking at me as if they were saying “What in heaven’s name is he talking about!?” My self-esteem started to tremble as “The Earth Trembles” (My favorite Italian Movie).

In this dilemma, I had to choose either the easy way—let it go to any direction it wants to like the  wind—or the hard and better way—stand still and choose my own path even if it is against the stream. I might still be a successful Ph.D. student in the arts and humanities if I select the first, but I would definitely be a prosperous and industrious scholar from the beginning if I choose the second. In other words, when you find yourself in the uncomfortable zone, you either choose to surrender and pull back or challenge whatever jams you up. The first would be like a boring love story movie, and the second would be like an unpredictable romantic movie, such as “La La Land.”

So what I did was a bunch of silly sounding stuff that works:

  • I asked my sweet landlady to correct me whenever I speak, and she happily accepted to be my home teacher (which is free). And because she is from the 70s, I have learned a lot of nice expressions and am still learning. An example would be what people said when it was the first of May starting with “Hooray, hooray, it’s the first of May . . . . ” As you can see, I am learning a new culture, not just language in a technical way.
  • I carry a notebook with me wherever I go to write down whatever I hear from people in public places, see on the walls, hear from movies, TV series, and everything I need to learn while I’m reading something, from a book to an article, even if it is about my own country’s political and social news.
  • I make ten sentences with the new words to memorize them.
  • I read novels and stories in English that I have always wanted to read but never had time to. Now it has become a constant five-gold-star mandatory pleasure.
  • I go to the Centre for Academic Communication at the McPherson Library and try to learn everything I know about writing based on the papers I write. I share whatever I am confused about the language and ask as many questions as I need to ask, even if they make me look like a dummy, which might be cute.
  • I try not to meet too many people from my own nation, obliging me to speak English in order to keep the dynamic of my training zone. Remember, the more you are in the training zone, the more you improve in your career.

If you keep doing all these in an organized manner, gradually you will see yourself overcoming barriers. And you move to the next level of improvements. Yeah! It is exactly like a video game. But keep it steady and be patient. Some of these things are not new; you just have to deal with your daily jobs (e.g., reading news, watching movies, going out with friends), but you ought to use only the secondary language for all of these, except in one case: when you are speaking with your parents.

Arash Isapour arrived in Victoria in January 2017 from Tehran. He is a PhD student at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre. Besides being literature-crazy, he is a film buff, in other words a walking movie database.  

Why we worry: Writing as therapy

Academic Writing, Anxiety, Centre for Academic Communication, Goal setting, Mental health, Procrastination, Productivity, Time management, Tutoring, Writing groups, Writing process

by Jonathan Faerber

photo of author Jonathan Faerber
Jonathan Faerber

Many of us worry about our writing. We are apprehensive about an unfamiliar topic, or we are afraid of what others will think of our work. We anticipate getting things wrong. We exaggerate criticism and fear failure. We are overwhelmed by uncertainty and obsess over details that are outside of our control.

When I worked as a writing tutor and graduate student at UVic, I often lived in denial of these fears.  I like writing, I told myself. I enjoy it. But all too often, I found myself making excuses not to write: I had other work to do, or I needed to finish a few more books before completing a thesis chapter. I struggled to be honest with myself, but these were symptoms of a simple problem: I was terrified of my thesis.

Anxiety like this is a natural emotion. It is characterized by uneasiness, tension, and pessimism. The causes of anxiety are somewhat subjective, but there are some common patterns. Anxiety is often preceded by negative events followed by an expectation of continued difficulty or future disaster.

Fortunately, there are therapeutic activities and treatments for anxiety, and if writing anxiety is a special case of such worry, similar strategies can help writers as well. For example, psychologists often treat anxiety disorders with cognitive behavioural therapy or exposure therapy. CBT involves identifying our negative thoughts and focusing on positive or realistic thinking instead, while exposure therapy is a way to progressively familiarize ourselves with what worries us.

Similarly, it helps to be honest about our writing anxiety and to spend time getting comfortable with the writing process. For example, consider that writing assignment that you dread. Perhaps it is for a demanding instructor or it is on a subject or topic you do not like. Or perhaps the sheer amount of work you still have left is overwhelming. It is all too easy to push these thoughts into the back of our minds and turn to Netflix or Facebook and focus our attention elsewhere.

But this won’t help for long. We can’t ignore what we are afraid of forever. And in my experience, I can’t really forget about writing that I have to do unless I am writing. It was only in this honesty that I’d realize that my worries were often exaggerated.

So the solution here is to write. Of course, this is easier said than done. But it is important to write even when we feel that we cannot or do not want to. The more we write, the less writing will worry us. It does not matter exactly what writing you do, as long as you write. With that in mind, here are three suggestions that helped make my writing experiences more positive—even therapeutic.

First: try to focus on what you can control. We often are so preoccupied with the end product that we will not put pen to paper until we think we have the end product in sight. But that is never how writing works. The only way to know what you will write is to write. Do not obsess over what is outside your control. Do not obsess over the end product before the end. Set yourself achievable goals. Focus on the next step—the one you can complete right now: whether this is one paragraph, or one page, or one section, or one chapter. Either way, the only way to accomplish anything is through incremental steps.  Do what you can. You can’t do what you can’t, so don’t worry in advance about what you haven’t managed yet.

Second: make yourself vulnerable. Let others know what your worries are. Talk to people. Write with people. Share your writing with readers who aren’t grading you. There are many people who can help you and who will read your writing for the sake of helping you. This might be a close friend or a classmate. It might be someone at the Centre for Academic Communication.

Again, we all worry about writing. All the time. You are normal. You are not alone.

But then, there are times where being alone will help. Too often, we think writing is just for school or work, and we are often trained to think we are wasting time unless we are writing for someone or to accomplish something, and then we wind up getting nothing done. So my third suggestion is write things you don’t have to write. Sometimes, these can turn into parts of papers that you have to write. After all, it is hard to like what you write if you don’t like writing it. So remember to make time to write for you. You don’t always have to write. But don’t write only what you have to write. Remember to make time to write for you.

Of course, I cannot guarantee that following this advice will make your anxiety go away, but it might help you diagnose and understand its causes. The good news is that once we better understand our anxiety, we can predict or expect it. We can reduce it. We can manage it. But it may be unrealistic to think that we can eliminate anxiety altogether.

After all, anxiety is a difficult problem. But I think almost any solution to it will involve a conversation. This blog post is my contribution to this conversation and an invitation for you to face up to your worries in your own writing as well.

Jonathan is a UVic alumnus and former tutor at the Centre for Academic Communication. He is currently Writing Centre Associate at Royal Roads University.

 

Lessons learned from my first year in graduate school

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Citation management tools, EAL graduate students, Feedback, First year in graduate school, Grammar and punctuation, Productivity, Time management, Transition, Tutoring, Writing groups

By Cindy Quan

photo of the author, Cindy

Technically, I’ve only concluded the first two terms, but I have yet to grow out of the undergraduate mindset of April signaling the end of a school year. Now that it is May, I have had the chance to reflect on the many types of writing that I completed since September. In this blog post, I hope some of my reflections may be of relevance to incoming graduate students, especially clinical psychology students.

Many types of writing

There are many types of writing to learn in graduate school. In the first year, there is a great demand on time: the course load is high, you must learn psychological tests, get familiar with the research in your advisor’s lab, and write literature reviews. This can distract from other types of writing, especially mastering the writing of assessment reports and scholarship applications. Yet both these types of writings are essential for long-term success as a clinical psychology student and deserve dedication of time and effort. During the first two semesters, I allocated little time to learn these skills, and becoming more proficient at both is one of my goals for the summer months. I have found plenty of resources in the library about both types of writing. This site has a lot of specific suggestions for proposal writing that I adopted for writing my tri-council scholarship application.

Extensive feedback from your advisor

If your advisor is anything like mine, you might be surprised and even feel a bit startled the first time you open a review paper or a research proposal with feedback. The many comment boxes may be unnerving, but they are actually great news. (At least, that is the perspective I have chosen.) First, they indicate that the advisor took time to read the text closely. In other words, your advisor cares about the work you do. Second, the comments are useful. I recognize that this might not always be the case, especially for “senior” students who have committee members who may provide conflicting suggestions or students who have developed a sufficient foundation in the area and their informed opinions differ from their advisors’. As a first-year student, I have always found adopting the suggestions improves my research. Third, the advisor may provide grammatical corrections and editorial comments. This brings me to my third realization.

Compensatory strategies for being a non-native English speaker work

As a non-native English speaker, I believe I spend more time revising than peers who are native English speakers. This habit partly stems from a lack of feedback on papers submitted during my undergraduate years. Not knowing why I received a better grade on one paper than another encouraged my neurotic and perfectionist tendencies – I just kept revising until a deadline. This is not necessarily a bad habit; it helped me improve the clarity and conciseness of my writing. As Gillian wrote in a post a few months ago, good punctuation and grammar requires practice. But in reality, as a graduate student there is little time for extensive rewriting. When time permits, I now try to read a style guide or visit the CAC experts who can efficiently point out recurrent grammatical errors I make. Also, simply incorporating the comments my advisor provides on my work improves the quality more than trying to revise on my own and it saves time! When revising, I now stop at the point of diminishing returns. A great law…

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

Experiment with writing

Since I had to do a lot of writing this past year, I experimented with systems of organization and writing settings to see how to become more productive. I finally started using a citation manager. Since I do my work both on a Mac and a PC I use Zotero; it syncs the information seamlessly. There are many other citation tools. You can find a nice comparison chart for what suits your needs here. Some people enjoy writing in groups, finding the presence of others to keep them accountable. Writing in a group did keep me from browsing online shopping sites and checking emails, but I also felt awkward. I tried writing in cafes, but the noise was distracting and the cost of snacks adds up quickly. Ultimately, I found that home is the best place for me to work – I can drink my weight in coffee and tea for free, and there is silence.

Somewhat surprising to myself, I find that my confidence in writing increased after the first year and the writing process is easier. I am looking forward to writing the introduction to my thesis over the summer. Anyway, happy writing!

Cindy Quan is a Master’s candidate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include the intersection of culture and mental health as well as risks and protective factors in vulnerable families. When not working, she loves spending her time playing racquet sports, travelling and cooking.

How to write a dissertation when you’re really busy and love to travel

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Conferences, Dissertation writing, Focus strategies, Goal setting, Graduate student writers, Political science, Procrastination, Productivity, Time management, Tutoring, Writing process, Writing resources

By Marta Bashovski

It’s the end of April, the end of another academic year, and the beginning of another summer. This can be a tricky time for “senior” PhD students like me. On the one hand, my usual sources of funding and the duties that take up most of my time – teaching, TAing, and tutoring at the CAC – are on hold until the fall. On the other hand, we’re now in the midst of “conference season,” and since defending my dissertation proposal, committing to writing conference papers has been how I’ve found time to write the chapters of my dissertation. The “perks” of attending conferences – travelling to interesting places, catching up with old friends, and seeing new work in my discipline – are not bad either!

What I hope to offer in this post isn’t suggestions for how to approach conference abstracts, networking, papers, or presentations. There are many excellent guides already out there. See here, here, and here, for instance. Instead, I would like to share some reflections on the dissertation writing benefits I’ve found to regularly attending conferences.

Writing to a clear deadline

I need deadlines to be productive. The daily life an ABD PhD student with non-writing duties and commitments often means that writing gets pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. The long-term, amorphous deadlines of a dissertation project also mean that, for better or for worse (usually worse), writing happens very slowly and in tiny chunks. This is where I’ve been able to make strategic use of conference deadlines. Since the conferences I attend have application deadlines six months to a year in advance, I am able to plan when I’ll be forced, by the stress of necessity, to draft a concise version of a dissertation chapter that I can later develop further. The commitment to submit a paper draft and the accountability to a group of colleagues has helped me to prioritize scheduling – and following through on – writing time.

comic from Piled Higher and Deeper
“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham (published with permission)
www.phdcomics.com

Clarifying the project

If your dissertation proposal was anything like mine, you quickly found that your aims were far too broad to make for manageable dissertation chapters. Taking your chapter outlines – and your ambitious plans to cover all of the relevant literature for the questions you address – and making them into conference papers is an excellent way to focus your argument to emphasize only the most important themes. I’ve found that for a typical conference paper, I write about a third to half of what I had originally planned to cover in a given dissertation chapter – and this is fine! I have the opportunity to complete a skeleton draft and can always supplement and revise this later. I have found that my original ambitious plan did not serve the purpose that I hoped to achieve in the chapter. (This post offers some more specific suggestions on writing a conference paper in a limited time – in a mere two days!)

Writing for an audience

As writers generally, and PhD students in particular, we are often told to consider who our readers will be when we write. As with elusive dissertation deadlines, though, our audiences can also be vaguely defined (our committees? other scholars in our field?). Writing for a conference comes with a built-in audience –even if that audience ends up being not many more people than your discussant and fellow panel members. Writing for a particular conference and panel, you now have a sense of the themes expected of your paper, the concepts you will need to explain, and the debates to which you hope your work will contribute. I have also found that writing for a specific, tangible audience also helps me to personify my usually densely theoretical work – it helps me to cut the jargon and focus on the takeaway I’d like the audience to remember from my talk.

Feedback and revisions

As we complete our highly specialized dissertation projects, most of the feedback we receive as we go along comes from readers who know us and our projects well – supervisors, committee members, and if we’re lucky a few friends or department colleagues. These people are mostly “insiders”: they have a sense of the orientation of our projects, our goals, and the conceptual vocabularies that frame our writing. I have found it very helpful to receive feedback from people who are interested in my project – and may be experts in the field – but do not necessarily begin from the same assumptions (and, relatedly, institutional background) as I am. Feedback from outside our own “bubbles” can offer new perspectives, new reading suggestions, or even reframe major aspects of the dissertation. The latter happened to me when a particularly conscientious discussant asked whether I would pursue a particular concept later in my dissertation – I hadn’t planned on it, but now this discussion forms the last chapter of my dissertation.

Possible caveats

Directing your dissertation writing through conference papers – and conference attendance in general – comes with several caveats, of course. First, you might find that the feedback you receive on your work is sparse or not at all helpful. Second, you might find yourself writing papers or participating on roundtables not related to your dissertation work at all. This could be a downside or not. Working on other projects might seem like a waste of time, but it might also be a welcome distraction from dissertation burnout, and an opportunity to develop new ideas for future projects and meet a new network of scholars.

I have two more conferences this summer – the British International Studies Association annual meeting in Brighton, UK and the Gregynog Ideas Lab in Newtown, Wales. At both, I’ll be presenting parts of the last chapter of my dissertation – yet to be written! In Brighton, I’m excited to be on a panel that both fits my research well and includes scholars I am eager to talk to further. In Wales, I’m looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and both sharing my own research and getting inspired by their research. In the meantime, I’ll be taking part in another long-honoured academic writing tradition – the writing retreat, in my case my brother’s sunny apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria. Have a wonderful summer and happy writing!

Marta Bashovski is a tutor at the CAC and a PhD Candidate in Political Science and Cultural, Social and Political Thought at UVic. She is most enthusiastic about food, travelling, and her cat.

 

Comma chameleon: Transforming punctuation and grammar in your writing

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Editors and editing, Graduate student writers, Grammar and punctuation, Posts by Gillian, Reading, Tutoring, Writing resources

By Gillian Saunders

It wasn’t so long ago when I found out that I didn’t really know how to use a comma. I mean, I knew how, but I didn’t really, really know. I could put them in the right place about 95% of the time, but not explain why I was adding them or choosing not to. Sound familiar?

I wasn’t a poor writer, making word salad with a careless handful of commas tossed in; I’d been admitted to a graduate program in English Language and Literature. And I didn’t know how to begin to fix this problem. At this point, the finer points of punctuation seemed mysterious and probably unlearnable.

As an English as an Additional Language Specialist at UVic’s Centre for Academic Communication and as an instructor, I meet a lot of students experiencing this same frustration. Writers who learned English as an additional language may be at an advantage: for the most part, they have been “taught” a lot of what they need to know to be able to master the use of commas and other fun and useful things like colons and semicolons with relative ease. In order to know whether you need a comma in any given situation, you need a functional range of metalanguage: relative clause, dependent clause, conjunctive adverb, etc. Native English speakers under a certain age, however, were mostly just told to throw a comma in when they “felt like they needed a pause,” which, unfortunately, isn’t a real rule of comma usage. As adults pursuing graduate degrees, not having been taught real rules isn’t doing us any good now. In fact, it’s kind of embarrassing.

“What am I supposed to do about it now?” you might be wondering. Here’s the abridged version of how I’ve filled my own vacancies in the punctuation and grammar puzzle: first and foremost, my education is in a very reading- and writing-heavy field. I studied writing and linguistics with some very inspiring and knowledgeable instructors, and then I started teaching grammar and composition myself. At that point, I had to learn everything there was to know, or else risk being shown up by students who had mastered not only their own first languages, but mine as well, and better than I had. I completed a Certificate in Editing by distance. I read books like Michael Swan’s Practical English Usage, Strunk and White’s classic The Elements of Style, and everything by Kate Turabian and Diana Hacker. I Googled. A lot. “Which vs. that?” “What is an appositive?” I tugged at the knots of obscure grammar forum threads until I was satisfied that I could explain when and why you need a comma before “such as.” I started reading my work, and the work I edited, aloud, with verbalized punctuation: “The semicolon has two main uses COLON it separates long items in a list COMMA which may also contain commas COMMA and it joins two independent clauses that are closely related PERIOD.” I questioned my identity as a writer, as a native English speaker, and in other areas of my life. Had I also been singing the wrong words to my favourite songs at the top of my lungs in the car all along? (I had.)

Learning the “right way” to use punctuation (and the correct lyrics to all my favourite 80s and 90s songs) clearly took time and the kind of dedication that may not be available to you when your literature review is due next week. Thankfully, there are other options available. First, get a diagnosis from someone who knows a lot about these things. Maybe you’re guilty of conjunctive adverb abuse because you’ve got them confused with subordinating conjunctions. Maybe you’ve never thought about restrictive and non-restrictive clauses. Half the battle is just knowing what to Google.

It may seem painful at first, but picture yourself at some point in the future when it pays off: your perfectly punctuated cover letter just got you your dream job. You didn’t have to hire an editor before you submitted your article for publication. You’ve met the girl of your dreams online; her profile said she only dated people who texted with correct punctuation, and she really meant it. Good punctuation matters to a lot of people, more than you might think, but at the end of the day it’s up to you how accurate you need your writing to be and how much you are prepared to invest in your writing practice. Like doing yoga or learning how to knit a sweater, it takes time and dedication to develop the skills and ability you need in order to have a practice you’re satisfied with. A good practice requires a good instructor that you trust, clear instructions, the ability to detect errors, the skills to be able to fix them, the confidence to take risks, and the humility to ask for help when you’re not sure what you’re doing. Who can you ask? The CAC. We’re here to help!

Gillian is an English as an Additional Language Specialist and Business English and Communications instructor at UVic, and has taught in Canada and South Korea. In her spare time she can be found reading about grammar and English language teaching and patting herself on the back for not pointing out every single writing error she encounters during her day.

 

 

Hidden gems: A conversation about writing with Dr. Anne Bruce

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Creative writing, Dissertation writing, Faculty member, Feedback, Graduate student writers, Outlines, Productivity, Reading, School of Nursing, Tutoring, Voice, Writing process, , ,
Dr. Anne Bruce

By Madeline Walker

Late one Friday afternoon in January, I sat across from Anne in the Bibliocafé to talk about writing. The metal gates were being drawn around the food counter, and most seats were empty as students went off to their week-end activities.  In her role as the Associate Director of Graduate Education at UVic’s School of Nursing, Anne meets with many graduate students struggling with writing their theses and dissertations. The first thing I asked Anne was, “How can students be effective writers?”

Anne was quick to respond: “Write a lot. Engage in conversation with what you are reading—make notes, be in conversation with the author.” Anne recommended that students engage in note-taking at every stage of the dissertation.  Take notes during your coursework, your research, your data analysis.  “Very soon,” she said, “you will start to make connections.  The analytic process is fostered through organizing one’s thoughts through writing.”

Note-taking, Anne suggests, can also be in the form of a reflective journal, a vehicle that gives you “permission to be footloose and fancy free. Especially when doing research. You can include everything. Include whatever’s happening, the feeling of being blocked, the emotional experience of writing, the personal—everything—follow all lines of thought.”  Anne’s eyes lit up when she remembered how an entry she made in her reflective journal while on vacation led to musing about the verb “to vacate,” an observation that ended up in her dissertation.  “You never know what gems will come up,” Anne smiled.

This talk of gems got us onto the topic of voice: How do students find their own way of writing?  Anne suggested you be alert to writing that really engages you, writing that evokes a sense of aliveness. “Read to get a sense of what moves you,” she said. “If a writer really speaks to you, acknowledge that—take the writing apart—ask yourself, what is it about the style that is evocative? Don’t mimic the writing, but look at structure and style and make it your own.”

“Who do you like? Who moves you?” I asked.  Anne didn’t skip a beat. “Gary Rolfe writes with passion. I’ve found his voice clear and strong, the confidence.  He has an opinion,” she continued. “His writing borders on polemic, and my tendency is to be temperate, but polemic has its place,” she said with a wry grin.

Engage in note-taking at every stage of dissertation writing.

“Anybody else?” I asked. “Sally Gadow, a poetic philosopher,” Anne replied.  “She gave me permission to write that way. And another writer is Patti Lather—she writes fractured text, visually
‘saying’ what she means.  For example, she embeds boxes in her work that disrupt the writing.”

Anne and I talked about how students can gain inspiration from writers they admire, how they can play with writing, not taking it too seriously.  She reminded me that just as an academic writer’s body of work changes over time, so does the writing of graduate students as they develop their own styles and voices.

We shifted to another topic.  What about writers who struggle with writing and self-expression?  Anne suggests that grad students do an honest self-assessment of their writing, and if they need to learn the basics, then they can set out to learn them. It’s never too late to figure out how to work with an outline, to practice using mind-maps, to learn how to signpost and summarize.  This was the perfect opportunity for me to point out that graduate students can make appointments with tutors at the Centre for Academic Communication to work on any aspect of their communication skills.

Fittingly, my last question for Anne was about finishing; how do students finish a long writing project when they feel stuck?  Her answer was that we need to “acknowledge and work with fear and resistance. It’s part of the process, inherent to a sense of identity. It feels vulnerable to write, but we must find a way to be with it.”

One of the reasons students get stuck is that they get paralyzed by feedback from supervisors and committee members.  Anne had this recommendation: “Try not to take feedback personally, learn from it, and know that you don’t have to accept it, especially comments about style or approach. You can differentiate what is helpful and leave the rest.”  Anne also cautioned about “seeking feedback too early. In writing’s formative stages, things are in process. It’s a messy incubation period, and if you seek feedback from your supervisor too soon, the work can become even messier. You may get advice you don’t want to follow, which complicates your relationships. Instead, find peers who might be helpful, trustworthy, and honest.”

The winter sky turned purple and orange beyond the quad: It was time to part ways.  Anne had to go meet some PhD students at the Grad House and my work day was over.  But before we left each other, Anne added a lovely parting gift: “I know that students, as they build confidence, will write themselves into their dissertations.”

Thank you for the wise and encouraging words, Anne.  May we all trust the writing process.

Dr. Anne Bruce has been with UVic since 2003. Her approaches to research and teaching invite students into (un)speakable and in-between spaces of our professional and personal lives. Her current scholarship includes understanding nurses’ experiences with medical assistance in dying and integrating contemplative approaches into teaching and learning. She believes education can inspire, transform, and generate life-long friendships.​

 

 

Writing undressed

Academic Writing, Centre for Academic Communication, Colyar, Tutoring, Writers writing about writing, Writing process

img_1259“Writing puts on its trousers one leg at a time, but we rarely see it in stages of undress.” (Colyar, 2009, p. 424)

[/Introduction placeholder/ How to start? What about audience? Tone? How am I pitching it? What’s my pitch?/ Find a quotation. Maybe Colyar? Main idea? *x*%&%! What about that dressing metaphor—weak? silly? Everything has probably been said before and said better in somebody else’s blog. Argh!]

Normally you won’t see writing in “stages of undress” as exemplified in the paragraph above. You only see the finished written product, the fully dressed book, essay, article, or blog post. To continue with this metaphor, usually only in our own writing do we witness the confusion of dressing: the false starts, the messy drafts, the placeholders, the marginalia, and the sentences to the self. Because of this, many of us have suffered from the thought, “it must be me. Other people get it all down beautifully the first time; others don’t struggle with writing the way I do.” Julia Colyar’s (2009) wonderful article “Becoming Writing, Becoming Writers” both explores and illustrates the rarely talked about process of thinking/writing:

My nonintroduction is a tool I use to propel the text forward, into the next paragraph, toward the meat of my argument. Ultimately, it will be rewritten,
and thus, seemingly out of order, written, and complete. The nudge-forward this placeholder paragraph provides is essential, because I will not come to understand my own argument until I have completed the initial draft. Only then will I know what I want to say, where the various sections connect, and how to revise the introduction. I cannot draw the roadmap until I know what the road looks like. I can’t start until I have already started. (p. 422)

She holds up a mirror to us as writers, showing us how we pull on mismatched socks, pick cat hairs off the suit jacket, stumble over our shoes. To get to spiffy writing with its trousers zipped, we have to experience the discomfort of dishabille. Colyar argues that we need to teach writing [at the graduate level] and talk regularly about the process of writing—to bring undressed writing out of the closet and into the open. In doing so, she hopes, we can demystify the often private process of academic writing.

I agree. After several years of teaching writing to graduate nursing students, I observed that fears about academic writing topped many students’ worry lists. I started my course with the question, “How do you write?” I invited students to talk about their processes, their stumbles, their mismatched socks. I asked them to share their writing-to-learn drafts, their vulnerabilities, and their concerns. I encouraged them to relax.  I wanted (and want) to help students worry less and write more.

Please consider describing your own writing journey for this blog.  Email me, Madeline Walker cdrcac@uvic.ca

And if you’d like to talk about your writing and/or get support, please drop by the Centre for Academic Communication or register online to meet with a tutor.  We love to talk about writing: undressed, dressed, and all the stages in between.

Reference

Colyar, J. (2009). Becoming writing, becoming writers. Qualitative Inquiry 15(2), 421–436.   doi 10.1177/1077800408318280

 

Our blog

Academic Writing, Blogs and blogging, Centre for Academic Communication, Tutoring

We at the Centre for Academic Communication (CAC) are excited to launch this resource for graduate students.  Starting in 2017, we’ll be blogging bi-weekly with juicy material on writing your thesis or dissertation and  surrounding issues. We’ll be reaching out instructors, students, and staff to provide guest posts.  Is there an academic writing topic you want to share about? We’re interested in topics from technology to terror of public speaking. Do you have a story to tell about your own writing journey as you develop your thesis or dissertation?  Are you a faculty member with wisdom you’d like to impart?  Please email Madeline Walkercropped-cropped-cropped-2110144017-2.jpg at cdrcac@uvic.ca and sketch your idea or story in 250 words (final blog posts will be 300-800 words).

Check out the Thesis Writing Starter Kit and the Dissertation Writers’ Resource for lots of information (see menus at top of page).

The Centre for Academic Communication will re-open for regular tutoring appointments on January 9th, 2017. Our experienced tutors can help you with all aspects of academic communication, from pre-writing to presentations.