Extended writing at university: Why do students write?
Students write for a number of purposes, according to the particular requirements
of the course. In many cases the topic ot title will be predetermined by the lecturer, and may
require the reading of recommended texts.
The reasons why students carry out extended academic writing activities may include:
1) to develop and express ideas;
2) to provide evidence to support the ideas;
3) to show they can dispute or support existing theories;
4) to display knowledge
University students are often asked to write essays- extended essays, especially during
examinations, these are referred to as projects. Towards the end of their period of study,
most students will be expected to write a thesis – a long piece of writing based on your own
ideas and research as part of an university degree – PhD. Sometimes this is called a
dissertation – a long formal piece of writing on a particular subject, especially for a
university degree. In certain academic disciplines, students may be required to write a case
sstudy. Whatever form of extended writing students are expected to do, the process will
usually involve the following steps:
-gathering information from various sources;
-organising this information so that it appropriately answers the needs of the task that the
writer has to complete;
-planning the text;
-drafting and redrafting the text until it communicates the information and ideas fully and
clearly.
Students are expected to take responsability for working through these steps.
Types of assessment
The writing of reports, theses, dissertations and case studies is all part of the assessment
process in most academic disciplines. Another form of assessment is through oral
presentation as part of a study project.
Summarising information from texts
One of the key skills involved in using/referring to sources in summarizing,
this means being able to state clearly and succinctly the key ideas or thrust of an
argument. The summary should be in your own words, with an acknowledgement of
the source. If one summarizes ideas in the exact words of the original without
acknowledging the writer, or fail to name your source, this is considered to be
plagiarism-a form of cheating and universities have strong views about this.
How to summarise
❖ First it is important to decide why you are summarizing. Are you going to use this
information in an essay? Do you need only the main ideas or are the details also
important? Perhaps only sections of the text are relevant; in which case you need to be
even more selective.
❖ Before you attempt to summarise, it is essential that you understand the material you plan
to summarise; if the ideas in the material are not clear to you, then they will not be clear to
the reader when you express them in writing.
❖ It is useful to take notes. The first reason for this is to clearly identify the main points of
the text, and the second reason is to use these as the basis for writing your summary.
❖ Write your summary using your notes as a stimulus – put the original text away. If you
write your summary while looking at the text, it will make it more difficult to summarise
in your own words.
❖ When you have finished your summary, you may want to read the original text again in
order to ensure you have all the information you need.
When summarizing, use the N. O. W. approach:
▪ NOTE down key points
▪ ORGANISE the points
▪ WRITE your summary using key points
Features of a summary
Which of the features below do you think characterize a good summary?
A. Using the same order of facts and ideas as the original
B. Using all the information from the original
C. Using none of the same vocabulary as the original
D. Using different grammatical structures from the original
E. Emphasizing the points you feel are important in the original
F. Giving your opinion about or commenting on the original text
