Academic writing – understandings and strategies

Pat Thomson@ThomsonPat

Writing is a social practice. Every kind of does specific work in the world

• Writing is high stakes textwork/identitywork• Writing for understanding, and writing to

enter the conversation and make a contribution

Entering a conversation means understanding the genres and conventions- to then resist, conform, change them.

mediaytext

mediation

Framing discourse practices

Audience and genre- Who am I writing for? - What do they expect?-What do they usually read?- What are the characteristics of these texts?- Do I want to push the boundaries of their world?

What is the journal – who are the editors?Who is the editorial board?What do they publish?

The work of the introduction

• Interest and engage the reader. Give them a taste of what is to come.

• Create the warrant for the paper – in policy, practice, current event, disciplinary issue, literatures.

• Introduce the writer. Establish credibility. Give a flavour of ‘voice’.

• Map out the paper and indicate the shape of the argument

The introduction moves

•Locate•Focus•Argue/Expand•Outline

Some approaches

• Narrative• Media headlines• Quotations• Lively and provocative proposition BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS FIRST TIME ROUND.

The work of The Literatures section

• Always to show what is already known about the topic And thus to indicate the space/debate/gap/opportunity that you will occupy

• Generally to indicate what key ideas from the literatures you will be using

• Possibly to define terms or key concepts• Maybe to outline your theoretical toolkit

Literatures: not the same as your research proposal

• The purpose is to position a piece of research that has already been undertaken.

• The reader is going to get what’s-already-known, plus the newly conducted piece of research – this research as the contribution.

• The literature is used to locate the contribution, the what-we-now-know-that-we-didn’t-before-and-why-this-is-important. Some texts and themes that were in your initial scoping review are omitted, and other things are now emphasized in order to make clear the connections and continuities, similarities and differences of your research to what’s gone before.

Problems with The Literatures section

• A list which doesn’t indicate what are the texts most germane to your work, why and how they are to be used

• The section is descriptive rather than evaluative• The section is too long and too detailed ( it

looks like a cut and paste from a proposal or thesis)

• Key texts in the field are left out.

The work of The Methods section

This section establishes a firm foundation for the new research by• Positioning the researcher• Situating the research in a specific tradition• Showing how the researcher understands and used

particular methods• Indicating the corpus of dat used and how it was

analysed• Providing an audit trail for the reader (who, how many,

how long, why these, when)

Methods Sections

• Different journals have different expectations of how much will be written here

• Some US journals expect quite detailed information

• Some Australian and UK journals don’t expect a lot

CHECK THIS OUT

Common problems in Methods Sections

• A trawl of the quantitative qualitative binary• Too much general discussion and not enough about the

particular approach taken, why and how. It reads like an assignment.

• Not enough detail. The reader doesn’t have a clue about why they should believe a word of what is to come.

• Not enough specificity about the tradition – Ethnography? Yes but what version and what does this mean for the conduct of the study?

The Methods section doesn’t have to be a riveting read. But it does have to be clearly written and logically ordered.The Methods section is a combination of argument – this is how the research was conducted and why – and a report – here is what I actually did.

The work of the Results section of the paper

• Everything that you’ve done so far has been leading to this, you’ve been setting this up for the reader.• Now they’re there, the job is to

make the case for the contribution - and to wow them.

Structure

• This section can be organised as Results + Discussion or with the Discussion integrated into the Results.

• If a theoretical framework is used then again, it can be integrated or a re-reading offered after the first results and discussion.

• Whatever it is, you need to sign post this at the start.

Problems with results/discussion sections• Too much description – where’s the analysis? • Too abstract – where’s the evidence?• Not enough subheadings – what’s the point, where is this

going?• Too many headings – I cant keep track of where this is going• Just a report – why did this happen , why does it matter?

Where is this going?• Too much stuff – could have used a chart or table?• Not connected to the literatures – what’s the contribution,

what’s been used, does the researcher think they live in a vacuum?

The work of the conclusion

• It returns to the problem/question/niche/puzzle you identified in the Introduction

• It shows how you have provided an answer – this is your contribution to the conversation

• It then deals with the So What and Now What – by talking about implications for practice, policy and/or further research.

Problems with Conclusions

• Introduces new material• Repeats what has already been said. Déjà

vu.• Too short and says nothing• Doesn’t deal with the So What, and Now

What• Is trite/hackneyed/cliched and/or states the

obvious.

Moves

• Summarise. Reprise reason for paper. Provides succinct summary of what you’ve done

• So What – why your contribution is important to know now and…

• Now what –who needs to do what as a result of now knowing this – practice, policy, research? Anything that needs to happen immediately?

academic presence is about making your mark

The work of (your name, 2025) is best known for…