Strategies of Academic Writing

Question: Write about theStrategies of Academic Writing. Answer: A flawless academic writing is very important in todays world for students of both schools and colleges. Parents and guardians always encourage the children to read newspapers and storybooks both to have knowledge regarding the world and to develop well rhetorical skills and good stock of words. These are the thing, which helps a student to increase their understanding and thinking ability (Bertsch Pesta, 2014). After this come the three important aspects of writing skill. The first is taking notes, the second is paraphrasing and the third is summarizing. The learning, thinking and writing potentialities increases by these three strategies. In this essay there is a thorough discussion about the main aims of note-taking, paraphrasing and summarizing. Then one can accelerate these aspects of writing skills and the methods involved in it. In academic writing, it is very important that the students and the research scholars must adopt and follow certain strategies and rules so that the students can become more equipped in their field. Paraphrasing, taking notes and summarizing are the important strategies. First, there will be a discussion about the note taking technique. From the very childhood, one has heard about listening to the teachers in the classroom and writing in the notebooks. There are textbooks, which helps us to learn about specific matters but unless and until the teachers explain it to the students properly, the students are not capable of deciphering something from it. Nevertheless, the problem remains because the students cannot retain those things and they forget or topsy-turvy the things which he or she has learnt. For this reason, much emphasis is given on taking notes. Thus, the main functions of the note taking is to record facts and information and to have reflection of certain things, then it h elps the students to learn things from the notes (Blankenship, 2016). The other two purposes of taking note are to resolve problems for having a clear concept of complex documents, writing reports and solving mathematical problems. There are some procedures of taking notes. It is known to everyone that the average writing speed of a student is around 0.3 to 0.4 words/ second, whereas a lecturer speaks at a rate of around 2 to 3 words/second. The teachers will not explain one thing or dictate same thing more than once. Therefore, in that case the student has to develop their linguistic skill like acquiring the skills of abbreviation, writing the letters in short hand. There are some attributes which solves the problem of information transmission rather triggers the students to take more notes which helps them in their studies (Cromley Wills, 2016). They are: Writing on the board by the teachers helps the students to take notes accurately. Thus for the reason the teachers are suggest ed to write accurately and precisely on the boards. The teachers are also recommended to dictate slowly and with prominent vocal voice so that the student can understand and write the necessary things. An educator can also write things on the board by the form of listing things (Ruby Ruby, 2014). Another unique feature which the teachers or educators can use is macro-textual planning indicator which organize and structure the segments and division for example expressions such as firstly/secondly or first question/second question can be used to dictate or write on the board (Podhajski, 2016). All these factors enhance the students to take notes. Paraphrasing is another important strategy of the academic learning. The main purposes of the paraphrasing are to understand and critically analyze the facts from a particulars source. The second one is to avoid plagiarism and to write unique things about a particular matter. Plagiarism means writing or copying something from other sources. Paraphrasing helps to write things in a unique form. Another important feature is to provide proper evidence and documents in the writing. In paraphrasing, the writing is similar to the original writing. There are specific examples given in the paraphrasing part of writing. There must be proper evidence to substantiate the arguments. The use of in-text referencing and footnotes must be included in the paraphrasing. There are specific elements in properly paraphrasing the original work. The first thing is using the Academic Note Template, which helps to track the source and focus on the specific issues of the original text. The second important ste p is learning and reading the original text. There must be emphasis on important facts of the original work. However, one has to write from the original work but also in a unique form. Thus, in order to do the work uniquely one has to change the order of the ideas, one has to twist and change the structure and grammar of the original work (Griffiths et al. 2016). If plagiarism is found in any dissertation, thesis and other assignments then that thesis or dissertation might be totally rejected and in some cases a degree of the student is cancelled. Finally, the phrases of the original work must be change instead of changing the original work. Thus, facts derived from the internet must be properly referenced so from an authentic source. The prime thing is check all the information derived from the internet so that the sources must be of the renowned scholars. The in texting and citation must be accurate as that of the bibliography. Hence, it can be said that paraphrasing supports atta ining of the ethical responsibility of a writer and it increases the creative writing skill of a student (Hagaman, Casey, Reid, 2016). Summarizing is also one of the important aspects of writing skill. This is because if one writes a good summary then it denotes that one has clearly understood text or a document (Wong, 2014). Thus, a good summary helps the learners and readers to understand about the original text. Sometimes there is difficulty in writing summary, so for this reason there are eight steps, which are required to follow: - First, one has to search out the key points of the text. Then that key points have to be divided into parts by giving heading and sub-heading. One can also highlight some specific important terms. After this, one has to focus on the authors tone, main style of writing and the main things which the author wants to say to the readers. Then, to write summary the student or reader should definitely underline the exact main points and try to understand thoroughly if he or she cannot do it then one should clarify these important points (Higgins et al., 2015). After this in the main heading s and sub-headings one must write about the only prime points one must not include any trivial matter in these sections. Now, from these prime points one should construct a thesis statement, which reflects the main purpose of the summary. This thesis statement can be considered as the introduction part of the body and other headings should be the main body of the summary. A summary must contain a topic sentence, which provides facts about the creators of the piece, which one is summarizing, and contain about the title of this information. There are some important features, which makes the summary very precise and distinct. They are: - The summary should be written in present tense. The author and title of the original work must be there. The summary should be short in length; it should not be same just as like the main text. If the writer has to write the words of the author then he or she must cite the words, if not this then the writer must use his or her original words (Harris, 2016). There is no personal thinking, viewpoint in the summary. This is because the main aim of writing the summary is that it must contain the main ideas of the author written in the text, it is not a critical writing in which he or she gives her opinion (McDonough, Crawford De Vleeschauwer, 2014). A writer must avoid grammatical and punctuation mistake while writing the summary. Thus, to avoid these types of mistakes, one must check its work at least two or three times. If one follows these attributes while writing summary then definitely the main aim of the summary is fulfilled. In conclusion, one can say that the three weapons of writing skills that is paraphrasing, taking notes and summarizing are equally required to improve the writing skill of a student or any other person who is related to the academic field. A student has to be very attentive if he or she wants to perform well in writing skills. This is because in order to take class notes in school or college inevitably the students have to acquire concentration power because even if the teachers cooperate with the students. In many cases, it can be found that the teachers cannot give so much of time due to time or other things, and then the teacher has to be very fast. After this one can analysis about the paraphrasing. The main characteristic of the paraphrasing is to write according to the length of the original piece but one has to write in a unique and new form. Again summarizing the writing should be not equal to the original text, it should be precise but it must contain all the important ideas of the author. Finally, in both the cases the writer has to develop a strong linguistic sense, which uplifts the level of writing. Reference Bertsch, S., Pesta, B. J. (2014). Generating active learning.Acknowledgments and Dedication, 71. 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