W 067 F

Introduction

Taking part in any field of scientific life of modern times, the knowledge of academic writing is desperately required. This feature of the academic scene demands conscious and hard preparation works from everybody who decides to participate in any field of science. Most university students can create pieces of writings by following their language instincts and these writings are suitable for everyday reasons, but not for academic purposes. In order to become successful authors, students need to attend courses where they can acquire the techniques of academic writing with the guidance of a tutor. ANG 1603 Writing and research skills was a course for majors of English at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs in the spring semester of 1997.
The syllabus of the course states that “the course aims to help students in developing writing and research skills and strategies that will make them able to achieve success in academic discourse...The course assists students in communicating relevant ideas and research findings in various types of academic discourse, such as descriptive essays, review essays and research papers.”(Horváth, 1997) Meanwhile the course students had to submit several kinds of assignments: four take home essays and four in class papers.

Method

This research paper will examine the tasks, a reading and procedures of the course, focusing on how they help students in improving their writing skills. To approach the topic and to reach satisfactory conclusion the sources of subjective experiences, other students’ experiences and pieces of information from authentic books will be used. Own and other students’ experiences shall reflect on the emotional characteristics of the tasks and they also show how students think about the importance and the reasons of them. Authentic sources might omit the emotional features of tasks but they show the real reasons behind them.

This research paper will only mention a selection of the tasks of the course. The selection contains those procedures which seemed to aid students the most in learning academic writing.

Results and Discussion

At the beginning of 1997 JPU Writing and research skills course the first theme the students attending had to deal with was reading styles. It was not completely understandable why, because the course was called “Writing and research skills”. Soon after the reason became clear. Reading has a crucial role in the development of one’s writing skill, because “no one can write for long on the strength of inner sources alone.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196.) Students found that the task was enjoyable and useful. They enjoyed it because they had the opportunity to talk about their favorite readings and share their impressions about them with others. They learned to feel empathy towards the readers of their future writings. They realized that they are not writing only for themselves but for an audience also. The students in the ANG1603 WRS group learned that their readers will have reactions towards their texts. In order to make these reactions positive they, as writers have to make serious efforts in the future to make their writings enjoyable and intelligible. In a group writing assignment one of the students very cleverly remarked: “...reading and talking about our reading styles...paved the way for essay writing skills.”(JPU WRS Group Writing Assignment, 1997, p.1) According to the college handbook that I used for completing my research paper with authentic details reading can affect writing in different ways. Reading can awake ideas to write about in one’s mind and most importantly it can give a direction in how to write. ”Reading is to writing as hearing is to talking. One cannot learn writing without reading what others written.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986, p. 196) Starting the course with discussing reading styles was a good idea. It turned students’ attention to readers’ interest and thaught them not to be selfish while writing.

The second topic the group dealt with was writing styles. The basis of this topic was an essay, titled The Transaction written by William Zinsser (Hurtt & Boylan, 1989, p. 22- 25.) . The essay is about two writers who were invited to a university where students asked them questions about how they create their writings. The main point in this essay is that there are two types of writers. They work in different kind of manners, one considers writing his hobby the other one considers it vocation. The group had a long discussion on which type of writer is more agreeable. Getting to this topic the group had to do its first home assignment, in which they had to write a topic sentence and the paragraph extending the statement of it.

Analyzing reading and writing styles were the first steps towards essay writing. They were rather theoretical steps than practical ones but the group learned a lot from them. They gave a general insight into writing. They warned us that academic writing is much more difficult than we ever imagined it and there are more rules to follow than we ever could detect.

The first task the group had to do in practice was paragraph writing. There were two options to chose from.

- There are two basic methods of writing.... was the first one and

- Women’s rights activists cannot tolerate sexist language.... was the second.

Members of the group were free to decide which topic sentence they wish to complete and on which they want to build their paragraph. Earning the knowledge of topic sentences was something completely new. The students, as the penmen of the future became aware of the importance of their essays’ first sentence. A good topic sentence raises interest in the reader with making him curious about the remaining part of the essay. An effective topic sentence can be even more empowered with a well developed paragraph. An ideal paragraph extends the meaning of the topic sentence logically. It adds thoughts one after the other to the topic sentence like pearls are applied to a piece of string to form a necklace.



“ Though a paragraph is commonly part of an essay, it can and does sometimes serve as an essay on its right, and the writing of one- paragraph essays will give you small- -scale practice in organization. One can sometimes learn a good deal about organization by writing a single sentence, and one can learn even more when writing a single paragraph.” (Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.144.) Starting to create the first “academic” paragraph it became clear that it is not as easy as it first seemed. Writing a paragraph one always should care to make it look like a real one. But organizing a paragraph can be a real hardship. It often happens that one wants to crowd too many items of ideas in one paragraph, so the outline of it becomes a real mess, especially when it is hand written. (Hand written drafts seem to be more difficult to control than typed ones.)

The essay on tape assignment was a rather unusual one. Members of the WRS group had to write an essay either about designing something or comparing essay writing with something. Finishing with the essay they had to record it on a tape, and in the end they had to submit this tape. The students became not only authors but listeners, audience of their own essays.
This task was not really given to improve students’ creativity but to make them realize the importance of revising, which is the last but one stage of finishing an essay.

“Revising- the word itself means looking again. ...it should be done everytime before submitting an essay. An unrevised piece of writing is like an uninspected machine. Neither of them is likely to work well.”(Heffernan & Lincoln, 1986 p.47). University students often make mistakes on vocabulary and syntax because they write their texts in a hasty manner and they rarely concentrate on re- reading their compositions. If they revised their essays more they could realize their mistakes easier. Self correcting mistakes before evaluation would be very effective in learning how to use written language effectively. Tape recording the essay can be very helpful too. After listening to the recorded essay the student might feel the need to change some vocabulary items or to make a part of the writing more clearer.

During the course there were some other revision tasks. One of them was correcting an essay titled “Why Do We Play Soccer ?”(Horváth, 1997). This essay contained all the possible mistakes an essay can contain. In order to remember avoiding these errors students had to correct them and write a review essay about it.

The final stage of effective essay writing is the editing process. As a part of it, the author has to make sure that the sentences of the essay are rhetorically correct. For the correctness of the sentences used the author might apply different strategies.
For example the technique of subordination can be used when there are too many short sentences which cause monotony or when main points need to be emphasized. Length and the construction of the sentences varied can make the essay powerful too. An other technique is control over word choice which means that the author needs to take care about the vocabulary of the essay. The words used in the essay should fit into the level of diction. If an expression is too slanguish or overly formal it should be changed or else it will bother the reader. (Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p.67- 70)
There is a sentence in the group writing essay in connection with evaluation: “WELL, WELL. YOU GET WHATCHA DESERVED.” (JPU WRS Group Writing 1997 p.2). This is a typical example of an expression being too low for the level of diction. It may suite the audience (the group) but it is completely different from the context of the essay, because it is too slanguish. Perhaps it would be better corrected to: “The evaluation is absolutely correct, one never gets underestimated or overestimated.”
The reader might get disturbed in grasping the meaning because the overuse of abstract and general words. “To avoid this a successful writer should be aware of using concrete and specific words whenever he can.”( Heffernan & Lincoln 1986 p. 70)

Conclusion

Dealing with reading styles, writing styles and learning how to write good paragraphs were the most crucial tasks during the course. The topics reading styles and writing styles gave perfect introduction into academic writing for students, because they turned their interest to possible ways of writing that worth following. As students have thoughts and themes to write about they desperately need to learn how to write a paragraph, because it is the basis of an essay.

Revising and editing are important processes to learn and to practice for the students who wish to produce powerful essays. Without revision and editing essays are precious but worthless looking stones, hiding the jewel inside of themselves. Students fulfilling the course shall admit and never forget this, and if they insist on practicing all that they learned, they will be effective essay writers.