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Eszter Timár

Budapest, Hungary

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How do you define your job as a teacher of academic writing?

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My own definition

My job is to teach students how to make their papers as reader friendly as possible.

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What my job is not

• Teaching grammar

• Teaching the given discipline

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Teaching Reader-friendliness in Academic Writing

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The writer should help the reader• In the title• In the abstract• In the introduction• In the thesis statement• In the structure• In the conclusion• In the data presentation and analysis • In paragraphing• In clearly distinguishing between voices• In giving references• In guiding the reader all through the paper

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning

the title?

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Some of the possible expectations

• The title is clear.• It reflects accurately the argument in

the paper.• It is catchy.• It inspires to read on.

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How reader-friendly are the following titles? 1. Yet another Commission of

Inquiry? Analyzing the Commission of Inquiry into the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya

2. Playing the game of heating systems: the case of Romania

3. Staying without paying: heading towards free tourism?

4. Collective Memory of the Armenian Genocide

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5. Gender, Power, and Reproduction: Rural-Urban Differences in the Relationship Between Fertility Goals and Contraceptive Use in Kenya

6. Shadow employment in post-transition—Is informal employment a matter of choice or no choice in Poland?

7. Relocating Gentrification: The Working Class, Science and the State in Recent Urban Research

8. The future of liberal Islam

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning the introduction

Why?What?

In what order?

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Some possible expectations for features of an introduction

1. a statement of the importance of the subject2. mention of previous (recent) work on the subject or of

the absence of such work3. justification for dealing with the subject4. a statement of the writer’s objective in the present work

(the thesis statement)5. the scope and limitations of the present work6. brief details of different parts of the main body of the

work and its structure7. mention of differing viewpoints on the subject8. the principal findings of the research9. a description of the research methodology10. definitions of key terms11. research question

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How is the introduction generally organized?

• There are three main “moves” in introductions [1], Move 1

Establish the field a. by showing that the general research area is

important, central, interesting, problematic, or relevant in some way

b. by moving from general to specific c. by introducing & reviewing relevant items of

previous research

[1] See: Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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How is the introduction generally organized

Move 2Identify a research problem

a. by indicating a gapb. by raising a questionc. by continuing a previously developed line of

inquiryd. by disagreeing with an existing or accepted

approach

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How is the introduction generally organized ?

Move 3Propose a solutiona. by outlining the purpose or stating the nature of

the research (usually a thesis statement)b. by describing the methodology usedc. by announcing principal findingsd. by indicating the structure of the research paper

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning the

thesis statement?

Where?Where not?

What should it be?

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Thesis statement• What? This is the the most important

sentence of a paper because it outlines its central purpose in one place.

• Where? It is normally at the beginning of a paper, in the introduction, and is later repeated in various sections, especially in the conclusion.

• Where not? It is usually not at the beginning of the paper, as the reader wants to know about the context and the problem first.

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Rebel Palm’s contribution on the EATAW discussion forum 6/22/2010

There's even a standard location for the thesis statement in a social sciences article - it should classically be just before the lit review and the actual hypothesis for the research should be just before the methods section. Example of a thesis statement from an article I use to teach how to write lit reviews: "Guided by Wilson's theory of neighborhood effects, we hypothesize had that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood lowers African-American adolescents' college aspirations." This statement does the job that a thesis statement should do: it identifies the problem to be studied, it makes clear the researcher's stance (which may or may not be "proved" at the end of the research), it identifies the key concepts.

The hard sciences are actually the same way, they just don't call it a thesis statement, they call it a research question (which is really a statement reversed to the form of a question). They are more likely to have open-ended inquiry, but in the social sciences we have a particular problem we want to "prove", it's not open.

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning the structure of the

paper?

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Some of the possible expectations for structure

• Clear chapters and subchapters• Clear titles• Clear numbering• Probably mini introductions and

conclusions

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning the conclusion of a

paper?

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Some of the possible expectations• It is short.

• It is a summary of the main argument.

• The conclusion may include deductions, implications, evaluations, predictions.

• It may include recommendations for future research and/or policy.

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning the presentation and

analysis of non-verbal information?

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Some possible expectations • All non-verbal information is necessary and adds

to content.• The reader can understand a table or figure in 30

seconds.• Tables and figures are clearly marked, numbered

and captioned.• They all have a source (except the author’s own).• They are referred to and analysed in the text?

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What are the reader’s expectations for

concerning paragraphing?

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Some of the possible expectations for paragraphing

• One paragraph should be about one idea.• Paragraphs should have a topic sentence.• The topic sentence is developed in the paragraph

(facts, details, evidence, arguments, examples, analysis).

• If the body is highly technical, the topic sentence is still understandable to a wider audience.

• Sentences within the paragraph are linked.• Paragraphs are linked to each other.

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Two paragraphs from a thesis introduction (written by a native speaker of English)

...• This work takes two NGO’s as case studies. The first, Minority Rights Group, (MRG) is a western based

organization that receives funding from large donors both independent and tied to the state, such as the Ford Foundation, Soros Foundation and the European Commission, a variety that has a bearing on the organization’s political involvement. MRG lobbies governments and the United Nations “alongside and on behalf of minorities” raising the issue of representational relations with their target groups, and declares itself as a minority rights advocacy NGO. A key aspect of MRG is that it works primarily with local grass-roots NGOs where some activists who speak English were willing to cooperate with my attempt to get a more holistic view of their challenges, modus operandi and working relationships. Thus, the Roma Democratic Development Association (SONCE) is a grass-roots Roma organization in Tetovo, Macedonia who has been a partner organization with MRG since 2003. Its staff is entirely Roma, which gave me a chance to gather information from the minority perspective on work with a western NGO and on the challenges that arise from this cross-cultural relationship. This working relationship also addresses power dynamics power between the two and issues with accessing the community.

• I chose the Human Rights Initiative (HRSI) at Central European University (CEU) because of its unique role as a human rights organization within an academic framework. The staff at HRSI are activists who have recently graduated from a masters program at CEU, and are transitioning to work in the larger field of human rights. Being closely affiliated to and primarily within an academic institution creates particular and more simplistic constraints that also cross over into the complex arena in which MRG works. This simplicity gives insight into core challenges of working in the field as a whole. HRSI’s mission is “to raise awareness and build capacity” of their target group, which is mainly the students at CEU. This rather abstract mission indicates some detachment from the issues they are advocating for leading to a compelling inquiry as to how they feel about their impact. …

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What are the reader’s expectations for

understanding the structure and logic of the text?

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Possibly the main expectation is to be guided through the text:

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Function: Help to guide reader through the textTransitions Express semantic relation between main clauses,

marking additive, contrastive, consequential steps

In addition / but/ thus

Frame markers Refer to discourse acts, sequences or text stages Finally / to conclude/ my purpose

Endorphic markers Refer to information in other parts of the text Noted above / see Fig. 1.

Evidentials Refer to source of information from other texts According to / Z states

Code glosses Help readers grasp meanings Namely /e.g./ such as / in other words

Interactive resources Ken Hyland: Disciplinary interactions: metadiscourse in L2 postgraduate writingJournal of Second Language Writing 13 (2004) 133–151

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Interactional resources

Function: Involve the reader in the argument

Hedges Withhold writer’s full commitment

Might / perhaps /It is possible that

Boosters Emphasise force or writer’s certainty

In fact / It is clear that

Attitude markers Express writer’s attitude, conveying surprise, agreement, importance, etc.

Unfortunately / surprisingly /I agree

Engagement markers Explicitly refer to or build relationship with reader

Consider / note /You can see that

Self-mentions Explicit reference to author(s) I /we / my / our

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What are the reader’s expectations concerning

references?

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The main expectations concerning references• There is no plagiarism:

In other words, everything borrowed from other authors is summarised, paraphrased or directly quoted.

• The author’s voice is clearly different from that of other authors.

• The text is consistent in using one style of referencing.

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Summary of emphasizing reader friendliness in

teaching

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• Starting from the readers’ expectations, getting students to put on their reader’s hat

↓• Analysis of good and weaker examples in the discipline

↓• Students drawing certain conclusions from the examples (guidelines rather

than rules!)↓

• Adding more information to their findings (e.g. “moves” or types of metadiscourse)

↓• Students writing their own papers

↓• Students getting feedback based on the guidelines established earlier

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The point is always to consider how your reader will feel