Academic Writing Qmul Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

A feature of academic writing is the need to be cautious in one’s statements in order to distinguish between facts and claims. Hedging can be defined as the use of linguistic devices to show hesitation or uncertainty and to display politeness and indirectness. Hedging is absolutely crucial in good academic writing and hedged words are said to account for 1 in every 100 words.

When writing for academic disciplines it is necessary not only to show that you are able to write in a formal, abstract fashion, but also that you are able to show the extent to which you believe in, or are prepared to stand up for, what you are reporting/claiming. People use hedged language for several different purposes but perhaps the most fundamental are the following: to minimise the possibility of another academic/teacher/lecturer/colleague/student opposing the claims you are making to enable you as a writer to be more precise when reporting results, e.g. You can show that something is not 100% proven, but rather that it is indicated and subsequently assumed. These include using modal verbs such as 'may' and 'might', using modal nouns such as 'probability' and 'assumption', using lexical verbs which denote a sense of caution i.e. 'assume' and 'indicate' and by using expressions which show a sense of caution or vagueness, i.e.

Tick yes, if you think the sentence could be effective in helping you to support your claims in an academic essay and no if you think it would not be effective in helping you to support your claims in an academic essay. the 'management' of danger is also not the sort of language to appear within policy documents that refer to grt children, where it might be construed to reflect systematic failures in schools. the hedge is in the words 'it might be construed to reflect'. the 'management' of danger is also not the sort of language to appear within policy documents that refer to grt children, which reflects systematic failures in schools.

viewing a movie in which alcohol is portrayed appears to lead to higher total alcohol consumption of young people while watching the movie. writing is key to doing well at university and turnitin gives you feedback on your writing. If you know how to use this feedback, it can help you to become a better academic writer. If your lecturer has set turnitin up to let you see the originality report, you can use it to improve your writing. The originality report not only highlights text that might be plagiarised, it also draws attention to important features of academic writing. Sometimes it confirms that you are doing the right thing and sometimes it highlights skills you need to work on. The originality report will draw your attention to: your use of quotations, citation and referencing: it is fine to quote from your source texts but you need to use quotation marks and reference the quotation correctly.

You also need to decide when to quote and when it would be better to summarise or paraphrase. Your ability to summarise and paraphrase: it is not easy to rewrite something in your own words. It is especially difficult if the original is well expressed and the writer is an authority in the subject. How well you are using the terminology of your discipline: the report may highlight words and phrases that you are certain you did not copy. This is probably because all academic writing about your topic uses similar terms. Remember that turnitin will show where your writing matches other documents but it cannot tell why.

Investigate all the matches that turnitin finds even if there are very few and your assignment has a low similarity index. Question the turnitin report: if you do not understand or accept something that it finds, ask your lecturer about it. Make use of all of the academic writing support that qmul offers, both within your department or through the language and learning unit. You may also find it useful to work through the online resource plagiarism and how to avoid it available at each time you study an originality report, write one tip for yourself.

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Look at the originality reports for two different types of writing for example a piece of creative or reflective writing and an essay on a set topic. How do the similarity indexes compare? how might you account for any differences? ask yourself questions about the quotations turnitin has highlighted. Good paraphrasing is not just a skill with words but a sign that you have assimilated the ideas you are expressing into your own thinking a sign that you have learned. Sources and referencing: you should follow your department’s referencing and citation guidelines.

As with quotations, you must acknowledge the source of statements, ideas, images, diagrams anything that you have included that is not your own, original work. If turnitin identifies any of these, you can check the source and make sure that it is referenced correctly in your bibliography. The language of your discipline: part of learning to write well in your discipline is using the vocabulary that practitioners use. If turnitin has identified short phrases and terms that occur in most of the other writing in your discipline this may be a sign that you are becoming a more confident academic writer.

Take a few examples from your assignment and compare the way you have used these expressions with the way they are used in the sources that the originality report has shown. Common words and phrases: turnitin is likely to find matches with commonly used expressions. These may not need to be investigated, but if you notice that you are using an expression very frequently you might ask yourself whether this was intentional. What if you do not see your originality report? you can still ask your lecturer to suggest the areas you need to work on.

‘i have reconnected with myself as a writer’    ‘your writing retreats are a spa for the brain’ typically a writing retreat is an occasion when a group of people get together to make progress on their research projects, detaching themselves from the usual pressures and responsibilities of their job or study. Thinking writing’s interest in retreats began when two of our members attended a residential writing retreat in the scottish highlands run by rowena murray see murray and newton, 2009, and  murray, 2008, for more details and decided to adapt the structures and ideas of the retreat to an urban university context. Since 2010 we have run more than 25 retreats for academic staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students, and local school teachers and students, and have a regular program of both general and department specific retreats running throughout each year. The retreats are structured around texts of the participant's choosing and include a number of short writing and discussion activities, but no teaching. We offer whole day reading retreats to postgraduate students across qmul, and shorter reading retreats organised in conjunction with a number of departments currently english and drama, and politics and international relations , aimed specifically at first and second year students on courses with demanding reading requirements.

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if you would like to attend a retreat or arrange one for your department, please get in touch. For details of and booking for forthcoming retreats please go to our events page. Browse our 'encounters ' blog pages for various reflections on retreats the school consists of eight academic departments listed to the left supported by an administrative team. The school teaches a range of languages catalan, french, german, portuguese, russian, spanish, at degree level, as well as other languages such as japanese, arabic and chinese, for students and staff wishing to learn these.we also provide teaching in academic literacy and writing for home and international students. We also teach degree programmes that focus on the linguistics, the literature and culture of the peoples that speak these languages. As well as this, we teach programmes in linguistics, with a focus on english language, in film studies and in comparative literature.

Some of our research investigates aspects of the literary, visual and intellectual cultures of the world, focussing on those areas where catalan, french, german, portuguese and russian are spoken, but extending to compare the literature of these cultures with the literature of the wider world. Research in linguistics focusses on the nature of language itself, and how it is used, while research in film studies investigates how culture and film interact and how we can understand film as a fundamental part of the modern world. The page you are looking for cannot be found it looks like there is an out of date link within this site. If you clicked on a link from within the queen mary university of london site. Please send an email to its [email protected] remembering to include: the url of the non existent page: the url of the page which links to it: if after trying the above you still require assistance, please send an email to its [email protected] specifying: the url of the non existent page: what it was you were trying to locate. Overall satisfaction among students of film at queen mary university of london is at 95 per cent, a five year high and an increase of 5 per cent on 2014. The results rank the department of film as joint first in london for student satisfaction.

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