• Introduction

• Thinking precedes writing

• Writing about the work of other authors

• Writing about your own thoughts

However well you know your subject, it is not necessarily an easy task to write about it. Many of us do not see ourselves as writers at all, but we must concede that writing skills do provide an immensely important and powerful tool in the academic world.

Whether you are writing in English as first or second language, and whether or not you feel that your early education equipped you for the task, it is possible to approach writing as a process over which you do have control, simply because you understand in broad terms what is at the heart of what is being said or written. Think how much more articulate you are in discussion when you are confident of your subject. It is the same with writing. If you know what's at the heart, you can fit it into the structures available to you.

This section helps you to fit together the processes of knowing what you want to say, and knowing how to articulate this clearly, whether it is about your own thoughts or someone else's.

• You will find a simple way of classifying knowledge so that you can immediately say what is central and what is peripheral to or subsumed within any idea.
• You will learn to plot your own knowledge on a mind-map, and we hope you will find that this tool, more than any other, will help you to write clearly, because you will know how to separate ideas and how to treat them each in turn.

All this will happen in 'Thinking precedes writing'.

You may have discovered that a different process is involved if you are writing about the work of other authors rather than writing about your own thoughts. In a literature review, part of the skill required is that you sift through a number of ideas that already exist in someone else's words. Your task is to reiterate an idea in whole or part, possibly in comparison with others, either directly or indirectly, without losing control of the main theme, without plagiarising, and without losing your own voice. You may agree that it is sometimes harder to convert an existing statement than to start from the beginning and generate your own. But when faced with the subtle possibilities available to us in English, it is not surprising that writing down a single original thought can also become a hazardous undertaking. Two sections help you to understand the thinking processes behind good writing, and help you to establish who is writing about what at any one time, so that the main ingredients for good writing are sound and accurate for each piece of text that you write: 'Writing about the work of other authors' or 'Writing about your own thoughts'.

In this section there are a number of planning sheets as downloadable Word 6 files. Note for planning sheets: assistance on:

• downloading Netscape
• Configuring Netscape and downloading files

Thinking precedes writing

Writing about the work of other authors

Introduction

A vital skill in research and all academic endeavours is the ability to summarise - that is, to reduce information to its essence without losing accuracy, by subsuming elaboration and detail into broad main points. In the planning sheets in this section you will be able to practise 'Summarising' from your own choice of materials.

Similarly, you are frequently asked to bring your own critical faculties to bear on what you read - not to take anything in research at face value, but to question and evaluate so as to build up and apply a high level of informed judgement to activities and assertions in your field. Some techniques for 'Critiquing' are made explicit, and the planning sheets offer you an opportunity to practise these.

When you are writing about other people's ideas, it is important for you to be in control of 'Voice' - that is, to make sure that your reader knows whether they are reading directly from the original source, or indirectly, filtered through your understanding and reiteration of the original.

Finally, there are conventional ways of giving prominence either to an item of information, or to its original author, and  you will discover some techniques for achieving this in 'Author orientation'.

Summarising is a vital academic skill, useful for notetaking (from written and spoken delivery), for critical reference to previous research or theoretical frameworks as in a review of literature, for brief proposals or progress reports, for writing abstracts and for summarising your own findings. The planning sheets in this section help you to summarise an existing text to different levels of reduction, without substantially losing any essential information. You will be able to practise 'A summarising technique', and apply this to 'The short summary,' 'The expanded, informative summary', and 'The full summary'. You are urged to do so as often as possible with a variety of texts in order to gain confidence and facility in this process.

The planning sheets are available as a downloadable Word 6 file summ:

• A summarising technique
• The short summary
• The expanded, informative summary
• The full summary

The word 'critique' is related to other words, such as critical, and critic, which are to do with having and stating an opinion about someone else's claim, statement or performance.

You critique (verb) the literature when you write about ideas in your field that are not your own, both to show you know the field, and as a context for your own research or ideas. Usually, your critique (noun) follows your summary of the original. The reader can then appreciate your views about the validity of other writers' ideas. This summary/critique partnership gives you the basic building blocks for a literature review.

In this subsection, you are given the planning sheet 'Starting points for critiquing' which helps you to ask critical questions of any text. A further planning sheet shows you 'A critiquing technique', and you have the opportunity to practise this using your own text. Lastly, some examples of authentic text from the Health Sciences illustrate the subtle use of 'Comparing and contrasting' to achieve a finely controlled critical tone while writing about the work of others.

See the following planning sheets as a downloadable Word 6 file critiq:

• Starting points for critiquing
• A critiquing technique
• Comparing and contrasting

Introduction
By its very nature, the review of literature is a vehicle which conveys information and opinion from its writer to its reader about the existing work of other authors. The writer clearly has a commentator's role, offering the reader a stream of information which moves between what was said by the other authors, and what was said about this by the writer. It is vitally important, then, that the reader is able to tell 'Whose voice?' is being used at any one time.

In a following subsection you will find further explanation and examples of how to vary the voice in your writing. Three common techniques in academic writing are 'Paraphrasing, reporting, quoting'; in the planning sheet 'Reducing text by paraphrasing, reporting and quoting', you will be given the opportunity to distinguish between the 'voices' inherent in each of these processes, and to practise each one.

It is often the case that a 'Writer's commentary' (or a statement in the writer's own voice) is introduced in order to intrude an opinion or make clear a position. Similarly, subtle degrees of 'Emphasis' (a planning sheet) can be placed by a writer in order to advance an argument or direct the reader's attention. You can lead your reader to take notice of certain aspects of an idea or piece of information which is pertinent to your own purpose.

Whose voice?
'[Students] can treat published literature like any other data, the only difference being that it is not data they generated themselves.'
(Brown R (1994). 'The "big picture" about managing writing'. In Quality in postgraduate education. Edited by O Zuber-Skerritt and Y Ryan. London: Kogan Page, p 97.)

When you report on your own findings, you are likely to present them something like this:

'Table 2 shows that sixteen of the twenty respondents preferred the Carlyle method.'

You could also say:

'The Carlyle method was preferred by 80% of the respondents (see Table 2).'

Or:

'From the results shown in Table 2, it appears that the majority of respondents were in favour of the Carlyle method.'

In this case, your source of information is Table 2. Had you found the same results in Smith (1988, p 17), you would naturally substitute the name, date and page number for Table 2. In each case, this is your voice introducing a fact that can be verified somewhere else.

Note that the tense used here is past for the fact itself ('preferred'; 'were in favour of'), and present for your part (or the source's part) in the reporting ('Table 2 shows that'; ' it appears that'). This is because the reported fact occurred specifically in the past, whereas both you and your sources are presenting it 'now' - that is, at the time that the reader is reading your document. You use the two time frames to indicate the difference between what actually happened and how it is being presented right now.

Sometimes you may need to use present perfect to refer to the recent past ('have discovered that ...' ) or past perfect ('had realised that ... ') which refers to a time prior to a specified time in the past.

It is also, of course, possible to present an idea in the present tense - for example, 'the sky is blue'. You do this when the idea is generalisable and undisputable. In an academic context, when new (not 'common') ideas are presented, the author makes a strong claim to validity by using the present tense, and thus needs to be very sure of his/her ground, providing irrefutable evidence in support of the statement.

When you yourself are making a statement about your own research, whether specific to a point in time (usually past tense) or generalised as a claim (usually present tense), the voice you use is your own, and no references need be made. However, as soon as you introduce ideas or information from another source, your voice must be combined with that of the source's voice. The skill with which you manage this combination - that is, the way in which you manipulate the various elements (idea, source(s) and voice) -  is often significant in assessing the merit and rigour of your work. So it is important.

Paraphrasing, reporting, quoting
Every time you repeat someone else's idea, you are providing a kind of summary - that is, your version is a very small part of a larger body of writing. You can choose to summarise in different ways for different purposes. In academic writing, it is important to include accurate references, using either the author-date or the numbering system.

There are three basic ways in which you can combine an idea and its source with your own voice:

1. direct quote
2. paraphrase
3. report

Each of these can be varied in many ways, but the distinction between them is important; the quality, depth and subtlety of your presentation may depend on the use you choose to make of each method.

Start with an idea expressed in one or more sentences as originally stated by the source. For example,  Jones who wrote these words in 1997:

'Physiotherapists work with a multitude of problem situations, many of which can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity.'
(Jones, M (1997). 'Clinical reasoning: the foundation of clinical practice'. Part 1. Australian journal of physiotherapy, 43:167.)

Below are some examples of how this idea may be expressed by direct quote, paraphrase and report, combining your voice with that of Jones in ways which are endlessly variable for your purposes.

1. Direct quote: what were Jones' exact words?

You can choose a single sentence or phrase from the original text which, in itself, sums up the main point being made by the author. If you quote directly in this way, you must surround the exact original wording with single inverted commas, or choose to indent longer passages in smaller font, with no inverted commas. In each case, include in your reference the page number from which the extract is derived.

Jones (1996: 167) wrote, 'Physiotherapists work with a multitude of problem situations, many of which can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity'.

As Jones observed in 1996, 'Physiotherapists work with a multitude of problem situations, many of which can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity' (page 167).

'Physiotherapists work with a multitude of problem situations' points out Jones (1996: 167), returning to the professional context for clinical reasoning. Many of these, he adds 'can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity'.

Physiotherapists work with a multitude of problem situations, many of which can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguit (Jones 1997: 167).

2. Paraphrase: what was Jones' idea?

This process basically means repeating or rewriting a statement in your own words from an 'inside' stance. You can restate the content in reduced form without mentioning the author by name, but writing as if you were using the author's 'voice'. This gives prominence to the information itself, while the author is (must be) added simply as a reference, either by name/date or by number.

Many complex, unique, even ambiguous problem situations are familiar to physiotherapists (Jones 1997).

That many of the problem situations encountered by physiotherapists can be imbued with complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity, is a phenomenon pointed out by Jones (1997).

3. Report: what did Jones do?

You can report the content by describing indirectly what the author wrote, as if you were an observer reporting the author's action or intention. Use your own 'voice' as if speaking about this author to someone else and restate the main points from an 'outside' stance. This gives greater prominence to the presence and authority of the original writer. It also allows you to imply your own level of acceptance of the author's point.

Although Jones (1997) claimed that many of the problem situations faced by physiotherapists can be characterised by complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity, he did not pursue this line of argument.

Jones (1997) characterises the multitude of problem situations faced by physiotherapists, describing them as complex, unique and ambiguous.

Referring to the complexity, uniqueness and ambiguity of problem situations that arise in physiotherapy, Jones (1997) provides a professional context for the significance of clinical reasoning.

Jones' claim (1997) that the characteristics of problem situations for physiotherapists demand sensitive clinical reasoning, is supported by several recent research studies (refs).

Use each of these methods to suit your own purposes, especially in a review of literature, where you should be displaying control over the way in which ideas and counter ideas are understood in relation to each other.

The planning sheet for this subsection is a downloadable Word 6 file reduce:

• Reducing text by paraphrasing, reporting, quoting

Writer's commentary
(This subsection is modified from materials prepared for the School of Geoinformatics, Planning and Building in 1977 by D Boerema, Student Support Services, University of South Australia.)
Note that the writer may include a comment or statement of their own (rather than paraphrasing the work of others). For example: 'Ironically, in real life situations, the practice often differs from the theory'.

Note that such statements are immediately followed by supporting evidence.

Comment statements may begin with some of the words or phrases below:

Clearly, ...
It is clear that ...
Ironically, ...
Interestingly, ...
Unfortunately, ...
Broadly, ...

Words and phrases such as those listed below allow you to use your own voice to link the text by showing connections between ideas or directing the reader to your 'argument'.

However, ...
On the other hand, ...
Moreover, ...
Thus, ...
Lastly, ...
Hence, ...

See the relevant planning sheet for this subsection as a downloadable Word 6 file emphasis:

• Emphasis

Author orientation
(This subsection is modified from materials prepared for the School of Geoinformatics, Planning and Building in 1977 by D Boerema, Student Support Services, University of South Australia.)
There are three main ways of reporting on previous research:

1. Strong author orientation

In this style of reporting, you refer to previous research findings, focussing on what the researcher did or said. The researcher's name is often at the beginning of the sentence:

Stoffregen et al (1987) determined the use of central and peripheral optical flow in stance in young children.

2. Weak author orientation
   In this style of reporting, you will present research in terms of researchers doing it or writing about it, but the researchers are not the primary focus. Therefore, what is being discussed is the focus of the sentence:

3. Information prominence
   In this style of reporting, a statement is presented first, and reference to the author follows, which simply adds credibility or verification to the information itself.

(Modified from Boerema D (1997) Student Support Services, University of South Australia, Materials prepared for the School of Geoinformatics, Planning and Building.)

Writing about your own thoughts

In the previous section 'Writing about the work of other authors' you learned how to deal with ideas that have already been expressed in words. Some writers find it harder to deal with their own thoughts, since they are fully responsible for generating the appropriate expression for good communication. In this subsection, we use a framework that is about ways of seeing: literal, lateral, critical, speculative. You can find this explained further in 'Organising your ideas: Conceptualising: Critical analysis'.

Not only are structured levels of analysis useful in conceptualising, but also you will find that you can actually control your use of language in academic writing by understanding the intention, vocabulary and expressive style commonly used at each level. A fundamental process in communication is 'Describing and defining - literal' in which we find out what is the focus of attention, and what type of thing it is.

The next step is to know how it works and where it fits into the whole. Language use for this stage can be found in 'Explaining and exploring - lateral'.

At a more abstract level, the academic approach involves informed questioning and weighing up of ideas. Writing at this level demands some subtlety; you will find some suggestions in 'Discussing and disputing - critical'. Finally, the driving force behind all research is the will to find out whether ... . Again, the language we use for wondering, 'Certainty and speculation - speculative', provides the academic writer with an expressive range if selected with care.

In all academic writing, a concise, accurate definition, or statement of certainty, is nearly always central to the elaboration that follows. It is the foundation for clear communication of both facts and ideas.

In order to make a comparison, or have a critical opinion about a fact, idea or item of information, you must first know and be able to describe exactly what it is you are focusing on.

Your ability to describe and define an item will reflect your skills of analysis, that is, your ability to look very closely and report on what is there and how it is made up, so that someone else can visualise and understand the item from your description.

The planning sheet in this subsection helps you to be clear about the formation of a basic statement in which an identified something (subject) is being or acting in a certain way (verb), possibly with other players on the receiving end (object).

The following is a downloadable Word 6 file state:

• Statements

At the lateral level of understanding, a piece of knowledge is looked at in terms of where it fits in and how it happens. No judgements are made or opinions given, but the focus is on the factors surrounding the item, from which it derives its own character and context. In this subsection, we look at vocabulary appropriate to making an 'Objective comparison' - that is, for comparing items in terms of objective, measurable differences.

For a more judgemental approach: see 'Discussing and disputing - critical'.

In the table of the planning sheet 'Cause and effect', you will see how subtleties of meaning can be achieved by selecting vocabulary appropriate to its context. In this case, the starting point for the table is the word 'because'. You may increase your vocabulary range by developing a similar table for any word or phrase, and entering synonyms found in any dictionary or thesaurus.

Comparison
Comparative terms of measurement must remain factual: larger than, less than, more than, fewer than, smaller than, to a greater/lesser extent/degree.

Comparative terms of degree use adjectives and adverbs in conjunction with 'more':

The following is a downloadable Word 6 file c&e:

• Cause and effect

Academic scholarship is built on the tradition of argument -  that is, an interplay between the assertions of one idea or one author and the claims of another. This very convention has given researchers and academics a useful language for scholarly and seemingly respectful communication, in which they can declare themselves quite forcefully either for or against existing or possible ideas in the process of laying claim to specialised knowledge, or putting forward a new theoretical viewpoint. You can use either 'Evidence and generalisation' (a planning sheet) in the form of empirical, generalisable statements or Subjective comparison to make judgements and to argue the force of our convictions. Look also at the 'Language for argument' subsection to find examples of how language is used to define turning points or emphasise main components in your critical direction or your line of argument.

The following is a downloadable Word 6 file for this subsection evid&gen:

• Evidence and generalisation

Vocabulary
We can use words with a range of meanings to convey judgement:

Objective assessments are made by increasing the degree of measurable meaning in the words:

Subjective judgements are made by varying the degree of value-laden meaning in the words:

Most comparative words and phrases incorporate judgement in their meaning:

better, worse, stronger, weaker, more advantageous, less lucky

no better than, no worse than

not as good as, at least as strong as

more likely to (+ verb), less susceptible to (+noun or gerund)

The Wankel engine has many advantages over the reciprocating piston engine. Fewer moving parts are necessary because it produces a rotary movement without using a connecting rod and a crankshaft. Because of this rotary movement it has no vibration. In addition it has no valves, it is smaller and lighter than conventional engines of the same power, and it runs economically on diesel and several other fuels.

Language for argument
In academic writing, vocabulary is usually formal, information rich, and limited to the subject matter and intention in hand. Control of your writing comes from confidence in sentence construction and conscious use of words and phrases which add, negate, compare or turn whatever direction or argument you have been taking.

Words and phrases which add weight:

Words and phrases which invite comparison:

Words and phrases which modify what has been said:

Words and phrases which negate what has been said -  deny validity or describe a negative state:

In writing up research, you deal not only with concrete and specific events, instruments, plans and outcomes, but also with the more nebulous abstractions, ideas, truth and falsehood. Researchers always wish to say ‘This is the case’ but are often constrained by simply not knowing for sure, or not being able to demonstrate with sufficient certainty to impress.

The English language provides us with a magnificent range of options in the areas of abstraction and speculation. You are able to distinguish between 'Finite and conditional events' using certain verb formations to examine the imaginary dimension of ‘if’, and you are able to use modal verbs to finely communicate the 'Degrees of will and certainty' that you hold as the writer of your own text.

Finite and conditional events
In certain circumstances, or under certain conditions, certain events will, might or could happen, and you have various ways of writing about the likelihood. You can convey whether a statement is about a straightforward or factual foreseen event (certain) or whether an imaginary or speculative possibility is being tested out in words (conditional).

Placing the possibility in a time frame

If the temperature goes down, (then) the experiment will be successful.

If the temperature is going down, (then) the experiment is successful.

If the temperature went down (then), the experiment was successful.

If it rains now, the experiment will not be successful.

If it should rain, the experiment would not be successful.

If it rained, the experiment would not be successful

If it were to rain, the experiment would not be successful

If it had rained, the experiment would not have been successful

If this were the case, then the argument would be different.

never, rarely, occasionally, possibly, seldom, tentatively, seemingly, apparently, sometimes, provisionally, evidently, often, presumably, surely, probably, usually, clearly, obviously, certainly, definitely, always

The preparation of materials for this site was funded by a DEETYA Quality Round 3 Grant awarded to Helen Johnston, Associate Professor Margaret Sharpe and Dr Esther May, and is a result of collaboration between the Flexible Learning Centre and the Faculty of Health and Biomedical Sciences.

Project Coordinator  Helen Johnston
Writer  Trish McLaine
Online developers   Moya Costello, Loene Doube and Rebecca Miller
Designer   Kelly Martin
Produced by the FLC

Copyright ©1998 University of South Australia
Last update August 1998
URL: http://www-i.roma.unisa.edu.au/flc/sls/publictns/researchwrite/acadwriting.htm