Interpreting the task

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From the course by Lund University

Writing in English at University

178 ratings

Lund University

Writing in English at University

178 ratings

Acquiring good academic research and writing skills early on is essential for your success both at university and in your professional life. This course aims: - to give you an understanding of the conventions of academic writing in English and to teach you the components and benefits of what is called process writing. - to help you to put together your own “toolbox” of academic writing skills, as well as to give you a chance to test out these tools and to reflect on your own development as a writer. - to encourage reflection on discipline specific conventions; although the course deals with generic skills, you will be able to apply these generic skills to meet the particular needs of your own discipline. The course consists of four modules: 1. Writing in English at university: An introduction 2. Structuring your text and conveying your argument 3. Using sources in academic writing 4. The writer’s toolbox: Editing and proofreading In each module you will find video lectures and reading assignments and assignments, such as quizzes, reflective self-assessment questions, as well as some peer review exercises in which you will have an opportunity to interact with other students taking the course.

From the lesson

Writing in English at University: An introduction

Welcome to the MOOC course Writing in English at University! This course has been designed as a resource for university students who are currently involved in writing assignments or degree projects as well as for students who wish to learn about academic writing in order to prepare for future writing at university. Although the course will provide guidance and useful tips and tricks to all student writers, it is specifically useful to those who are writing in second language contexts and whose native language is not English.

Interpreting the task7:17

Meet the Instructors

Satu Manninen
Professor
Centre for Languages and Literature
Ellen Turner
Senior Lecturer
Centre for Languages and Literature
Cecilia Wadsö Lecaros
Senior Lecturer
Centre for Languages and Literature

Hello I'm Satu and this video is about interpreting instructions.

When you write an essay at university,

you need to clarify to yourself from the start what is expected of your text.

Your teacher has most likely given you instructions that explain what you're

expected to do, and what criteria the finished product should meet.

These instructions are referred to as essay guidelines or

style sheets in the academic world.

The essay guidelines

usually also inform you of what type of essay you're expected to write.

Should you only describe something, for example, or

should you try to persuade your reader of a particular point of view.

The essay guidelines often also say something about how the finished

product will be assessed and how it will be graded.

Making sure that you understand the essay guidelines, and

that you follow them carefully, can help you reach a better result.

In fact, many students who fail their undergraduate writing courses do so

because they haven't read the instructions, or

they haven't fully understood them.

And they end up writing an essay that may still be a good essay, but

it just isn't the kind of essay they were expected to write.

An essay that only describes something or tells the reader what happened or

who did what, won't be enough for a passing grade.

If the instructions state that you need to present an argument and

defend it, on the basis of evidence that can be examples,

statistics, references to other peoples' work, and so on.

So, let's look at some common types of information in essay guidelines.

In addition to telling you what kind of an essay you are expected to write,

descriptive or argumentative, for instance,

the guidelines usually say something about the expected length of the essay and

about the layout, that is what the finished essay will need to look like.

So this means there will be information about things like the minimum and

maximum number of words, font type, line spacing, margins and text justification.

The essay guidelines also often specify if you need a separate title page or not,

and if you need to write a short summary of your essay in the form of an abstract.

So, when you plan for your essay, you need to check for these things and

make sure that you get them right from the start, and that you have a good idea of

what the finished product will need to be like before it can be passed.

You, of course, want to be able to focus on the contents of your essay when you write.

It is a good idea at this stage to also learn the functions of your

word processing program, so that you'll be able to format your essay document

according to a teacher's instructions from the start.

That way, you needn't come back and fix things like type font and

indentation and margins later on when you edit and proofread your text.

This will save you a lot of time at the end of the essay process.

This may seem like a small thing, but

it's actually not at all uncommon that students who haven't written a lot

of essays before are unfamiliar with how their word processing program works.

We've seen a number of times how, instead of the tabulator key,

a student has used the space bar to indent their text.

This may look fine in their own computer screen, but

when someone else opens the document, the indentations look totally messed up.

Fixing this manually at the end of the essay process takes a lot of time, and

it will also make you very stressed because at that stage there are so

many other things that also need to be taken care of.

And did you know,

by the way, that there are a few issues that non-native writers of English

need to be extra careful with when fixing the formatting of their essay documents.

Quotation marks, for example, may look different in different languages.

So when you write in English, you'll need to make sure that you set your word

processing program to English language, so

the quotation marks will look the way they should.

Another thing that essay guidelines often provide information

about is the expected structure of your text.

Will you need a separate introduction, for

example, and what will you need to do in the rest of the essay?

There may be also instructions about text levels and headings.

For example, if the text should be divided into paragraphs

of if there should be separate sections and perhaps also subsections.

And what this paragraphs sections and

sub-sections are expected to do and what they should look like.

Should they have headings?

Should they be numbered?

Should you leave a blank line between them?

And should you or shouldn't you indent the first line of each new paragraph,

section, or sub-section?

As academic writing always draws on previous work, you will usually

need to make references to previous work that is of relevance in your essay.

The essay guidelines will usually tell you what reference style, for

example APA or MLA, you are expected to use, and

where you can find more information about this particular reference style.

Just like with layout,

you can save a lot of time later on by getting this right from the start.

So, you should really try to make sure that you understand the instructions, and

that you have access to the resources recommended by your teacher.

Before we stop, I'd like to stress that the types of guidelines that I've talked

about here, essay type, layout, text structure, and

referencing style differ between disciplines, and

that it's important that you find out what requirements your own department has.

And what rules apply to each specific writing assignment

that you get from your teachers.

You also need to make sure that you understand the terminology

used in the essay guidelines.

In other words, what terms like, indentation, or

flush left, or full justification, actually mean.

You should always look up the meanings of words and

concepts that you don't understand in a dictionary so you can be sure

that you follow the guidelines, and don't make unnecessary mistakes.

You may find it useful to write down some of the things that I've talked about here

and use them as a kind of check list while you're writing your essay.

[MUSIC]

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