Hello, I am Himanshi Parmar, student of MK Bhavnagar University. This blog i have written as a response to Thinking Activity, Which is a Part of my academic Work. Which we get after each unit. In this blog, i am going to discuss about The Mechanics of Writing, And three videos related to it.
What is Mechanics of Writing?
In composition, writing mechanics are the conventions governing the technical aspects of writing, including spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviations. Getting your main points together can be a challenge, and one solution is to put together a draft of main ideas before writing. Some writing textbooks also include issues related to usage and organization under the broad heading of mechanics. Mechanics of Writing includes spelling, punctuation, Italics, Names of person, Numbers, Title of work in the research paper, Quotations, Capitalization and Personal Names in Languages Other than English.
Video - 1
The video is about Academic Writing by Kalyan Chattopadhyay. The writing is of two types 1) Academic Writing, 2) Non - Academic Writing. Which is also known as Formal vocab and informal vocab.
Academic writing is a formal style of writing that generally use for educational purposes. And in universities and scholarly publications. One has to analyze Journal, article and books and has to write research paper, Desertations and assignments in academic style. Mainly academic writing is structured well like the writing is divided into paragraphs and paragraphs are divided according topics and subtopics and at last concluding paragraph.
Academic writing includes various linguistic markers. It must be error free and with zero spelling error. Academic writing also includes The mechanics of writing like punctuation, spelling, Italics, Numbers, Quotations, Name of person etc. Academic writing is a little beat critical writing, while doing writing for academic purposes one has to make critical arguments, comparisons, analysis etc.
Language choice is also very important in academic writing. While doing academic writing, one has to choose appropriate formal language. And has to avoid informal language, and contraction, slang, and conversational phrases clichés.
The video begins with explanation of Formal and Informal vocab and examples. It also includes point of perspective. It means when one can do research work they are able and responsible to give a new argument.
Video - 2
In this video Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya explained Academic writing well. The outline of the talk is like this.
1) What not to do.
2) What can be done.
3) Web tools.
4) Case study.
Further Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya discussed that there are several kind of scales that will help to understand academic writing. Writing research papers, desertations, thesis etc are one kind of scale, another is publication scale for example research scholars has to publish their articles and journals etc. Here we also get example of Alan David Sokal and other scholars.
Publication scales : not so harmless. When one can upload their research works and desertation, thesis etc online, there are lots of people who come to watch. So this kind of scale is not so harmless. For this prof.Alan David Sokal gave one example of 'The emperor of all Melodies' by Siddhartha Mukherjee. In this paper Siddhartha Mukherjee gave one example of a report of breast cancer from Africa. The doctor found it can be curable and he published paper and he find that thousands of people got cure because of it. And laster people came to know that the data showed by the person was all fake. The meaning here is sometimes academic writing causes serious consequences.
A fake take away -
In this we find that academic writing has material effects. Some kinds of data, charts and rates can be material for academic writing.
Avoid a Jargon -
When one is publishing his/her research paper. It should be tke care that all the people who are reading our research paper is not familiar with the subject. So we has to form our research paper in a way that is simple and easy to understand for all. Another points are Research and publication ethics, and carefully choose the topic that was discussed in the video.
Few tips for academic writing is given in the video. Tips like,
1) Introduction last - because at the end you are aware that what your research is and how it ends, so you can write better introduction at last.
2) Creat an Index literature review - Indexes are not need to do in MLA or Chicago style but it simply a names of books which helps to understand what there is in the books exactly.
3) Be sure of the triangulated methods - it means while doing research work one has to analyze work with various perspective and various point of views for example historical views, from the point of view of biography or fiction etc.
There are three more suggestion given that are,
1) Do not repeat the same arguments.
2) Use available digital tools
3) Follow the literature
Many helpful digital tools are also suggested in video. Like websites to publish our journals. like,
1) Zotero
2) Grammarly - it helps to improve writing and to refin writing.
3) Mendeley
4) Microsoft Word
5)OWL (Online Writing Lab)
6) Reverso
7) Excelsior Online writing lab
Avoid plagiarism
As per Oxford Dictionary, Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. If one is taking ideas or words from somewhere it must needed to cite that source. There are several types given in video of plagiarism are,
1- Verbatim of rephrasing without acknowledgement.
2- Inappropriate collaboration.
3- Other assistance without acknowledgement.
4- Cheating (copying others’ work).
5- Duplication (submitting same work for different courses/ programs/ degrees).
6- Research fabrication and falsification.
7- Using computer networks for false attribution.
Video - 3
The third video is also by Prof. Atanu Bhattacharya. In this video he discussed about 'The Mechanics of Writing'.
The first point in it discussed is formulating propositions. Formulation of propositions follows this particular linguistic form -
Key term + verb (be)/ is defined as/ Can be defined/ may be defined as/ is often defined as + [in] which/ that/ where/ when + Defining features.
The second part is Gener : classification. The classification technique here used is Swale's CARS Model.
Definition
|
Purpose
|
Justification
|
literature Review
|
Method
|
Argument
|
Conclusion
Organization of Idea
For organization of idea many softwares available now. There are two examples given in the video that are,
1) MindMup
2) Mindly
Paraphrasing
1- Avoid repeating yourself.
2- Avoid quoting someone eles exactly.
3- Change your vocabulary and do not repeat.
4- Develop your own voice in your writing.
Introduction
1) The Rational -
This includes several points like why we are doing such research? What is the point of doing this? How interested we are in research? What is your position in that research?
2) The thesis statement/ the topic sentence -
It is all about research topic that research is about what.and how it is supported by other evidence. It structures the entire thesis.
3) Contextualizing Material -
It is linked with 'The thesis statement'. It is all about other works happened in this area of your research paper.
4)A statement to gain the reader's interest -
One need his/her own sentence to write so that they can provide audience something that is of his own and not taken from anywhere. Researcher has to mentioned the work that has been done by others and then his/her own arguments in favor or opposed.
5) A basic Definition -
Researcher need to define his/her topic. And has to give basic introduction about the topic so it will be easy to guess what the content about.
At last Noun Phrases and nominalizations,Stance, Hedging Language, Passivization,General structures of an Argument are also discussed in the video by prof.Atanu Bhattacharya.
I hope this blog will be helpful to you. Thank you.
Images - 4
Videos - 3
References
