ACADEMIC WRITING AND PLAGIARISM

Strategies for effective academic writing, and avoiding plagiarism

It is envisaged that after the workshop postgraduate students will have a clear understanding of

• The essence, expectations and challenges of research writing
• Research as a process vs the product of writing
• The purpose of research writing as communication – demystifying the academic conversation
• Two levels of research: incorporating practical problems (empirical data) and research problems
• Reading and note-taking as a process of conceptualising your research
• The generic structure of a thesis/dissertation
• The interdiscursive and functional aspects of source use and citation
• The three levels of structuring a text: macro-, meso- and micro-levels
• Cohesion, coherence, integration and synthesis in aligning your academic text
• Style and flow in constructing and editing the academic text
• Owning your academic voice and positioning your argument in the academic conversation
• Positioning your voice in finding your writing identity by means of your personalised voice and socialised voice
• Voiceless writing – a word or two on plagiarism and practical exercises
• The challenge of paraphrasing without plagiarising – practical application.