You would probably accept that you have to write in different ways throughout your lives. But why do you need to learn about academic writing? Considering one of the main ways you are assessed in higher education is through your writing, either by coursework or exams, knowing how to express yourself well, in good, written academic English is crucial.
When you are a student, you will find that your tutors use your writing to gauge how much you have learned and understood about a particular subject and to judge the quality of your thinking. But you should not only see academic writing as an assessment tool. Writing is also indirectly encouraging you to read widely, think critically, improve your communication skills and develop a certain level of competence and professionalism needed for your future career.
In academic writing it is often assumed that by the time students have finished secondary school education, they already possess the skills to write at a level appropriate to higher education, but this is not always the case. As a result, when students are faced with written assignments of anything upward of 1500 words they may find the whole process daunting.
Academic writing is a social practice. This means that you always write with a readership in mind and you always write with a purpose, for example to explain or to persuade. It also means that what is right and wrong, appropriate or inappropriate is defined by the users in the social community. In your case these are other students, lecturers or examiners.
There is nothing natural about the organisation and the way language is used in a scientific report, for example. It is as it is because that is the way it has developed through centuries of use by practitioners. For that reason it has to be learned. No-one speaks (or writes) academic English as a first language (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1994: 8). It must be learned by observation, study and experiment.
In higher education, you will be required to complete a wide range of writing tasks, some which will be familiar to you, but some which will not. You may, for example, have written essays before, but never completed a reflective log. Whatever the task, remember that writing is a process which leads to a final product. It starts from understanding what you have to do and planning your work. It then goes on to doing the reading and any necessary research. The next stage is writing various drafts. This is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this, taking into account the feedback you may receive, should lead to the final text.
Writing skills in higher education is important. Writing skills is important because In the higher education, a lot of assignment should be done in the form of an essay or report. By mastering the writing skills, we learn to how to organize ideas efficiently in a good order so we can express our way of think and opinion about a certain topic that given by the assignment. Writing skills also teach us how to react in a certain situation. In this case, writing skills teach us how to think critically with a wide perspective about a certain problem. This is important because in the future, leaders must be able to look at a problem with a lot of different perspective so they can compare which solution is the best.
ReplyDeleteFrom the lecturers perspective, by giving an assignment, lecturer will able to know about how far their student understand about the material and they also can understand every student’s character by understanding their opinion, critics, and solution over the topic that given by the lecturer.
I felt like relating this to the other article before, about reading makes you a better writer and such. Maybe making an academicals essay of 1500 words are an annoying assignment for some students, but apparently for me, it’s not such a big deal. I believe that your writing skills are on a straight line with how much you read. After you've got your writing skills, all is down to the material you have.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the quantity of your essay is equal to your writing skill times the material you have. Whether the quality is good or not is depending on your understanding. I don’t really understand what other peoples ranting for when they’re stuck in writing an essay, even though they got their material and skills. I am still new here though, I can’t say much about it before experiencing it myself, but somehow I believe I could manage.
Sometimes, I feel like writing skills are just useless things to be learned. Besides, I don't like writing so much. Maybe that is why i feel annoyed when the lecturers asked us to collect a report or an essay. But I can not deny that writing skills is important to our future. It helps us to know how to arrange an essay in good way. Later on, when we work somewhere, we have to know how to write a letter or a report or something related to our writing skills. We have to master it too if we want to improve our vocabulary in English. Like what Adhi said , writing skills are related with reading skills. Writing skills will push you to read. After you read, you will know some topics or information that will help your writing.
ReplyDeleteMy advice is to try mastering your writing skills because someday that will be useful in your life, even though some of you don't like to write or maybe some of you don't have any confident to write. Don't be afraid to write something incorrectly. Without any mistakes, you will learn nothing.
This topic is interesting one, writing skill, it’s an important skill for us, especially for higher education, because writing skill not only used in academic activity but also in non academic. But i can’t said that i love writing, writing is so hard for me, from junior high school until senior high school, i felt my writing skill does not changed, it’s stuck. But right now after i accepted in international class UGM, it’s really important for me to improve my writing skill by post in EWS blog (thanks it’s help me a lot), even it need 20 – 45 minutes for each comments.
ReplyDeleteYesterday i read some article that explain how to improve our writing skill, and like Mr. Adrian said, the only way to improve it by read and start to write, because when you read some article, you will learn how to make a good sentence. So writing skill and reading skill is a complement.
Writing skill is very important for us, especially for students who enroll themselves in prestige universities. When you are doing assignment and ordered by the lectures to make papers, writing skill is really needed. But honestly, I’m not good at writing. I don’t know how to start the topic I would like to present or discuss. Mr. Adrian said that good writing skill comes from how often you read. I read a lot, I enjoy literature but the problem is when I start to write I just can’t arrange the words nicely. I really want to be good at writing. I do really want. But, if I have some ideas that I want to write on my blog or my notes, when I face them, suddenly I don’t know what to write or how to begin the topic. People said that if you want to good at writing, you have to read a lot and practice. By commenting on this blog regularly, it helps me to improve my writing skill. Guess, EWS help me to improve my writing skill.
ReplyDeleteI found that this article is useful for me. It makes me understand how important academic writing is. I have not written much before, because when I was in high school I often thought that English is a foreign language that it is okay for us to not really fluent to speak or write, because we are not an English person. But then I realize it was a silly thought because in reality, English is the international language which means that we can’t treat it as a foreign language. Then I decided that I need to develop my skill to write. I often got scared when I need to write 1500 words or above because I don’t have much vocabularies, and even horrifying if I need to write a report about some lesson because my lack of knowledge. I feel scared and shy to ask about the words that I don’t understand because I assumed that the other people have already understood. Now I realize that we are all the same because to write properly, it need study and experiment.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I don’t really like writing and I also realized that my English writing is bad. Sometimes I forget the grammar and the vocabularies are slightly little. There are lots of same vocabularies I used. But, I know that writing is really important. In the school and university life, writing is really important. We have to make papers with full English if in this university because I take the international class. And I know if I choose this program because of I want to learn more about English. I want to make progress on my English and I want to be able to speak English fluently.
ReplyDeleteI also have the same opinion with Yuka, I don’t really like if the teacher give the writing assignment. It is like burdening. Before I attended the English writing skill class, I thought that the class will be boring and just fulfill with writing, writing, and writing. I just hoped that I could enjoy the class and hoped that my writing skill will be better after this class.
After attending the English writing skill class, I really surprised because there is no formal writing in the class. We just have to comment in this blog. First, I hoped that the blog is not too formal. Then, I opened the blog and I was really happy because the blog is not formal. I think this is a good way to learn writing in English. It is not a formal one, like if we have to write about politics or economics condition. The English Writing Skill class is also really fun. Now, this class is become my favorite class because it is interesting. I get new vocabularies from reading the article in this blog, and hopefully I can be better and better in writing.
I remember when Mr. Adrian said that if students read more passages or articles, they will find writing easy. Besides we will practice on our grammar and vocabulary using, it will also expand our way of thinking. When we practice on something, I'm sure we'll got used to it and it's a good thing when you have good habits like writing in formal form. It will surely help you do essays, or scientific works.
ReplyDeleteI am fond of writing about reviews, although my grammar is still very poor, and I really want to practice it. So I think people who think that they are not capable enough to type or write in correct grammars, should also try to open their minds toward reading and writing. I am so glad to have English Writing Skills class (although I don't think we're talking about this now), having lecturer who can encourage me to write. Even when I have some mistakes, he put a comment right away.
If you don't have any interest in writing, I think it's not good to force yourself getting into it, but at least you have to give it a try! It will be very useful in the future.
As mentioned above, I do agree that writing skill is important to us, especially as a college student. We have to learn to write properly because we cannot write like the primary students do anymore. To be honest, I still find some difficulties on academic writing, both Indonesian and English. I’ve read so many books, again, both Indonesian and English, but I still can’t arrange words by words properly. Maybe I read the wrong books, maybe I need to read academic books, or maybe I need to practice to write after I read academic books. To write 1500 words, I need to grumble first, then I could continue to write. Even I understand the topic and know what to write, I just can’t start a sentence. It’s easier for me to speak than to write, because academic writing is just a hard thing to do.
ReplyDeleteAnd, I agree one thing on the article that, “Writing is also indirectly encouraging you to read widely, think critically, improve your communication skills and develop a certain level of competence and professionalism needed for your future career.” It makes me want to practice my writing skills more and more.
“When you are a student, you will find that your tutors use your writing to gauge how much you have learned and understood about a particular subject and to judge the quality of your thinking.”
ReplyDeleteThis is why having an excellent skill on writing is very crucial. Our lecturers will use our writings to see how well we understand about a particular subject. There are people who are very smart and rich with knowledge but they are unable to express their thoughts and they end up looking dumb. We don’t want that to happen to us, because in college it’s not just about embarrassment, it’s going to affect our GPA.
We have to keep learning on how to improve our writing. Mr. Adrian has told us in our first session that in order to be able to write well we have to read more. This is true. I have experienced it myself. I started reading kids novels since I was 8 and it really helped me with my Bahasa Indonesia class. I always got good grades on writing back then in elementary school. Reading those novels had helped me to understand how to write properly and how to express my thoughts. Therefore, in order to be able to write excellently, beside on practicing consistently, we also have to read more.
Winnie
Ever since we were kid the first thing they taught us to do is to talk next they would teach us how to read and write. Reading and writing is always found together. Because after reading you suppose to write something.
ReplyDeleteWriting is the primary basis upon which your work, your learning, and your intellect will be judged—in college, in the workplace, and in the community. That is one of the reason of why writing skills is important. Another reason is that by writing you can express who you are as a person. Writing also demonstrates your intellectual flexibility and maturity. Because the more mature you are the more advance your writing skill is. Basically writing skill is benchmark maturity. The often we write our thinking and vision is going to be more flexible. And also writing stimulates you to extend a line of thought beyond your first impressions or gut responses. And last but not least, writing is an essential job skill. Inevitably, we must have good writing skills
I don't want to gloat and certainly have no intention to do so, but for every writing I have done, that's exactly what I've been doing in this blog: posting a comment longer than anyone could do. (I may be a writing expert, though I said it myself.)
ReplyDeleteEver since I was little, I have been writing quite a lot. I don't know if it has anything to do with my reading comprehension, but I write a lot possibly because it's just my nature. It's hard to explain. I often write something that came out of my mind.
I don't know if it's true, but your writing skill is associated with your creativity related to imagination. The more creative your mind, the better your writing skill becomes. Yes, there may be little to no relation to academics, but if you could make your writing easier, more understandable and fun to read, that's when you want to use your creativity in your writing skill. When you write an explanation of a theory, you might want to add an example to get a better idea of the explanation, regardless if it makes it easier to comprehend or just adding words to make the article longer. You write because you have a purpose. It could be to tell your opinion, to argue, to satisfy your lecturer, to criticise, to gloat, or to explain facts. Writing is simple. It's also a concrete proof that you have comprehensive academics skill.
If you can explain a theory with a simple but deep enough to understand, that means you just used your academics and creativity, and pour it into your writing skill. Most people wouldn't really want to read a long, boring, agonizing, complicated, and twisting article that is non-beneficial (for readers, not for the writer), unreliable, unusuable, maybe so unrelated to the main topic, and completely wasteful of time even though it shows high academics degree, would they?
Writing is important, yes, and it's compulsory for our academics skill, but it should also be fun. You can write a long article, but you should know what you're writing about. Like Adhiwana said, writing 1500 words is not a big deal. Again, I don't want to gloat, but it is easy if you can use your creativity to write and not just "copycating" words from the other article, don't consider it a tall order, and do it with genuine will.
Writing is also indirectly encouraging you to read widely, think critically, improve your communication skills and develop a certain level of competence and professionalism needed for your future career. I undoubtedly agree with this line. Most of my friends say that speaking is more important and necessary beside writing, listening and reading. To be honest, at first I also think that way. One day my english teacher said to my class that if we can write properly with correct grammar then we can speak english fluently, and I think she is correct. I still have problems with my writing skill such as incorrect grammar, still informal and so on.
ReplyDeleteRead many books are very helpful to improve our ability not only on language side but also on knowledge. However, I cannot deny that even though we already get the materials that we needed to do the essay; we still find it hard to write. We need to practice more to be able write properly.
This topic has successfully takes my attention. I agree that Writing help us improving our English skills but I think there are other aspects like reading and listening that helps us too. Honestly I'm not really good at writing, I don’t know why but my writing skills wasn’t as good as others, maybe it because I don’t like writing. EWS course actually helps us improve our writing skills, and this blog is a great facility that gave us a lot of opportunity to read and write, thanks to Mr. Adrian who made this interesting blog. When a teacher gave me a written assignment consist of 1500 words, I usually didn’t know what I'm going to write because I often make a mistake on grammar and my vocabulary is not as many as a dictionary of course. But in this blog I just have to make a 150 words of comment, so it's not a really big deal for me isn’t it?
ReplyDelete“Writing skills” I think writing skills is very important to us (not only for college students but for all people). Why I said that writing skills is very important? There are many reasons to have good writing skills. The important one is communication. If you don’t have good writing skills you will be difficult to communicating with your readers. To be honest, I don’t like writing and I think my writing skill is not good enough. But we must prove our English writing because it is important to our life. For example If you’re trying to get a job, good writing skills make you more desirable to the employer. The first thing an employer looks at is your cover letter or your resume. So you must make interesting cover letter.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to have good writing skills. Read good writing, read bad writing. Learn to tell the difference. One way to make your writing skills better is to remember simplicity of style: noun, verb, and object. That’s my teacher’s strategy.
-ekal-
The knowledge of writing in a higher level is mandatory. Eventhough we don’t use it on a daily basis, the understanding of it is still important. It shows how critical and intelectual we are. I am not saying for those who dislike writing in general is not intelectual; that is far from what I meant. But those writings will determine our grades from our lecturers. Writing an assignment or a report is not the same as casual writing. It has guidelines to follow and criterias to fulfill. I feel that this course was emphasized in high school, where our Indonesian teacher teaches us about how to write properly. Starting from how we arrage our words, to writing a simple assignment with the pointed format, then our annual papers. It’s much more important now in university where there are work loads of assignments to be done. We should consistently improve on our writings, and I agree with others that this blog is a great and interactive platform for us to learn and improve our learning skills.
ReplyDeleteWriting skill is one of the most important skills in facing university life, because most of the assignments must be done in essay, to complete the assignment writing skill is needed. Writing skill is not difficult skill to be learned, the point is we just have to be patient and think out of the box what we what to tell about. With good writing skill we can express our ideas into the paper. Writing skill also learn about word arrangement to organize our idea into the paper. In order to do an essay, usually a person who has good writing skill does the brainstorming at the first before he starts to write. The brainstorming is to issue ideas that he wants to write.
ReplyDeleteWriting skills is relate to reading skills, more books we read then it will impact more ideas that we can write. With reading a book, we can know more about something, it means new knowledge. It will make our perceptive about something wider, that makes our insight also become wider.
I think writing skills is really important, as the fact that we have to do every assignment using our writing skills, and I guess that’s why we have English writing skills in our subject. When I was in high school I felt that writing skills is unnecessary, but when I entered the university, writing skill influence everything in our assignment and I feel that I haven’t fulfilled the qualification as a good writer. Writing feels like a bridge between you and your readers, when your writing skills is under average, the reader will not be able to understand about what are you writing, and the communication purpose is failed. to be a good writer is easy I guess, the only thing we need is a painstaking. If you want to be a good writer, you need to read many articles and practice a lot. I can guarantee that your witting skills will be improved.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion…
ReplyDeleteI like to write, specifically ‘freewriting’. Although when the writing comes with the term of ‘in higher education’ it doesn’t come up with the term ‘free’ anymore. Writing academically means every paragraph, word, and sentence will be count as a point. Because it’s a general task in higher education, we have to deliver our understanding towards the subject from our essay, so they could take a point in whether we understand the matter or not.
Well, it’s not just about an assessment tools. The writing skill that developed in higher education is also a tool for us to become more professional for our future career. Not just to motivate us to be more informative, but it also help us to become more critical in thinking and innovative in generating ideas. Writing skills also help us to become more organized in thinking and deliver our ideas and argument, not only on our writing but also how we communicate commonly (you know, talking).
Although my paragraph is not good, I think I made my point.
I completely agree. Writing is very important. It's true that after finishing high school, students already know the theories to write at a level appropriate to higher education. But, in so many cases, students will still have a very hard time to actually write a proper essay. We were always given the theories, not the practices. That's why I really like Mr. Adrian's idea of teaching us on how to write. We are “forced” to write. No matter how good or bad the result, you just have to do it. This will somehow make us want to improve our skills. And unconsciously, we are the ones that want to learn it.
ReplyDeleteFor me, the most important step from the steps given above is doing research. Because nowadays, when students given a topic to write about, they would just write it. They think they know about the topic, so they won't bother to find more information about it. This is wrong. What we need to do is to do a lot more research first, to find out every little detail about the subject, then you can write it. Not only it will improve the quality of your writing, but will also broaden your knowledge about that particular thing.
"No-one speaks (or writes) academic English as a first language"
ReplyDeleteThis statement is clearly undeniable. Academic writing, for me, is something that is required to measure a person's way of thinking, ability to express and elaborate ideas, and how he/she can build an argument when encountering a problem. Academic writing can also encourage people to read more, in order to develop their writing skills.
Sometimes, students often consider academic English writing isn't necessary to be studied, and that conversational skills come first. In my opinion, even if you tend to have brilliant ideas and/or arguments about something, when you express it by writing but with a structure like someone who just passed the elementary school, nobody will take you seriously. I've gone to several short writing courses and an academic english summer school, but I'm still unconfident whether my writings are satisfactory for the foreign eyes.
For me writing skill is really important for every student (primary, junior high school, senior high school, etc), especially university student. Because writing skill is one of the most important skills in facing university life. And also most of the assignments and some tests are must be done in essay, so to complete the assignment writing skill is really needed (especially for IUP students).
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, my writing skill is very bad, especially writing skill in English. For me writing in English is difficult because we have to write with the right grammar spelling and tenses. If we use the wrong tense, the meaning of the sentence will be different. Moreover, for me, it is harder to write what we think or our opinion than to say what we think or our opinion. And it’s hard to arrange the best word and understandable to make a good sentence (especially in formal writing). So for me writing skill is very important for our education and for our future (to improve your communication skills and develop a certain level of competence and professionalism needed for your future career).
I cannot agree more with this article. I strongly agree that academic writing is one of important skills a student should have. Students should differentiate between the daily writing they used and academic writing. In written examination, students are being assessed through their writing. Varied vocabulary and coherent paragraphs give a positive point as they must be more structure. A more structure essay would give the opinion that the student really understand the material and has been thinking critically about it. I think written assessment or examination is harder than oral because it is hard to express yourself with writing if you are not focus. Practice makes perfect and the only way to be an expert in writing is by doing the process of writing itself.
ReplyDeleteI am so grateful FEB provides EWS class. Ever since I graduated from high school last year, I rarely write. Even in my previous major, Computer Science, they didn’t provide EWS class. Academic writing is not a new thing for me. As a former IB student, I was trained to have minimum of 1,000 words of essay as my assignment.
To summarize, I would strongly suggest that academic writing should be teach from high school time so that in the university life, students can perform better and achieve more.
“Considering one of the main ways you are assessed in higher education is through your writing, either by coursework or exams, knowing how to express yourself well, in good, written academic English is crucial.” I agree with this statement. Especially for college students, usually our scores are only taken from assignments and exams. You can be as genius as possible, but if your writing skill is horrible, you can be judged as bad as your writings, which can lead to bad scores. “When you are a student, you will find that your tutors use your writing to gauge how much you have learned and understood about a particular subject and to judge the quality of your thinking.” If I’m not mistaken, couple weeks ago Mr. Adrian said, good writings make anyone who read it knows what’s in your mind and what’re your ideas. And like this statement says “No one speaks (or writes) academic English as a first language (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1994: 8). It must be learned by observation, study and experiment.” That’s why I’m happy to know that I got the English Writing Skill Class. Because I know that my writing skill isn’t as good as other IUP students. I hope I’ll learn a lot from this class. Thank you for reading.
ReplyDeleteWriting in higher education is followed by practicing, learn, read and evaluate. Indirectly, I regret about what my teacher taught to me that I should have read and write lots of book. My class were facilitated with oxford and cambrigde books, where every story or every book has their own level. The task is quiet simple; we have to report until what chapter or what page and having a book test after 2 weeks of reading. I only did small things about reading and practicing my writing. It caused me some throuble when I have to pass some of tests for finishing my grade. At that time, I decided not to play a lot but read and write a lot. I tried to climb up to catch what I left and I made it!. For now, we are not high school students anymore. We are in higher education called “university”. Writing is one of a million way to success. So, beat your laziness and write alot !.
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, when we're writing something, all of our muscles are connected and our brain react to it. By writing something, we can reveal more detailed information to our brain and it is very useful rather than reading a book. That's why most high education ( high school, college) applies writing in their class much often than just reading the book. It is also essential because later on when we're about to apply for a job, the requested CV by the company must be in the form of handwritten, which would be difficult if we have bad handwriting because we use computers to often that writing. Writing can also reveal what type of person you are, which is a serious matter for the one who is very curious about their attitude or behavior. By knowing your SWOT (Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat) through your handwriting, you can predict how you should act on your daily life. See? You don't have to come and see a gipsy or something like that just to ask what type of person you are. So start writing, and see the benefit of writing for yourself.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was studying academicals writing in my late semester of high school. When the other students stressed out about final exam, I didn’t even bother thinking about it, and focusing in my TOEFL score, and academicals writing. This is because I want to get a university abroad. That’s why I am focusing in my English, rather than study for final exam.
ReplyDeleteBut, in the middle of it, I am thinking to try some of novelize writing skills. But, it is stopped because I need to mastering academicals writing first. In the end, all of this effort is paid. Because of this intense training, I got my hand on the IUP class.
After this first semester ended, I am thinking to write a novel. This is my dream from high school. I need to publish some books, and I want to know how people think about my writing. I hope, everyone can accept my book in the future.
I've been trained from Senior High (SMA) to write for higher education. At first the tasks was jaw-breaking; Students should 500 words with detailed terms and condition. I couldn't remember what are the terms and condition but I can assure you for a 1st grader in Senior High it will take your breath for 1 second, 2 seconds top. Eventually when I step onto 3rd grade of Senior High where I was given tasks to write 1000-2500 words scale, I was prepared. The most annoying besides writing wall of texts in front of my computer is searching for proof or quote from previous writer to strengthen my writings. What I wanted to say is students have to be trained to be accustomed with writings. We, Indonesian students in general, is not prepared to write so many words because some reasons that I don't know and can't explain it concretely. However, if we are trained from Junior High, we might be prepared to write even 3000 words when we are in Senior High.
ReplyDeleteWriting is not only about how well we can arrange the words become sentences on the piece of paper, but also how we can share, represent and communicate what actually we want to tell to the readers. It can be a very helpful media for people who can’t express their feelings by speaking. So that’s why, writing is an important form of communication. I strongly believe, an appropriate writing skill is needed by people at all ages. Whether for everyone at higher level of education, student, job seeker, or businessman. Since it’s considered as one of important basic skill beside reading and listening, today many universities require students to write essays as part of their admissions application.. When I started my first day as a college student, I can understand writing is important and beneficial. Because, the more we write, the more we read, as an effort to find the right references. Then, reading play huge role to assure everything we have written is well organized. At the same time, writing helps us to improve grammar, personal opinion and critical thinking.
ReplyDeleteAs all you know writing skill is important for us and it is necessary for us to learn and practice it, so then we will become good writers.
ReplyDeleteI once had a composition class in my senior year, this class wanted me to write some papers and essays; such as argumentative essays, abstract, descriptive essays, and others. At first I did not notice that it was important for me and I was like trivialized it and thought that I was not necessary for us to do such things and I was like thinking, why did the teachers keep giving us those kind of assignments. But then now as I am a college student, I understood the reason of my high school teachers train me and keep giving me some essays assignment to write, and stuff.
It is true that writing skill is important and I suggest you to practice it all the times, because it will help you in writing reports and other assignments for higher education.
I strongly agree that academic writing is one of important skills a student should have. Students should differentiate between the daily writing they used and academic writing. In written examination, students are being assessed through their writing. Varied vocabulary and coherent paragraphs give a positive point as they must be more structure. Writing feels like a bridge between you and your readers, when your writing skills is under average, the reader will not be able to understand about what are you writing, and the communication purpose is failed. If you want to be a good writer, you need to read many articles and practice a lot. I can guarantee that your witting skills will be improved. We should consistently improve on our writings, and I agree with others that this blog is a great and interactive platform for us to learn and improve our learning skills.
ReplyDeleteWriting is an important aspect in our lives now. Without writing people might not gain high education. Especially if you were a student in University. In English classes like EWS, writing will become a main source of grade for the semester. Strong writing skills are the key to success. Other classes, including business and economics courses also requires strong writing skills. Lectures and Proffesors even in non English courses, commonly assign written homework and paper.
ReplyDeleteActually writing isn't only needed by students but they are appropriate for people of all ages. People that are young and old still have to use there writing skills in their daily lives.. I also think that academic writing should be teached in young ages such as primary or junior high schools students. It will really help them encourage to improve their reading, thinking and also their communication skills. Maybe the spelling and punctuation may lead to markdowns in those times but the more you practice writing the more you are fluent in things like grammar and tenses. So, don't underestimate writing like people often do because it is important as you think it as.
"Writing is the most unforgivable part of the English curriculum. Writing is different from speaking, listening, or reading, in the sense that if we can speak without proper grammar, it's still okay (because its communication); If we Listen but can't understand all of it, we can speculate from the words we can interpret, and so on. However, in writing, all of our work is written (it's all there in black and white, to be judged, even more so if its academic writing)."
ReplyDeleteQuoted: Mr. Adrian
I started the comment by quoting something I remembered, and found very true at one of Adrian's EWS classes. Writing is unforgiving; this fact has been daunting me ever since I had to take an IELTS test before applying for Monash, which apparently had academic writing in it. In the end, I obviously got the lowest marks on writing. Due to the fact that I hadn't been able to organize any of my ideas into a coherent and solid text.
As time moved on, I thought I was free from academic writing for about another 2 to 3 years (until it was time for the thesis). It turned out I had English Writing Skills, first semester in UGM. But in the end the experience turned out better than I thought, it was better than any writing course/class I've ever attended and has taught me so much (not only in structured writing, but developing and improving on ideas and paragraphs).
I know this comment isn't very academic (which is a bit ironic, considering the title of the article). But I wanted to leave it as memento for the time I had in the EWS class, both for my future self and mostly to thank Adrian for all the knowledge, swag, fun, etc. he has given us IUP students throughout this semester. It truly was a pleasure.
I hope I don't have your classes anymore (A bit of British humor).