Helping you achieve academic success
I am an experienced academic passionate about inspiring individuals to aim high. I have assisted multiple students and early career academics to achieve their goals.
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I am an experienced academic passionate about inspiring individuals to aim high. I have assisted multiple students and early career academics to achieve their goals.
Since I began teaching university students in 2004, I have heard a variety of complaints and concerns from students at all levels regarding things they find difficult about writing their assignments. Some examples are as follows:
“I don’t know where or how to start my assignment!”
“I can’t envisage the writing process”
“When I write, my ideas get muddled in my head”
“I struggle to put into words what I want to say”
“I’m worried about whether my writing is good enough”
Do any of these sound familiar? The main problem I have found is that students have rarely read or been taught much about the writing process and this is the number one reason why they struggle with writing their assignments.
According to Stella Cottrell, author of The Study Skills Handbook, writing an assignment of any length or type (essays, reports, literature reviews, dissertation chapters, PhD thesis chapters, etc.) should follow a 7-stage process:
As you can see, each step of the process has a percentage next to it which refers to the time to devote to it. You will also see that each step is not equally weighted, and Cottrell also suggests some moving back and forth between steps is often necessary, meaning the process is not completely linear either. In addition, note that the first four steps of the process (about 60% of the time to be spent on the assignment) are essential preparation required to be in a position to begin writing what will be the assignment itself. The final three steps (around 40% of the time) involve the actual drafting, editing and proofing of the written assignment to be submitted.
Over the course of the next 7 blogs, I will provide my own brief summary of each step of the writing process in more detail based on my experience of academic writing over the last 20 years. It’s worth stating at this point that in my experience, the students who begin their assignment early and work on it consistently right up to the deadline, are usually those who deliver the best work. Check out my next blog to see how to get started on writing your next assignment by clarifying and planning the task.
Get help from Gibbons Academic with your academic writing NOW by booking an online session or sending your draft work for review and detailed written or verbal feedback with suggestions for improvement from an expert.