Writing to impress!

No-one has more interest than students in writing to impress their readers.

Writing for assessment is your main way of demonstrating what you have learned. No matter how well you can perform technically, whether it’s designing or building equipment, or conducting experimental work, the quality of your writing can make or break you in assessment.
The person who reads your work is important to you so you need to think about that reader's needs. Make sure your readers finds reading your work interesting and enjoyable. This means attending to the quality not merely the content of your writing.

A few pointers:
To ensure that your work is credible you need to read and cite the best sources you can find in your professional field

• Ensure your search skills enable you to find those sources
  

Keep comprehensive records of your reading so that you can readily track the best ideas back to their source/s

• Use a Reading Log to develop a more analytical approach to reading
  

Make sure you understand the demands of the genre e.g. if you’re writing a report how do you organize the present your information in report form?

Learn to paraphrase well – see how others do it in the readings that impress you

• Use the recommended referencing system exactly
  

Allow yourself enough time to revise your work comprehensively.

If you know you do not write well in English you will need to allow extra revision time. Final papers that include spelling and grammatical errors make it very difficult for your reader/marker to understand what, if anything, you have learned. Avoid sabotaging yourself.

Tip: plan your writing schedule to allow for revision time. For example you may need at least one full day between the drafting and revising stages when writing a major paper. Taking a break between these stages allows you to see your draft more objectively.

I hope you find that any extra care you put into writing about your learning is worth every minute.

Helen

Helen Johnston

Lecturer: Learning Adviser

Learning Connection: Mawson Lakes