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Academic Writing

Academic Writing. Systems Thinking Spring 2013 Dr Susu Nousala. Who is your Audience?. B efore you begin your writing task, you need to consider your audience. M ost graduate students will be writing for course work requirements and project, and have knowledge about their topics.

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Academic Writing

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  1. Academic Writing Systems Thinking Spring 2013 Dr Susu Nousala

  2. Who is your Audience? • Before you begin your writing task, you need to consider your audience. • Most graduate students will be writing for course work requirements and project, and have knowledge about their topics. • Its good to have an understanding of what is expected of you by your audience – your lecturer, project partners, colleagues etc. as the choice will affect the content of your writing.

  3. What is your purpose? Why are you doing this? • There is usually a relationship between your audience, your purpose and the strategy you are going to adopt in order to convey your work, concept, idea, discussion or event (for example a thesis connected to project or creative work).

  4. Structure and Organization • The way in which your written academic work is structured will most likely be influenced by the strategy and approach you have selected to convey your purpose to your chosen audience. • For example: • Conference paper • Journal article • Book chapter

  5. Lets talk about writing styles and elements • These styles and approaches are typically influenced by the disciplines that is informing your work. Other key elements which need consideration also include the theoretical content. • For example: • Methodological approach (Qualitative – Quantitative) • Layout of data, findings, results • Approach to Discussion and Conclusion (a question of style).

  6. Writing Styles and Approaches: Highlighting Statements • Typically the data sections of academic papers and the like usually consist of general statements. • These are highlighting statements, or generalizations used to draw out and highlight specific details from your data. • Highlighting statements are useful to draw attention to key ideas within a larger body of data, to underscore the relevance or the important data/findings so you can separate more important findings. • Make these statements appropriately. • Rather than diving into all available detail/information or making statements beyond what is clear appropriate.

  7. Qualifications and Strength of Claims 1. • Highlighting statements and/or generalizations need to be appropriate. • It also helps to present them clearly. • These statements have to be responsible and clear whist not over stepping the mark. Skelton (1988) described this task by stating the following, "It is important for students to learn to be confidently uncertain.”

  8. Qualifications 2. examples • In these examples of appropriate levels of emphasis, the use of statement depends on the quality and type of findings/results: • There is a strong possibility… • There is a good possibility… • There is a definite possibility… • There is a slight possibility… • There is a remote possibility…

  9. Focus and Language: Qualifying and Clarification • The clarification and qualification of data may be better served by consistent language. • Whilst repetition maybe consistent throughout the data/results when presenting this within written work it needs to go beyond the what the data has already stated: • Ninety five percent of the GDP in the Asia Pacific region are made up from SME companies, verses 5% of mid to larger companies. • In contrast to this statement: • Within the Asia Pacific region, SME companies made up the vast majority of the GDP backbone, in sharp contrast to the contributions by mid to large organizations.

  10. Citations • Citations are important as they are a way to recognize and acknowledge the intellectual contribution to the body of knowledge by authors. • Citations are also a way of creating the pathways and history of the knowledge development which is also matter of ethics and a defense against plagiarism. • This theory has many supporters, especially in well- established fields like the sciences, but there are other views or understandings of citation impacts.

  11. Citations 2. • Different styles within disciplines. • For example (engineering management conference) • The present paper provides an overview of an approach being developed to better understand the knowledge building and dissemination needs of a range of organizations from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) working on a single site, to large distributed organizations (multi-national) and communities of organizations such as industry clusters and multi-organizational scientific and technical forums [1],[2], [3],[4],[5],[6],[7],[8],[9],[10],[11].

  12. Citations 3. • Corresponding References: • S. Nousala, “Tacit knowledge networks and their implementation in complex organizations”, Ph.D. thesis, School Aero, Mech, Manuf. Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, 2006. Available: http://tinyurl.com/2feky6 • S. Nousala, S., S. John, S. Jamsai, “Knowledge strategies and implementation in complex organizations: A Thai engineering company case study”, International Journal of Knowledge, Cultural and Change Management, Vol. 5, No. 5, 2005, pp.177-182. • S. Nousala, A. Miles, B. Kilpatrick, W.P. Hall, “Building knowledge sharing communities using team expertise access maps (TEAM). Proc. Know. Mgmt. Asia Pacific (KMAP05),Wellington, N.Z. 28-29 November 2005 Available: http://tinyurl.com/q4n8y • S. Nousala, W.P. Hall, S. John, “Transferring tacit knowledge in extended enterprises”. Int. Conf. Info. Know. Eng. (IKE’07), Las Vegas, Nevada, June 25-28, 2007. • S. Nousala, M. Terziovski, "Development and exploitation of innovation capability at a defence project engineering company (DPEC)", In Building Innovation Capability in Organizations: An International Cross-Case Perspective, M. Terziovski, Ed., London: Imperial College Press, 2007, pp. 121 - 139 • S. Jamsai, S. Nousala, M. Terziovski, "Development of innovation capability at Invincible Company Thailand", Building Innovation Capability in Organizations: An International Cross-Case Perspective, M. Terziovski, Ed., London: Imperial College Press, 2007, pp. 177 – 188.

  13. Citations 4. • Examples of Social Sciences and Humanities citations within the text: • The significance of CoPs is that they provide an environment for tacit knowledge sharing or TKE to occur, which is then exchanged through tacit knowledge networking (TKN) (Seely Brown & Duguid 2000a; Nousala & John 2004; Nousala et al. 2005). • Corresponding Reference: • Nousala, S.H., & John, S. 2004, ‘Tacit knowledge management networks and its implication in organizational prosperity’, Proceedings of the Qualcon 2004 Conference, AQQ, Adelaide.

  14. Styles • Two systems • Vancouver referencing style (numbers in the text) • Harvard (full or part, citation or name within text, with dates). • Citation Styles • APA (American PhyAssoc) Style • MLA (Modern Language Assoc) Style • Chicago Manual Style • Blue Book – by Harvard Law etc • Alwd citation manual – alternative law system • ASA (American sociological assoc)

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