Welcome to my IA181 Writing Skills blog. You may note a particularly smug tone to my blog, because I think I've managed to grab the best URL for this course. Tiny things please tiny minds...
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

Monday, 14 November 2011

Precise Expressions

Two online resources we looked at in today's session:

Manchester Academic Phrasebank
Oxford Collocations Dictionary

For those of you with technical queries about using MS Word, there are plenty of online tutorial videos available.  Search for MS Word footnotes or double spacing on Youtube and then choose a narrator whose voice doesn't send you to sleep...

I'm not sure if the following meetings the criteria set out above:

Monday, 7 November 2011

Clarity

Can you rewrite the sentences below in order to remove any possible ambiguity:

1. The burglar was about 30 years old, white, 5' 10", with wavy hair weighing about 150 pounds.
2. The family lawyer will read the will tomorrow at the residence of Mr. Hannon, who died June 19 to accommodate his relatives.
3. Mrs. Shirley Baxter, who went deer hunting with her husband, is very proud that she was able to shoot a fine buck as well as her husband.
4. We spent most of our time sitting on the back porch watching the cows playing Scrabble and reading.
5. Hunting can also be dangerous, as in the case of pygmies hunting elephants armed only with spears.

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Some suggestions for blog posts

You're welcome to write about anything at all in your blogs, but over the course of the Writing Skills module, we'll be hoping to see evidence of self-reflection through your thoughts on your own writing and academic skills.  I will post some questions from time to time, and I'll also make suggestions for blog topics in my comments on your blogs, but here are a few prompts to start you off (if you haven't already done so):

- what, in your opinion, are your strengths and weaknesses as a writer?
- what do you expect to gain from completing the Writing Skills module?
- what kind of texts do you feel confident about writing?
- how confident do you feel about completing written assignments for your university studies?  Do you expect university writing to be different to anything else you've done before?  If so, in what way do you think writing tasks might be different at university?
- is there a particular writer whose style you admire?  Who is the writer?  Can you identify what it is about their style that you particularly like? Do you think that you can learn to write in a similar style?
- what advice have you been given on writing style in the past?  Do you think that this was good advice?