#AcWriMo: The Big Conversation

In our final blog post for #AcWriMo 2022, Kate Spencer-Bennett, an Academic Writing Advisor in the Academic Skills Centre, thinks about how writing fits into the landscape of the literature.

Becoming familiar with the literature in your field can be a daunting task. Where should you begin with your reading? Where should you end? How can you make sense of the connections between the different pieces of research?

I believe that it’s useful to think of the literature on a topic as a big conversation. With #AcWriMo upon us, I’ve been thinking about how this analogy could help us to think about our writing.

‘The Big Conversation’ goes like this. The scholars working in a particular field are sitting around a table having a conversation about a topic. Somebody says something – they write an academic article, a book chapter, or a report. Somebody else hears what they say and joins the conversation to say, ‘yes, good point,’ or, ‘that’s interesting and also…,’ or, ‘but have you thought about?’ In this vein, the conversation continues with a bit of back and forth between the people at the table. People arrive at the table and listen for a while and have a say. And, as in any conversation, there is agreement, disagreement, and everything in between.

Viewed in this way, the literature is a series of ‘turns’, and each new piece of research published represents a new ‘turn’ in the conversation. This has consequences for how we view our own writing. Our thesis chapter, conference presentation, or academic article becomes a response to what we have heard in the conversation. And, like any other scholar, when we plan our writing, we are planning our own turn. If what we are saying is a response to what has come before then some important questions emerge:

• What has been said already?
• What hasn’t been said?

And perhaps most importantly:

• What would I like my turn to be?

So next time you sit down to write, think about what you want to say at the table. How are you responding to what has come before? Which contributions do you want to highlight? What gaps in the conversation are you trying to fill? What do you want others to take from your contribution? Perhaps you’ve heard the debate at another table and want to bring different conversations together.

And, if nothing else, thinking of your writing as a turn in the big conversation means you’ll be ready for that classic viva question – ‘What is your unique contribution?’

Discovering the unknown unknowns

Whenever you start something new, whether that’s a new job or joining a membership society for the first time, there’s a lot of learning to do. What are the requirements? What are the expectations? Do I have the equipment and/or the skills that I need? Where can I find out all this stuff? Much of this learning is set out for you through formal channels, but often we learn some of the most valuable information informally, stumbling upon it while looking for something else, or while gossiping with a peer.

A research programme is no different (you probably saw where I was going with that!). And in 2020, there are new ways of working for us all.

Starting to write your dissertation

Peter Hancox, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and PGR Lead for the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences, gives his advice to those for whom the lockdown means starting to tackle your thesis…

That day has come.  You can put it off no longer.  You can’t even go into the lab under the pretence that you just need to do a little more work.

Photo credit: Rasmus Larsen

You must start to write your dissertation.

The experience of writing a dissertation can be lonely.  After all, it is your dissertation and no one else can (or should) write it for you.  It’s a bit like being at a social distance from your colleagues.

To get started, the first thing to do is to decide to start. 

What’s the difference between a systematic review and a literature review?

This is a question that I’m often asked, or I have a request to help someone with a systematic review, only to find that what they really need help with is a systematic search of the literature for a literature review.  So what is the difference?

Helen writes: explicit content!

I am often surprised by the difference between what people think they have written compared to what is actually on the page. I was reminded of this recently when helping a friend with a chapter of her postgraduate work; she was confident that she made frequent links back from her literature review to her own research. Trusting her opinion I had a look, but soon found myself writing comments like “How does this inform your approach?”, “I’m not sure how this relates to your topic” and “Can you link back to your own research here?”

Either you are explicit in how you set out your ideas or discussion, or you are expecting your reader to pick up the implicit connections. Something about doctoral-level writing in particular seems to breed a fear of being explicit. Certainly on my part I always felt that the more complicated I made my writing and argument, the more ‘intelligent’ it would appear. Setting everything out clearly for a supervisor or examiner felt overly simplistic or even patronising – as if they couldn’t work out the links for themselves.

The reality is that no-one should have to ‘work’ to understand your writing; there is a difference between complex ideas (which a doctoral thesis should engage with) and complex writing.

In the footsteps of others

The University of Birmingham eTheses repository has a fantastic new look and improved functionality, so now is a great time to have a browse through previous UoB theses.

A research thesis is a very different piece of writing from anything else you may have produced before, and from anything you will need to do in future, and as such, it can be difficult to understand exactly what is required, particularly in terms of structure and style.  Looking at previous theses can provide really useful examples to help you navigate this unique form of academic writing. 

Helen writes: getting started

In 2018 I started at the University of Birmingham as a Writing Skills Advisor, and when asked to contribute to this blog I considered the hardest part of writing my own thesis.

Helen Williams, Writing Skills Advisor, Library Services

Fittingly, ‘getting started’ was often the toughest task for me, which also felt apt for a first blog post. Preparation is essential in drafting effective writing, and there is a lot that you can do encourage this process before putting pen to paper. So, to start, here are four tips for getting started.

Write often!

This week, it’s the University Graduate School Writing Summer School.  There are a lot of exciting workshops planned, covering wide-ranging topics on writing from mapping academic writing, writing for publication, reviewing the literature and doctoral writing groups to editing and proof-reading.  For full details, enrol on the Canvas module.

Writing for research is such a huge topic that it can’t be covered in its entirety in a 2-day summer school, so a blog post is definitely not up to the job.  But in the spirit of the writing summer school, I wanted to share with you my “top tip” for writing.  It’s not particularly original, and has been encapsulated in a thousand clichés, but here it is:

Write often.