Academic Writing Reflections

Answers to the following questions and further thoughts should be covered in your first reflective piece. Add your ideas and then create a blog for yourself. Title it Your First Name_Academic Writing_S2012. Be sure to make it public.

What areas of your writing in English do you wish to improve, i.e., things you do well already but want to refine or areas which are lacking that need attention?

What has been your experience with writing in English so far?

What do you consider to be academic writing?

What are the components of sound, scholarly academic writing?

The current state of my writing abilities in English is quite good, as the grades for my last four English courses at the Johannes Kepler University were “very good” to “good”. Further, if I compare my English written texts with those of some fellow students, I have the impression that my texts are much more cohesive and accurate than theirs. However, there are still many points I want to improve, as my writing abilities in English are certainly not perfect. For example, I sometimes have problems in finding the accurate words without the use of the Internet. Moreover, I sometimes mix up the tenses and even encounter difficulties, when writing in a formal way.

As I am looking forward to write my diploma thesis at the Institute of International Management, I have to improve my English writing abilities to be able to write a very good thesis. This is due to the fact that this thesis needs to be written in English. Furthermore, I plan to make an exchange semester in Australia in the next term. If I want to succeed and pass all courses in this totally English speaking academic environment, I have to improve my English writing abilities. Of course I am a little bit afraid of going abroad, as there is always the question “What is, if my English is not good enough?”. This is the case for both, written and spoken English. However, the enthusiasm for this great experience outweighs these threats.

Academic writing, in my opinion, is the process of writing academic papers and has to follow several standards to be considered as academic writing. An Example for these standards is correct citation. In general, academic texts claim to have a higher quality than other texts, as their content should be verified and substantiated by empirical evidence. 

In this semester I want to improve my English skills to be able to manage the challenges I will face in the near future. The main areas I want to improve in my English writing skills are the accurate use of words and tenses. Further I want to strengthen my ability to write formal English texts. I plan to realize these goals according to the principle of “learning by doing”, as this is, in my opinion, the only way one can get better in writing.

Link to my blog: https://collabor.idv.edu/JDAcademicWriting/

When it comes to my writing abilities in English, I believe that I am progressing very well. However, there is still room for improvement in some areas.
In general, before commencing to write an English text, I usually make a mind-map in order to organize my thoughts. This kind of tool helps me to focus on the topic and it supports me in identifying the goal of my writing. I also do a lot of research and reading beforehand to get a good overview of my topic. Nonetheless, I often lose track of the big picture when reading so much literature and have the feeling that I cannot identify what kind of information is most relevant for my purpose.
Concerning the writing itself, I’m of the opinion that I always use a variety of appropriate vocabulary.  I use every opportunity to read English articles, watch English movies and speak English. This helps me to enlarge my vocabulary and consequently to write used advanced English. Nevertheless I often try to write in a sophisticated way that may result in sentences which are too long and too confusing. As my first language, German, is a very flowery language, I guess I try to do the same when I write in English.  In addition, I also find that I set too many commas which is indeed more common when writing a text in German but unnecessary when it comes to formulating a text in English.
I have always received good feedback from my teachers with regards to writing academic papers and summarizing or paraphrasing a text. Furthermore I have no difficulties with meeting the requirements of correct citation.
My hopes and expectations towards the course Academic Writing are to significantly improve my writing skills and to get support and advice with regards to working on my weaknesses. 

https://collabor.idv.edu/MNAAcademicWriting/

When assessing my writing abilities, I would say that my strength is to structure ideas and write a coherent text with clear paragraphs. In general, I do not have any problems when formulating sentences. However, I would wish to be able to use even better vocabulary and terms in order to convey the information in my papers, essays and texts more accurately.

I think that the challenge in this course is to write an academic paper on any topic one considers to be interesting as well as important. The difficulty is to select a subject which is controversial and provides enough room for discussion as well as argumentation. However, I believe that once one has decided on a subject, the working-title as well as the thesis statement arise nearly automatically – and so do the following steps (hopefully).

After this first and difficult step is completed, I can continue to do my research activity. In my opinion, this is one of the most interesting parts of the writing-process, as one is able to gain a lot of new information, make connections and generate new ideas. The actual writing of papers does not constitute a great challenge for me because I always try to prepare very conscientiously before I start.

What I might need to improve concerning my academic writing skills is to revise, correct and supplement my paper. Although I know that those last steps are very important, I do not like to change something that I have already written. This point is probably my biggest weakness when writing. For this reason, I will try to take advantage of the opportunity to write a term paper in this course in order to improve the aspects mentioned.

Writing is a task that is often required at the university. Therefore good writing skills are important for a positive passing of university assignments. The key driver for me to do this class is that I would like to get used to write academic papers without any problem of structuring and finishing assignments.

Currently I’m a pretty fluent speaker in English due to a year that I have spent abroad, but also pretty solid in writing English papers. However, I still have to urge to improve my writing skills as I think that training in academic writing in English also benefits my writings in German.

I expect from this class that I improve my academic writing in a way that my future output is a higher level than now. Furthermore I hope that I get some tips how to synthesize and integrate my research better into my paper but also that ways how to decide on a rhetorical strategy will be shown in class.

I am worried about the mass of pages that I am supposed to write but probably in the process of writing this problem will be solved by itself. However I hope that the course instructor will support me and even provide me help when I am stuck with my paper.

By the end of this semester I hope that I can hand in a paper that is of interest of my colleagues but also engages them to inform themselves about the topic. I expect from myself that I write a paper that brings the message across and can be proud of my performance.

Link to my blog

https://collabor.idv.edu/srieger/

The current state of my academic writing abilities in English are difficult to explain, because the only academic writing I have done so far, was my bachelor thesis in German. Unfortunately I have not had any opportunity to write an academic paper in English. At the Vienna University of Business and Economics I only had to write business letters such as offers, orders or letters of complaints. Therefore I would say my current state of writing includes the ability to developing ideas, supporting ideas with pros and contras and organizing arguments in paragraph writing. Instructors and supervisors sometimes got a little bit confused with my writing, because I always had good ideas and a lot of different ideas, but at times it was difficult for me organizing and clarifying my ideas to be understandable and easier to follow. Furthermore, at times I am not quite sure about my sentence structuring and my word usage.

Regarding the academic writing, the most difficult part for me in my bachelor thesis was to find proper sources and even to start searching for sources. I often did not know where to get the literature from and specifically for which literature I should look for – magazines, books, journals, etc. Sometimes I had an idea or an argument for a specific topic, but I could not state it, before finding someone who had the same idea earlier on, meaning that I had to find some source or author who had similar thoughts before me - to avoid plagiarism.

From my personal experience I can say, that my fears are mainly on the academic part – finding sources, integrating quotations and constructing a thesis from a specific topic.

I am confident, that in this semester I will be able to improve my academic writing talent and in the future it will be easier for me to write my master thesis, which I have to write in English.

Link to my blog: http://collabor.idv.edu/SCAcademicWriting/

As I did already a bachelor's degree in the United Kingdom, I do have experience in writing academically. I really enjoy researching particular topics and I am eager to learn more and more about a specific field. What I really find difficult after doing a lot of research is to conduct a proper selection of all the information that I have gathered. I find it quite complex to formulate a precise question and to clarify my ideas as I usually tend to cover topics too extensively. So when I try to get started I am prone that I want to make too many points at once, instead of defining the topic ina narrower context.

Obviously I do not take enough time to select, to structure and to clarify my ideas prior to starting with my writing or even prior to starting the research! However on the other hand once I know what point I want to make, I find it relatively easy to express myself and to put these ideas down in writing. In other words: once I know what I want to write and what point I want to make, writing is a real pleasure to me. It is fun to reread and rewrite my work and I enjoy bringing it to “perfection” once the hard graft is done.

So basically it is not the writing itself that exhausts me - what really costs me an effort is to put the plenty of ideas in my head into a logical and meaningful context. So I believe my greatest fear about academic writing is that I keep “rolling in the deep” (sorry I am hearing this song all the time) for too long, giving me a hard time to get started. What I realized in this context is, that I get much clearer ideas when I am away from my keyboard. It happens that I find my conclusions or the "central theme" while driving in the car or cleaning my apartment - it is really funny, but sometimes ideas just pop-up during less demanding activities which are obviously giving me time to reflect on things.

Another weakness may be that I tend to describe or reproduce facts, or only outline the perspectives of various authors and forget to go beyond that by introducing elements of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.

Although I know that academic writing or the editing of an essay is a continuous time and research related process, I really hope that in this semester I will make a progress to faster formulate and identify the key points, the main statement as well as the final conclusions of my future works.

Good luck to all of you! It is really interesting and a great help to read all your thoughts!

Christina

In general, I have to admit that speaking is a lot easier for me. Concerning my writing skills, the gotten feedback of the vocabulary part is quite good. Moreover I make almost no mistakes in grammar. Sometimes I forget about punctuation. In addition I always try to use synonyms to avoid getting boring in the articles I write. From the feedback I got, cohesion and accuracy are those two aspects, where my writing is not as good as it should be.

It is very difficult for me to bring something to the point that every reader knows exactly what I mean. Most of the time, my essays are quite confusing for readers. I have already been trying a lot. For example, I tried to change my style of writing; furthermore I read a lot of English books in my free time, to improve my writing skills – but nothing really worked.

Nevertheless, writing academically is going to be a real challenge for me. I do not fear the citation or the given layout, because once you are used to it, it is always the same procedure. But what I do be worried about is that I cannot manage to improve the accuracy and the cohesion. Hopefully, my writing skills are getting better during this semester.

http://collabor.idv.edu/awb/

When I am trying to reflect my abilities in academic writing in general, I could assume that I am probably a bit more used to writing than the average economics student. Studying Cultural Studies implies a lot of reading and writing, therefore I have had the possibility to study a lot of rather professional and academic papers and write a couple of essays and papers myself (which were of course a lot less professional).

The main problem I encountered was that most of the literature we read is written in or at least translated into German. All papers I had to write myself (with the exception of one paper last semester for Ms. Gagan-Donat’s course) were in German as well.

The writing style in English academia seems to be a whole lot different compared to the German way: while German texts like to “brag” with the use of technical terms and extremely long sentences, English papers seem to be less “elitist” and therefore better legible to untrained audiences.

Due to being trained in reading/writing German texts, I have a major problem with “run-on’s”. An estimated 90% of corrections in my final paper last semester were because of those too long sentences, which showed that there’s a long way to go and quite some potential for improvement. Furthermore it is everything but easy to remain in a formal style and avoid the use of colloquial words, which are much more present in my vocabulary.

Two further issues come to my mind, when I think about academic papers: First of all it is usually a challenge to formulate a thesis. In my past papers this was a major – and very time consuming – problem. The second aspect only applies to English papers, where we usually also need to work with English language sources. Our library is not very well equipped with English language books and even if JKU owns those books, they are scattered around institutes, who are not willing to lend, let alone give them out for a 10 minutes read, to students. I had to make his experience last semester and found it really frustrating. This is also a big challenge I see for the coming paper this semester: It’s not the most interesting topic that I’ll be able to pursue, I will have to chose a topic which is already discussed in English literature and available via the library-network.

http://collabor.idv.edu/VreNee/

I love writing anyway and it does not really matter what I write or in which language. I have to write a lot for university (but mainly in German), for work and of course I write with my friends often in English, because they live in the whole world. Unfortunately, I did not get the chance to write an academic paper, so I am really happy to get the chance in this course.

I think my written work is quite good and comfortable to read. I try to use new and appropriate words related to the type of article. I try to facilitate my ideas with "high class" English, because I think my university work should differ from school home works, but when I proofread them I am not really convinced of my "high class" English. The usage of my words should get better.

For this semester I really hope that I will get the chance to improve my written English. Another big problem is the punctuation. I use much more commas than necessary and I think the rest of my punctuation could also be better.

The question for me is how can I get better in writing? I started to read English books, but this did not make a big difference. To read newspaper could maybe help, when I would read them every day. But I really want to get better in writing and I hope this course will give me some ideas how.

Link to my blog: https://collabor.idv.edu/Alina

I took my final exam in 2002 and started my studies at the Johannes Kepler University in 2008 after 6 years of occupation. I worked as a claims adjuster for an insurance broker and we had some international clients, so I could use my business English from time to time. In my first semester I joined Dr. Brewster´s communication course and made good progress from the beginning. I was happy with my grading – I got a 2, which I had not expected afert six years of absence from learning. Later I joined the business English course and even got a 1, so I knew that my English was at least acceptable.

I like participating in courses that are offered in English because in a time of globalization it has become a necessity to be able to negotiate in English. Anyway I like the language because you can conversate effectively and simply. I have decided to take an English specialization in my social economics master program and I am actually participating in the Academic Writing course and the Business English 2 course.

I have hardly any experience in writing academic papers in English. It was even new for me to write academic papers in German when I came to the university. I have written my bachelor thesis last semester and did quite well. So I think the scheme is quite similar to writing an academic paper in English, but I don´t know how the writing style has to be adapted. I know some citation styles in German and I think there are international standards for that, so I hope to make good process this semester.

In my papers I often have problems with being effective, I decorate sentences too much because I failed in my research work and need some space fillers for a page. I really want to improve that. Sometimes I also have problems with structuring an academic paper. One of my strengths in writing is that I can attract the reader´s attention. I try to use a style that is exciting to read. But that often becomes a problem in academic writing because it´s too subjective.

Generally I think academic writing requires a high level of a language, so I hope to manage that. Of course I am looking forward to improve my skills and I hope to have another successful semester.

Link to my blog:

https://collabor.idv.edu/MDAcademicWriting/

My English level is about intermediate. I am good at reading and grammer. My listening and speaking abilities improve considerably after being surrounded in the English circumstance. However, I consider my writing as the weakest one. There is a lot of room for me to improve my writing abilities. My mother language is Chinese, therefore, I get used to think and write in Chinese. In this way, it makes me write in Chinese logic. 

With regards to my writing abilities, I think I can express my thoughts clearly. I am also careful with grammer and spellings. However, I am not really familiar with academic writing. Hence, I am sort of afraid that I cannot handle this kind of professional writing. Even so, I still want to enhance my writing skills. Knowing how to write academic papers will help me a lot in my future studies.  

After this semester, I hope that I can write an article with organized structure, clear logic and concise words. In addition, I also want to learn how to write an essay with academic usage and bibliography. Last but not least, learning how to do the research for the academic paper is also important.                                 

Here is the link to my blog:

https://collabor.idv.edu/michelleblog/

My language knowledge was developed through both theoretical learning and using English in practice, for example during language study traveling or vacation trips. In my opinion, my strengths are first of all understanding of fluent English speech, and my ability to talk in English about everyday topics. On the one hand, this ability to speak fluently allows me to write simple texts in English without the necessity to search for every word in a dictionary. On the other hand, it does not help me to write long texts, such as academic papers or other scientific works. However I know that in future I must learn enough about academic writing style in English, because I will need this information during my whole university studies. Up to the present academic writing in English has been my weakness, however I certainly want to turn it into one of my strengths during this semester.  

One of my biggest fears in speaking English has always been talking to the native speakers – I always felt some kind of language barrier and felt badly ashamed about every mistake I made. I hope that “Academic Writing” course will help me to communicate both with the native speakers and others in a better, extended way.

All in all, I hope that this course will bring my English to a new level, and I expect myself to write elaborate academic papers and apply my knowledge about academic writing format in other scientific areas.  

Link to my blog: 

https://collabor.idv.edu/Tatiana

Having closely analysed my writing behaviour for the last hour I am now aware of my strengths & weaknesses. I have read online that the best way to write a reflective piece of one’s writing is to tell about one’s experience with the matter itself: my writing skills.

So I get back to my first experiences with writing in English:

The moment I had gathered a good range of English vocabulary I started to enjoy writing texts in school. The more grammar I got to know tough, the more insecure did I get and the less fun I had writing. Years of struggle went by until I have found myself using the right grammar in a proper manner. The more I read in English, the more I enjoyed writing. I got curious finding a word I didn’t know, a phrase I haven’t heard of or an acronym I have not disenchanted yet. Up until today I look up all the lyrics of the songs I hear & love. I read most books in English & I tend to watch series and movies in English as well.

In school I always hated writing down the obvious phrases, expressing common sense knowledge, copying what we have been taught. The topics’ arguments on demand were always the same & there was too little personal clearance for thinking outside the box. So I always wrote what all the other pupils wrote, what we knew our teacher expected to read and what would reward us a good grade. Soon the writing about these topics got utterly boring to me, not because I was a literate master – I am actually far away from that, but rather my desire to do something that challenged me on a different aspect, namely on a CREATIVE level, gained the upper hand.

The more I’ve been hating to write down the common expected phrases, the less I wrote & consequently my grades slipped, just for the fact that I couldn’t write a 400 words argumentation about a topic anymore, that was simply put into a 100 words declaration in my mind. So to get better grades, I did what many people do, when they don’t know what to talk about, they just talk to talk. I started writing more verbiage than anyone else in my class & soon I became to be known as the pupil that could write 2000 words for just about anything. It soon was clear: It’s not about QUALITY; it’s about QUANTITY without making big grammatical failures. The moment I understood the weird system about counting letters and words instead of ideas, my grades skyrocketed & my new writing “style” was born: Quintessences with beating around the bush.

In my final school year I had a change of heart & realized that it was much more important for me to write down what I really felt & in a way that I always wanted it to be read: Introduction FACTS FACTS FACTS FINAL ARGUMENT – so that I  “win” the argumentation with a solid creative statement that just keeps the reader with nothing left to say & astonished, wondering where my ideas might have come from.

After school, I was very concerned about receding in my ability to read, write & speak English, as I have experienced such a decline of knowledge in French, the moment I stopped practicing. So I started reading more English texts than I have read in my whole school time, I started to get active in several English forums, where I wrote wrote and wrote. I started to write my own song lyrics, poems & thoughts. But soon I realized that all my writings where either very shallow or just me stating my opinion on something I was interested in.

This leaves me, after successfully passing most of the required English courses here at University, insecure in my academic writing and quoting skills. In addition I seem to never have improved in my paragraph structure & punctuation. A recent lack of different grammar usage in my text productions also leaves me wondering, if I still got the right idea of the proper grammar usage in my written words.  

Unlike my many insecurities in writing, I am certain, that I am a fast learner. I love writing that involves being creative, gathering new ideas or solving problems not just the plain vanilla way. I am able to write any text in no time, when I have made my mind about what I want to write. Then I also do prefer writing in English to writing in German.

After this course I’d like to eliminate at least 90% of my weaknesses & turn them into my strengths. I'd love to learn how to write academically right, how to use quotes in an adequate way & how to express my thoughts in a scientific manner.

Here's a link to my blog: http://collabor.idv.edu/NinoAW/

I write English because I think it is important in the current society and it will be definitely helpful for my future. But I have a problem that once I stop writing English for a while, it will get worse!

About my favorite part of my writing, I think it is when I am able to write my own opinions freely. Oppositely, summary is the least part I like, I often have to read the article again and again, but sometimes I still get the wrong idea about what the author wanted to say. Usually I take my break between classes or weekend to do my writing assignment. To be honest, sometimes I really have to spend a long time to accomplish it, even though it is not that difficult.

My final goal is I will not be afraid of writing a paper anymore. Specifically, I hope I will be able to write a paper in a good structure logically. I am also eager to learn more about academic paper conventions. It will be great if there are some good samples. There is no doubt that it is good to let the students write freely, but meanwhile, it will be great if I can get more specific tips. I need to know where exactly is wrong so that I can improve efficiently.

The only way to improve my English writing skill is to practice as much as possible, the most important is to practice consistently. It is difficult to insist, but no pain, no gain, I hope I will realize my goal!

Here is the link to my blog.:)

http://collabor.idv.edu/Kuangni/

My English communication skills contain:

• Listening comprehension skills

• Reading comprehension skills

• Speaking skills

• Writing skills

In general I would describe my current state of those English skills as not that bad. I guess otherwise I would not voluntarily attend an additional course. According to the results of several language courses and exams I successfully passed, compared to the other three skills mentioned above, my writing skills usually come in last.

Therefore in my view it is a big chance to especially concentrate on my weak point during the whole semester and hopefully I am able to improve it as well. Furthermore, I experienced that it is much easier to write about a personal interest or at least about a topic I am allowed to choose on my own.

My hopes in writing academically are to make a big step towards a noticeable improvement concerning creating proper texts on a high academic level. As I am a student of international business studies, I am likely to write my diploma thesis in English. However, even if I should not write my diploma project in English, the abilities I can gain in this course can also help me to better pass my projects and exams in my specialization namely international management.

Fears I have concerning the academic writing course is the high level of accuracy and that I cannot meet the high requirements. Nevertheless I am highly motivated to work hard during the term, to adequately solve the tasks and to pass the course with a good grade.

I don’t find it particularly easy for me to be able to estimate the current state of my writing abilities in English, since I hold the opinion that certain areas still need some improvement. What I think I am capable of at the moment is a good paragraph structure, sentence structure and an adequate word usage. Furthermore, the strengths of my writing skills are contained in my ability to organize and better clarify ideas. I am quite fond of writing and every kind of it I find a challenge, because there are so many skills that I have to develop to become a good writer and to make the writing process an adventure.

Moreover, I sometimes fear that I cannot discover the right topic and synthesize the most important things that refer to it. Another fear that I have is to present in front of a big audience. Therefore, I hope that I can improve not only my language, but also my presentational skills in this course. I would also like to improve my verb usage, my punctuation and my spelling. It is a great pleasure for me to have the opportunity to be a part of this course and I am very excited about developing my skills and improving my academic writing. I am also very curious about the areas in my writing, which I would be able to enhance. I would also like to learn not only from the professor, but also from the students in the class.

I know that writing is a long and hard process. However, I believe that in order to improve my writing skills, it's very important to know my goals and to be able to choose the most appropriate way in order to obtain them. I also believe that this course will help me to greatly improve my English and to obtain better academical writing skills . 

Here is a link to my blog: http://collabor.idv.edu/Katerina/

Writing academically in a foreign language like English still is a challenge for me. However, I would also label it as an interesting task. What is so interesting about it is the difference to the common English I use when I talk to somebody or when I write privately. When writing academically, much more concentration and attention is needed. This is not only true for the topic you write about, but also for the style of writing. Furthermore, you need a certain amount of preparation before you even start with the first sentence.

What can be regarded as the first possible source of a problem is finding a suitable topic to write about. It is not always easy for me to find such a topic because sometimes my suggestions are either too narrow or too wide to be usable. Consequently, I definitely want to improve my skills in that respect.

As already mentioned, the writing process of course is a challenge as well. However, I usually find it very interesting and, frankly, also enjoyable to write academically. I consider it quite rewarding to find good expressions and formulations and, as a result, produce a well written academic text. On the other hand, sometimes I tend to exaggerate a little bit, especially what the usage of linking words is concerned. Likewise, sometimes I end up producing too long and too difficult sentences with too many commas.

Therefore, my writing abilities are far from perfect and I definitely hope that I can improve them. This semester in general and the “Academic Writing“-course in particular should be good opportunities to do so. I am eager to receive feedback in order to detect those areas in which improvement is necessary. After all, feedback from another person should give me an analysis about my writing skills which usually is more objective than my own evaluation. Therefore, when thinking about this semester, I do have hopes but certainly no fears.

Academic writing is very interesting subject for me during this semester, since I have some experience with academic writing but I definitely want to improve it and bring it to a much higher level. I have experience with academic writing in my language (I'm coming from Croatia-I'm just on a student exchange in Linz), but I also have experience with academic writing in English. However, when I was writing those two articles in English, both times I had experienced co-authors with me so I had opportunity to learn from them on the one side, but on the other side that means that those articles weren't written by only me. Moreover, those articles were connected to quantitative analysis, and my opinion is that it is a lot easier to write academic article when you have quantitative analysis as a background, then when you have to prove everything only with arguments and discussions of these arguments.

Regarding areas of writing in English that I want to improve, there is lot of them. When I was writing my essays in English, professors would often say that I did good organization of text and wrote solid arguments, but that my English vocabulary is poor. Therefore, as Johann already said, I also have problems with finding accurate words without using Internet. Also, I often want to make text more interesting but I still want it to be formal at the same time. Of course, discussing a problem from a different point of view but still staying neutral is also a challenge for me, especially in English. 

As I had first studied “Translating and Interpreting” in Vienna before I decided to do Economics, I consider my writing capabilities to be good but still not perfect. Although I have always received good grades in English, my Spanish skills unfortunately did not improve as much as I initially had hoped for and, therefore, I did not finish these studies. Nevertheless, I still occasionally work as an interpreter on the side of my current studies, mainly translating from German to English. Overall, I have already translated several marketing-related texts for a national newspaper and various technical instructions for different components of an automated storage system.

However, there still is room for improvement regarding my writing capabilities. Personally, I am looking forward to expanding my vocabulary and its variety. Moreover, I have already gained some experience in writing academic papers for other courses during my studies, especially when it comes to courses dealing with management content.

As I am used to read books and magazines in English as well as to watch TV in English, I understand almost all of it but sometimes do miss single words. Furthermore, I might also have minor grammatical problems in setting commas before the conjunctions “and, because, but”.

My passion is to talk with people, this is the reason why my language skills are much better in spoken English than in written. Another reason is that spoken English is not as strict, concerning accuracy and grammar. The point is to make people understand what you want to say. When I am traveling to foreign countries, getting to know other people and the cultures is very important to me. The best way is to speak with natives.

Unfortunately writing is a problem in general. First finding a topic is hard, as I am always interested in too many aspects, what makes me change topics very fast and makes me lose a lot of time. I am passionate at researching topics and finding new sources where interesting topics are published. During the last English courses it turned out that accuracy is my biggest weakness. For this reason, I am afraid of studying abroad and having to write papers in English.

This course should help me to improve my writing skills, by giving me ideas how to do text research and revision. On the other hand, I want to keep practicing and improving my English in many aspects. A rolling stone gathers no moss.

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In my opinion my English writing skills are at a satisfying level, but of course there are some areas which should be improved. Although I always had an A or a B in my previous courses, I do not feel comfortable writing academically. As I was used to write about my own ideas most of the time, I find it difficult to adapt my writing style to an academic level. The distinction between formal and informal writing is one of my weak points. Furthermore, my sentence structure has often been criticized by my previous teachers because of run-on’s.

Concerning writing academically I fear that I am not able to find sources of high quality for my paper and that I make some mistakes in quotations. The paper which I am going to write in this course is the second academic paper of my life and I am a bit afraid of it, but it is necessary for me to practice this type of writing. As I will start my year studying abroad at Emory University in August 2012, it is inevitable to know how to write such papers in order to pass the courses there.

 I hope that I can make good process in this course and develop my English writing skills to a higher level.

First I have to mention that I am maybe not aware of my problems concerning academic writing. Usually when I start writing, it takes some time that the words come out, but when I am in a creative mood, it is easy for me to fill pages. The most important step for me is to create a goal. This can be either an idea or a clear structure, which helps me to write in an acceptable speed. If I do not have a sudden inspiration it can take hours to complete one paragraph. Another important aspect for me to advance is that the topic has to be interesting to me. If I am not able to identify myself with my work, the going is tough. Furthermore it is advantageous when there are not long breaks during my writing process otherwise it is hard for me to catch up.

I've found out that it is my punctuation that is making me problems. I tend to have problems with comma usage, semi colons and colons and their correct usage. Of course there are only a few important comma rules, but sometimes there is still a doubtful feeling. Another problem is that I sometimes switch from British English to American English and the other way round.

For me this course is a chance to practice and improve my writing skills. That we concentrate on 'academic' writing does not make a big difference. I am glad that I can choose my own topic because otherwise it is hard for me to get started and motivated. My big goal is it to feel confident while writing and create a good paper and presentation.

---> Link to my blog: https://collabor.idv.edu/Andreas

In my mind my writing skills are at a good level right now, as far as style, structure, vocabulary and grammar are concerned. As I have not really been engaged in academic writing so far, I hope that this course will help me improve my academic writing skills. Due to the fact that the only feedback I got on academic writing issues was on formatting guidelines, I know that there are still many things I have to work on in this field.

When looking at the self-assessment sheet I received in the first lesson I mentioned some fields that raise questions. When it comes to developing a project, I am convinced that my strategies concerning rhetorical issues and organizing, supporting and clarifying ideas can be improved. As far as mechanical points of writing are concerned, I hope that this course will help me improve the accuracy of words used in my texts. Regarding styling points of writing I see problems in academic paper conventions, diction and, as already mentioned above, formatting guidelines.

By the end of this course I hope that my writing skills are on a higher level than they are now, and that I can improve my abilities in all the fields mentioned in the text.

Personally I think my strengths in writing in English are that I am able to express myself in an understandable way and bring in my own ideas. Moreover, I think I am capable of discussing general, as well as my own ideas in an objective and reasonable manner. Another strength is, in my opinion that I can logically order my thoughts and write them down structured and comprehensible.

My weaknesses, as I can conclude from the last couple of pieces of written work I handed in are especially prepositions, articles and sometimes I have problems using appropriate vocabulary and style. Personally I think my writing is often influenced by colloquial English and I am often not sure whether I use the right order of words.

My hopes and goals for this course are that I can further improve my English skills by broaden my vocabulary, upgrade my style, minimize my mistakes and overall become more confident writing pieces in English.

Link to my Blog: collabor.idv.edu/MatthiasGruber

To begin with I have to say that most of the time I really enjoy writing, especially if I do it voluntary and if I can identify with the topic I write about. Because of five years at the commercial high-school in Ybbs I am used to writing essays and business communication letters. However, last year at the university course “Wirtschaftssprache II” I sometimes felt that I have difficulties in arguing for or against a certain topic. We had to write commentaries and I felt that it was quite difficult for me to write a critical piece of work in a short time and without much research. If I, however, have the time to do proper research and information collecting, arguing and stating my point is easier for me.

Regarding the English course “Academic writing” I somehow fear that I might choose the wrong topic for my paper. I have the impression, that the final paper is the most important piece of work in this course and working on a boring or inappropriate subject would be fatal.

I hope that during this course my word usage will become more accurate, so that I learn to use the exactly right expression for the meaning I intend to write. Moreover I want to focus on memorizing the right prepositions for rarely used phrases. I am looking forward to a productive semester, and a paper that makes me a proud author :)

Link to my blog: http://collabor.idv.edu/san/stories

Hello everybody,

I just had a "light bulb moment" with doing ny sentence outline. I read through all the articles that I collected for my topic and was surprised how many statements I found that finally fit into my sentence outline. I filled them in and it really helps to structure my paper. Reading and selecting the arguments consumes some time but it is worth the effort.

We will all get there!

Happy Easter to all of you!

Christina

I had created blog, but at the wrong spot in this system. Here it is now:

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Having been raised to some degree in an English-speaking environment, I have never feared the use of this foreign language in an academic environment. It is not that I am a true native, but up to this point I was surrounded by German natives for whom it was a much bigger step to take and I knew that in comparison my existing skills would be sufficient. Yet, as my future studies in the ACT programme are leading me to work in an environment, in which I will be challenged by true natives I see the necessity to address my linguistic shortcomings.

Luckily they remain – to a certain degree – hidden thanks to the automatic spelling correction provided by programmes such as Microsoft Word. After I learnt the spoken word in an English-speaking surrounding, I resisted putting much effort into studying the language at school in Germany. This lead ultimately to me knowing the vocabulary, but failing in its spelling.

Though, I am glad to see improvements in this area as my academic work is shifting to English. By reading a great variety of English publications I manage to address this problem step by step.

Furthermore, I notice that a broadening of my vocabulary would be of great value, as it is becoming more frequent that complex issues need to be clarified and explained concisely.

Lastly, I face I fear that many English natives have difficulties dealing with, too: The English use of the comma. Even, if many may disagree, the grammatical rules seem to me to be somewhat incoherent.

While I do not believe to improve a great deal in the point last mentioned, I hope for an automatic learning experience in the other areas. Of course I will try to address them more systematically, but it is good to use a broad approach.

Hello everybody,

I almost finished my paper and realised that the sentence outline really helped me a lot!

I can only recommand to use it! I also realized that the more I read the better I was able to make my point. Still there are someting like 800 words missing but  I will get there.

Unfortunately it always gets me 10 to 20 minutes to really get started. But once I am into it I am positively surprised about the quick progress.

Well then, good luck to all of you.

Christina

I realized that the more time went by I got really tired of working through my paper back and forth, reading and re-reading it.

The most productive phase of my paper was actually when I wrote the middle part in more or less one piece/session. 

The technics that we learned in the course where really helpful and I find it quite easy to apply certain "standards".

What still confuses me is to apply the proper "referencing" as the style guides on the net differ from each other, so hopefully I picked the ones with the correct format.

Christina

I enjoyed the course a lot and I really got a lot out of it. In particular in terms of writing „standards“ and techniques. It really improved my understanding for what is considered as „academic“ and that there are a number of conventions that you need to pay attention to. Another major aspec that I was able to improve was to really make my point and to become more precise on the message that I want to get across. But in fact what helped me most to structure my essay was the sentence outline. It will help me a lot for any of my future writings, particularly for papers of longer length.

Thank you Dr. Brewster!

Christina