I don't have much to share this week on my researcherch or the class readings, so I thought I would share some things I learned in another course I am taking (not at Cal--it's from a different program I am doing), which is on non-fiction writing and lecturing.
The four main principles we are learning in the course are:
1. Motivate your audience
Your audience is investing their time and effort in reading and understanding what you have to say, and they aren't going to do it if they aren't getting something out of it. You should let them know what it is that they will find valuable on early in your paper, and in a lengthy paper, should periodically slip in reminders or new motivations to keep them interested. A key part of this is understanding who your audience is and what is important to them.
2. Delimit your topic
It is tempting to try to cover everything and explore all peripheral topics, but that isn't really possible. Clearly delimiting your topic helps focus your argument, guiding which facts are and are not relevant. It helps your reader, by making your paper a coherent, unified whole, and it also helps you write it by helping prevent wasting time on peripheral or irrelevant issues.
3. Balance abstractions and concretes
It is important, when writing about abstract ideas and relationships, to keep them grounded in examples, facts, analogies, etc., so your audience clearly understands what you are saying. The more abstract ideas get, the more difficult they are to interpret correctly by a reader, and providing concrete explanations of what you mean ensures they interpret you correctly. Likewise, too many concretes require an abstract idea tying them all together and preventing the reader from getting overloaded. (A side benefit is that providing concretes ensures you fully understand the material yourself).
4. Organize your argument logically
Having some logical structure to the argument you present helps the reader organize and keep track of everything you are saying. How you choose to organize your thoughts is optional to a large degree, but it is important that there is some non-arbitrary organization to your paper.
2 comments:
It's a very helpful guide on writing my paper, especially the second principle. Thanks Dave!
Yeah I actually found it helpful as a quick reminder on how to remain focused on my paper. I tend to make the mistake mentioned in point four. I also really like point one. I think especially for this paper it would be easy for the audience to get lost so reminding readers throughout the paper what the main focus would be a good idea.
Post a Comment