Writing Session

Today I attended the Writing Session with Peter Thomas. This seminar helped me understand the ways I should approach my writen assignments In order to become familiar with the level of writing that is academically approved but also easy to read by other 'communities'.

It's usually harder to get across your thoughts on a piece of paper because you have to think about the structure, language and content of writing in order for the reader to understand your point.

Before you publish your work think...

1. Am I clear enough?
2. Am I accurate?
3. Am I using the appropriate language to my needs?
4. Can my work be easily read?
5. Does the content of each paragraph have a point?
6. Does the main topic/meaning come across?

Remember...

1. Focus on the main point and idea.
2. Contain a topic sentence that summarises your point.
3. Contain support that explains and provides evidence and justifies your point.

Paula mentioned the 'American' way to structure each paragraph so that you end up with a complete essay

* Topic points
* Key points
* Concluding sentence
Make sure you use 3-5 sentenses in each paragraph!

Let me explain what we did during the session in order to understand; How to approach and Apply a written task so that the reader gets the Meaning we want to bring across as soon as possible.

1.Peter asked us to think of an event or a performance we recently watched or we've been part of.
2.Then we had a couple of minutes to brain storm and write down any words that came on our mind about the experience we had.
3.After that we took 5 minutes to write our personal experience Without stopping or correcting our work.
4.The next task was to highlight the key words within the text.
5. Then we had to rewrite it but concentrate on the points that we highlighted.
6.Last but not least, we wrote a paragraph describing the most important points within the text but this time we had to think about the reader.
7. Finally we presented our paragraph to the rest of the students and we all shared our thoughts on how we can improve.

My thoughts about the task:

The task was quite challenging at the beginning as we had to continue writing even if we did a mistake or even if we didn't know what to write! The good thing about this exercise is that it brings out your initial thoughts and because you are not aloud to stop, you write the first thought and feeling that comes up in your mind, which is the original!
As we continued focusing on the key words the work became much easier; we just concentrated on the important events and left behind any unnecessary comments. During the end of the task when we had to present it everything fell into place, as we had a much better idea on how to make the content of the text interesting for the reader!
Finally we gave constructive criticism to each other by mentioning points like; ''Talk about the subject and then the experience'' or '' Build up your thoughts- Think how enjoyable and interesting is the content for the reader''. Peter mentioned that the next step was to rewrite the paragraph but because we run out of time he asked us to post the paragraph on our blog. I'll be posting mine tomorrow so keep an eye on it!

I'd like to end up with some advise and a little quote...
My advice will be Not to overthink but to Think wisely and always remember to write the point in order to grab the reader's attention!

And as Mark Thain said..  'When in doubt, strike it out!'