Graduate Student Expectations
Reading
Undergraduate Student Expectations
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Graduate Student Expectations
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Writing
Undergraduate Student Expectations
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Graduate Student Expectations
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Characteristics of "Scholarly" Writing
Reading and writing are generally regarded as the principle components of graduate courses. Have you ever stopped to wonder about why this is the case?
Unlike many undergraduate learning experiences, professors in graduate courses often assign readings that do not always produce clear, concise answers to specific questions. Such material is used to organize, unsettle, provoke, provide feedback, clarify, and possibly confuse particular issues. If this seems confusing at times, it may be the result of the transitional role graduate school is designed to play in your intellectual development. The expectations in graduate school extend beyond consuming and “absorbing” knowledge to producing original ideas that have value. Such transitional thinking reflects the creative nature of graduate educational experiences (Robinson, 2011), and illustrates an important difference between graduate and undergraduate purpose. Writing is key to creative expression in graduate school because it provides the medium for expressing thoughts, understandings, and original ideas in purposeful and precise ways.
As a graduate student, it is imperative that you practice the skill of scholarly writing in all coursework, which includes your discussion participations online as well as any documents or presentations you might produce. Essentially, every item you produce for your coursework must adhere to the principles of scholarly writing.
But what characterizes scholarly writing? Although the exact nature of “scholarly” writing may be debated, there is some general agreement among the academic community that scholarly writing involves a formal tone and includes attribution and synthesis of sources into writing and the support of assertions made in our writing through use of literature. Furthermore, academic writing is for an audience of academics, other scholars, and therefore is quite different than the writing we may conduct in social media, texting, in writing a business or personal correspondence in email, and certainly much different in tone and format than what we would produce in texting or other more casual forms of writing.
Kemp (2007) explored the nature of scholarly writing in education and concluded that it is a skill to be practiced during coursework with the onus of learning these skills belonging mostly to the learner with some shared responsibility for coaching and feedback from instructors. Some of the key findings from Kemp are listed below to guide you on what it means to write in a scholarly, or academic, way. You will find support for these points about scholarly writing from the well-known OWL at Purdue University (2019), and the APA Style Manual.
Unlike many undergraduate learning experiences, professors in graduate courses often assign readings that do not always produce clear, concise answers to specific questions. Such material is used to organize, unsettle, provoke, provide feedback, clarify, and possibly confuse particular issues. If this seems confusing at times, it may be the result of the transitional role graduate school is designed to play in your intellectual development. The expectations in graduate school extend beyond consuming and “absorbing” knowledge to producing original ideas that have value. Such transitional thinking reflects the creative nature of graduate educational experiences (Robinson, 2011), and illustrates an important difference between graduate and undergraduate purpose. Writing is key to creative expression in graduate school because it provides the medium for expressing thoughts, understandings, and original ideas in purposeful and precise ways.
As a graduate student, it is imperative that you practice the skill of scholarly writing in all coursework, which includes your discussion participations online as well as any documents or presentations you might produce. Essentially, every item you produce for your coursework must adhere to the principles of scholarly writing.
But what characterizes scholarly writing? Although the exact nature of “scholarly” writing may be debated, there is some general agreement among the academic community that scholarly writing involves a formal tone and includes attribution and synthesis of sources into writing and the support of assertions made in our writing through use of literature. Furthermore, academic writing is for an audience of academics, other scholars, and therefore is quite different than the writing we may conduct in social media, texting, in writing a business or personal correspondence in email, and certainly much different in tone and format than what we would produce in texting or other more casual forms of writing.
Kemp (2007) explored the nature of scholarly writing in education and concluded that it is a skill to be practiced during coursework with the onus of learning these skills belonging mostly to the learner with some shared responsibility for coaching and feedback from instructors. Some of the key findings from Kemp are listed below to guide you on what it means to write in a scholarly, or academic, way. You will find support for these points about scholarly writing from the well-known OWL at Purdue University (2019), and the APA Style Manual.
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References and Resources
- Kemp, A. T. (2007). Characteristics of academic writing in education. Retrieved from: http://www.academia.edu/1629873/Characteristics_of_Academic_Writing_in_Education
- Nespor, J. (2010). Cultural process in education. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/usedcabbage/recent-course-syllabi/cultural-process-in-education.
- OWL at Purdue University. (2014). Tips for writing in North American colleges: The basics. Retrieved from https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/683/01/
- Radford University's online APA Guide for Graduate Students
- Robinson, K. (2011). Out of our minds: Learning to be creative. Oxford: Capstone.