In my experience with academic writing, the biggest challenge has been providing enough detail and backing up my ideas. I’ll have all these good ideas in my head and when I write, I’ll assume that the readers will know them as well. The amount of information available to us through Royal Road University’s Writing Center is remarkable. I especially found the Planning the Paper video useful since once again, providing enough detail has been challenging for me and this video showed me how to plan my ideas first before I start writing. I wish I watched this video at the beginning of this program.
Writing in APA style has not been a big problem for me since I am familiar with tools that can help with APA citations and sources through teaching them in my classes. The tools that I found very useful are:
- MS Word Citations & Bibliography Tool, which I have used in my classes and my students found it very helpful.
- Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which was recommended at the beginning of the program. I have been using it and the example papers have been great for me to use as guide.
I know that I have to help the readers connect the dots in my writing and offer more detail, and that is what I will work on going forward.
July 9, 2017 at 8:50 am
Hi May.
First off, your blog has a cool look and feel. 😉
Thanks for the link to the MS Word Citations and Bibliography article. I have used them in the past, but also struggled a bit. Reading through this article was both confirming and provided a couple of “a-ha” moments.
I also need to work on connecting the dots for my readers. I guess I must get so caught up in the research that I start to make assumptions. Perhaps we can trade papers and do a quick review? Could be helpful to ensure that we haven’t missed anything.
Karen.
July 10, 2017 at 8:34 pm
Hi Karen, Thank you for your comment and what a great idea to do that 🙂