Clay goes it alone this week, and shares ideas on how writing principles can make you a more confident and more engaging public speaker. Clay used to provide Defence Preparation workshops at NMBU each semester for Master students. The timing seemed right to share ideas, information and techniques for thesis defence.

To learn more about thesis defence, NMBU students and employees are encouraged to use the Scientific Writing Resource Portal (SWR100) in Canvas, and look through Module 6. Thesis Defence and Publication.

To learn more about rhetoric and hooks in public speaking, we encourage you to visit the following sites that analyze TedTalks:

https://blog.slideshare.net/2014/07/30/set-your-hook-to-capture-your-audience

https://visme.co/blog/how-to-start-a-presentation/

Niklas and Clay give their perspectives on plagiarism, information dumping and the struggles academic writers need to go through. There is a lot of information available to research students and professional researchers, and knowing how to avoid plagiarism, but also boring your reader with information dumping requires a bit of learning and skill development. The conversation touches on how different educational backgrounds and academic institutions may lead to widely different understandings of citations and referencing, but also the importance of developing an analytical mind as a researcher and writer.

Resources

NMBU Library's Referencing Styles

Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)

Kildekompasset.no

A rather funny video about the dangers of plagiarism from the University of Bergen

Abstracts are effective ways to communicate a research article or report's main contents, but abstracts also provide us with more subtle information about the intended audience, the research purpose, and the construction of ideas. Niklas and Clay break down an abstract to show you how deeper analysis can highlight important information useful to us as readers and writers.

Read along and form your own opinion of the article:

Cheng, V. C., Lau, S. K., Woo, P. C., & Yuen, K. Y. (2007). Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus as an agent of emerging and reemerging infection. Clinical microbiology reviews, 20(4), 660-694. 

Niklas and Clay pick up the pieces of their lost podcast, discussing practical approaches, tips and ideas about how to move through drafting, getting feedback and revising writing. Feedback comes in many forms, and many degrees of usefulness. Knowing when, where and how to receive helpful feedback can be beneficial to a smoother writing process.

Due to a technical error, our original podcast audio was lost. In this episode, Clay monologues about the Revision Road Map, a conceptual tool that helps you establish goals for your writing and revision process. This episode is a bit shorter, and refers to several online resources. Please follow the links below to access tools and practical examples.

Reverse Outlining

Constructing cohesive paragraphs with the SEEC Structure

The Writer's Diet Test

Revising prepositional phrases

Improving concision

Clay stands firmly behind the idea that 95% of the work involved in academic writing isn't writing at all.

An often overlooked part of the writing process is the pre-writing stage, and Niklas and Clay discuss how being well organized can help you overcome writer's block. We provide some insight into important aspects of pre-writing to improve your writing process, as well as provide some thoughts and strategies on how you can further develop your pre-writing process.

Links mentioned in the episode:

NMBU Writing Centre's YouTube page

Pre-writing Webinar

Welcome to Episode 1 of It's going to be all write. Niklas and Clay host a weekly podcast where we discuss all things academic writing related.

That sounds boring, but we try not to be. The podcast is designed to share ideas, perspectives and resources on how academic and scientific writers can improve their writing processes and practices. We'll try not to be dull, and we hope our experience as educators and Academic Writing Advisors can help you find joy in writing about the microscopic, the macroscopic and everything in between.

It's going to be all write is part of our work at the Norwegian University of Life Science's Writing Centre, a free support service at the University: https://www.nmbu.no/en/students/writing