Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

Go to Course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/writing-your-world

Introduction

**Course Review: Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space** In today's fast-paced academic environment, the ability to convey ideas through writing is more crucial than ever. With that in mind, Coursera offers a course that stands out for both novice and seasoned writers: *Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space*. This course promises not just to enhance your writing skills but also to help you define and explore your identity through academic writing. **Course Overview** The course is presented through a structured syllabus that dives into essential components of academic writing, including understanding one's identity, developing a cogent argument, situating ideas within cultural contexts, and crafting a polished final draft. Throughout this journey, learners engage with academic texts, offering a practical lens through which to digest complex ideas. **Detailed Syllabus Breakdown** 1. **Starting to Write: Understanding Definitions of Identity** This module introduces students to fundamental aspects of academic writing, focusing particularly on the concept of identity. Students will examine Kath Woodward’s insights and are encouraged to formulate their definitions, fostering a sense of ownership over their writing. The collaborative feedback process is a standout feature, as it enables learners to refine their thoughts while engaging with peers. 2. **Developing an Argument: Shifting Identities** The second week shifts toward the intersection of identity and mobility, emphasizing historical contexts and their relevance today. This week places a spotlight on writing an effective introduction, guiding students through the initial steps of academic argumentation. The approach to reading, with the introduction of the *preview, overview, and inview* strategy, equips learners to critically engage with their sources, honing argumentative skills that are essential for crafting comprehensive essays. 3. **Supporting the Argument: Situating Identity Within Culture** Delving deeper into cultural implications, this module encourages students to explore how cultural resources play a role in identity formation. The case study of a UK student in Johannesburg is particularly enriching, promoting a nuanced discussion on the connection between culture, identity, and the effects of globalization. Additionally, this week lays the groundwork for strong paragraph development, coherence, and the importance of referencing—core components that many writing courses overlook. 4. **Starting to Finish: Writing the First Draft** In the final week, students synthesize all they've learned to draft their essays. This wrap-up not only revisits key concepts but also emphasizes peer feedback, providing an experiential learning opportunity critical to the writing process. Here, learners receive comprehensive reviews of their drafts, which is invaluable as it aligns with the skills learned throughout the course. **Why I Recommend This Course** *Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space* excels in its pedagogical approach. It balances theory with practice, ensuring that students are not merely receiving information passively but are actively engaging with it. The incorporation of peer feedback mechanisms greatly enriches the learning experience, fostering a community of learners who support one another's writing journeys. Additionally, the course’s focus on identity and culture is timely and relevant, encouraging self-reflection and deeper inquiry into how personal backgrounds influence academic writing. This is particularly beneficial for students from diverse backgrounds or those entering new educational spaces. Whether you are a student preparing for an academic career, a professional looking to improve your writing skills, or simply someone interested in exploring the intricate relationship between identity and writing, this course offers invaluable resources and insights. In conclusion, I enthusiastically recommend *Writing Your World: Finding Yourself in the Academic Space* to anyone eager to elevate their academic writing skills and to understand the broader implications of their work. Engaging, informative, and practical, it’s a worthy investment in your academic journey.

Syllabus

Starting to write: Understanding definitions of identity

This week, we will consider practical aspects of academic writing, such as structure and the importance of defining key terms in an essay. The term we will focus on this week is identity. After hearing Kath Woodward’s ideas on identity, our three student writers, Ada, Ziggy, and Joey will write their own definitions of identity. Emphasising that writing is a process, we will give feedback on the students writers’ definitions. We will then provide you with the opportunity to draft your definition of identity, give feedback to other learners and receive feedback from them.

Week 2 further develops the concept of identity by considering the effects of mobility on one’s identity. Throughout history, as individuals moved across borders, they were either welcomed or perceived as an outsider or a threat. In South Africa during Apartheid, people within the country were further separated into ‘homelands’, and those who challenged the boundaries such as Nelson Mandela were labelled as criminals and terrorists. To help you formulate ideas on such concepts in your essay, we now consider the features of a good academic essay focusing on the introduction. We also introduce a three-part strategy to approach your readings: preview, overview and inview. The task for this week is drafting an introduction at university level. We identify key features of an introduction, then look at introductions written by our three student writers, and provide them with constructive feedback.

This week begins with a discussion of culture and its relevance when individuals become mobile, moving between geographical and social contexts. We look at a case study of a student from the United Kingdom who comes to Johannesburg, South Africa. The case study helps us to think about who owns culture and how different or similar we are across contexts. Next, we consider Thornton’s arguments about culture. He argues against the view that there are many cultures and notes that there is only culture. Thornton considers culture as a resource to which people have different degrees of access. Some examples of cultural resources are clothes, money, beliefs, ideas. Individuals draw on these to construct their identity, but unequal access to these resources that are valued gives some people more possibilities to construct identities that are dominant and more valued. This creates a semblance of difference between groups of people. As people move across borders, these differences may become heightened, because some of the cultural resources that an individual carries with her, may cease to be relevant or may be seen as threatening. So, when supporting one’s argument about what happens to identity as individuals move across borders, it is important to delve into culture and how culture creates differences, how it may accentuate boundaries, and how these may or may not impact on identity. Writing paragraphs in support of one’s argument requires close attention to how the paragraphs link with the position, and with other ideas across the paragraphs. Hence, we offer practical guidelines on paragraphing, coherence and cohesion. We give an example of a well-written paragraph and analyse its form to see why it is good. We then review paragraphs submitted by our three student writers and note what is strong and what could be improved in each. We introduce the core aspects of referencing in essays. We also explain why referencing is an important part of academic writing when we are referring to different people’s views (or voices) and distinguishing these from our own.

This week we sum up the ground we have covered in this course. The week is about crafting your final essay draft. We recap the building blocks of writing an academic essay, relooking at the features of an introduction, body, conclusion and the purposes of cohesion, coherence and referencing. We also consider and provide engaged feedback on the draft essays written by our three virtual students. There is detailed feedback on the strengths, improvements and opportunities for further improvement on the essays. The feedback is aligned with the core skills introduced in the course, such as writing the topic sentence, linking sentences and ensuring coherence and cohesion. Thereafter we sum up the course with a discussion on the ideas of the four thinkers you were introduced to in this course, namely Woodward, Sichone, Blommaert and Thornton.