This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript of the programme. Группа Learning English: http://vkontakte.ru/club17650165 Продолжение транскрипта: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/al_09.pdf
ANNOUNCER: It’s time for Academic Listening - a series for students at English-speaking universities. Join Susan Fearn and members of the World Service class of 2001 for this programme that focuses on academic writing. Susan: We thought about how to make best use of the university library and how to gather relevant material quickly and efficiently. Now it’s time to start writing … a daunting prospect for many students. CLIP: Students I really need help, particularly in writing and in grammar. I need to know how can I write a sentence with the correct form - I think this is very important. During my masters I will have ten assignments and I need to write a report - ten reports - and at the end of the masters I have a dissertation to write, so writing is the most important thing for me. I have a problem to write because I have some topics and I have ideas. I make only one or two pages where I can make, if it is in my native language, ten or fifteen. Susan: At most universities, students are judged by a series of written tests. You may be asked to produce essays, reports, dissertations. You may well be familiar with the three hour exam paper. CLIP: Exam begins Transcript not available Susan: It makes me shudder to think about it! Well, today and in the next programme, we’ll be thinking about how you’re expected to write as part of the academic community, and we’re hoping to make the writing process seem just that little bit easier. CLIP: Christine Reeves There are different elements you could focus on - individual elements which would give you confidence in some areas - for example, how to write a definition, give examples, how to compare and contrast, how to describe cause and effect… These are some of the individual elements that would be very useful. Susan: Christine Reeves teaches English at Bell Norwich – a language school in the East of England. CLIP: Christine Reeves Then you need to look at the organisation of your writing which is also very important. You need to know how to select information, how to plan your essay, how to write an introduction and a conclusion. And some of the quite difficult elements that you would need to study would be how to give quotations, how to give references - the rules are very very strict in British universities, and you need to know the format. Susan: Whether your university is in Britain or elsewhere in the world, in your written work you will be expected to follow certain stylistic conventions. There are rules and guidelines that you can learn. Some teachers also suggest that you can improve your assignments by focusing on the writing process itself. Tony Lynch is a senior lecturer at the Institute for Applied Language Studies at the University of Edinburgh. CLIP: Tony Lynch By process I have in mind getting used to the cyclical nature of writing, thinking of writing as a series of loops, planning an outline, drafting, adding ideas at various points, revising and so on. And all of the parts of the process are important - if you don't give yourself enough time for any one of them you'll end up with a piece of writing that is less good than it would otherwise be. Susan: According to Tony Lynch, it’s helpful to think of the writing process as a series of stages. The first of these consists of drawing up a preliminary outline for your assignment. Next comes a period of research before you write your first draft. Then you can revise and improve your draft, and write the final version to hand in to your tutor. In fact, within reason, you can go on revising and redrafting your material as many times as you like until you reach the deadline for submitting the work.