Patchwriting is a form of plagiarism that most students aren’t aware is plagiarism – substituting in words into the sentence structure of a source. It’s like Academic MadLibs. In this episode, Adam and Dinur compare paraphrasing to patchwriting, explain why patchwriting is a form of plagiarism, and go over how to paraphrase instead of patchwrite. […]
Many students come up with great topics and arguments for their essays and research papers. The topics are timely, they’re important, they’re interesting. The problem is, these topics are also big enough that they will not fit in a ten-page paper! How do you handle this? Join Adam and Dinur for some help. Show Notes […]
You’ve identified the shared ideas in your sources by finding examples and creating categories. You’ve written literature review paragraphs to tie together those shared ideas and how they’ll help your audience. And now what? Now it’s time to write your first draft and edit it, so it makes sense. Show Notes No Show Notes This […]
You’ve developed your topic, your signposts, your argument and your audience. You’ve found your sources. But now what? Now it’s time to organize those sources, dig into why you’re using them, and come up with their shared ideas so you can write a paper. Join Adam and Dinur as we talk about how to do […]
Many students are told to write papers. Often, the directions are limited to formatting: double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font, a certain number of pages or words. But in college, you often don’t get much more than that for directions. Your professor might choose a topic, or tell you which topics you can choose from, […]
You’ve gotten a prompt for a term paper, or an essay question on an exam. How do you answer the question effectively? Join Dinur and Adam for Dinur’s sports metaphor “Writing as Football,” to learn how to set up, write, and complete these kinds of assignments! Show Notes No Show Notes This Episode
Many students today tend to “write like they talk.” This means that their writing may not take notice of things like spelling and sound-alike words. In a first draft, that’s understandable. Some students don’t realize that the word they wrote isn’t the word they meant to use. Others are hoping for the best, because they […]
So your teacher just told you that for your final paper, you need to write eight pages on a course-related topic. Let’s say it’s a course on race and ethnic problems in the United States. That’s a really big topic, and as a result, too many ideas start to spill into your mind. You could […]
Too many students have been trained into stressing out about the minutiae of citation styles. They worry that a misplaced comma, or an underline instead of an italicized string of words, will bring their grade down or fail them on a paper. Fretting about MLA, Chicago or ASA style takes up more of their time than […]
When students get an assignment for a “paper,” many times they don’t have a clue what kind of paper it is. Too many times, they assume it’s an essay, full of opinions, like just about every paper they’ve written in high school. They think a college paper is just another paper. But there are several […]
One of the biggest problems students report with college writing assignments is choosing a paper topic. In college, you’re expected to pick your own topic, most of the time – but most college students have never had the training in how to do that. In high school, they were always provided with a topic and told […]
Many students see meeting the page count or word count as the goal of writing a paper. They have to churn out 1,000 words or 10 pages to meet some standard that isn’t made clear to them. As a result, they turn in badly written, hurriedly written, rapidly typed, non-proofread pages full of words. They […]
If you’re a brand-new college undergraduate, the chances are good that high school didn’t teach you what your professors expect you to know about doing college research. Instead of research papers, you were probably taught the inverted-pyramid essay, the five-paragraph essay, or the expressive essay. This means that when the dreaded research paper rears its head […]