Modul ke: Fakultas Program Studi Writing 2 Subandi,S. Pd 10 Perencanaan dan Desain Teknik Sipil The Academic Writing Course focuses on development of academic writing skills of MA students of Social Sciences, by raising awareness of, practicing and reflecting upon the conventions of written texts. In addition the course will help the students become familiar with genres of and enhance skills related to critique, argumentation and research-based writing.

Reading and Writing: Argument & Evidence Some common questions that students ask about writing essays at university are things like these: How is writing at university different from writing at school or at work? Am I supposed to give my opinion in a university essay? What should go into my notes? What should go into my essay? What does my tutor mean by “argument”, in an assignment like “Summarise Anderson’s argument in Chapter 1 of Imagined Communities”? There are lots of things like this that are puzzling as you go into first year, and you’re wise to clarify them early on, and then you can approach your work more efficiently and more confidently.

How is writing at university different from writing at school? Well, you’re still dealing with knowledge, but at university there’s a different emphasis, which is highlighted here with the suggestion that you’re now in the middle of a 3-stage process: In school, you learn what your society knows. As an undergraduate, you learn how knowledge is made. After that, you can go out and make some knowledge.

“ AIMS AND OBJECTS OF STUDY In our view, “studying history” is not to learn a set of pre- selected “facts” and dates relating to a broad chronological span. Rather, we see it as an enterprise in creating and communicating understandings of “others” – people of other eras and other cultures. Integral to this is reflection on what is involved in creating such understandings. We believe that “history” is not “the past”, which has gone and cannot be recovered. Rather history consists of interpretations of the past: anything written or told about a past is an interpretation made in a present, whether contemporaneously by a participant or observer, or later by a historian.”

How to read an article Articles and books that present an argument usually have a similar structure, built around the need to convince a publisher and an audience that the author is doing something that needs doing, in the context of this international conversation in the discipline. So the article will usually start with the context – what it’s discussing and what other people have identified as important about it. Then it will pose a question, or a problem, that this author thinks still needs to be answered, and then it will give his or her answer, which we call the author’s “thesis”. These introductory steps can be demonstrated by looking at the following example from a Politics journal, which is read in a history subject in this Faculty. It’s called “The intellectual origins of mid-Victorian stability”, by Trygve Tholfsen of Columbia University, and it’s published in the Political Science Quarterly, vol 86, no 1, 1971 (57-91): In a well known passage Elie Halevy described Methodism as the key to the “extraordinary stability which English Society was destined to enjoy throughout a period of revolutions and crises.” Although Halevy’s thesis has been subjected to cogent criticism, the general problem that he raised – the stabilizing effect of intellectual forces in the history of modern England – has not received the attention it deserves. This article will consider an aspect of that problem. It will argue that ideas and beliefs derived from the Enlightenment and the evangelical revival contributed significantly to the development in mid-Victorian cities of a remarkably stable culture that co-opted working-class radicalism and contained class conflict within safe limits.

Structure of argument in an article or book: Introduction: Context Question Thesis Signposting Argument: Series of points, with evidence Conclusion

HANDOUT for WRITING BETTER ESSAYS : The uni project: Knowledge is “constructed” by a process of questioning, research, selection and interpretation. Implications for your work: Your degree is an apprenticeship, learning how knowledge is made in a range of disciplines. Key terms to do with making knowledge: Knowledge is made through arguments about the meaning of evidence: e.g. How did humans first settle Australia? Why is the coliseum in Rome designed the way it is?

Exercises Make short paragraph related to examples above ( free topic)

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