1. Lawrence Cleary Co-director Regional Writing Centre, UL www.ul.ie/rwc
FYP Workshop
Lawrence Cleary
Co-director Regional Writing Centre, UL

2. Organisation of the presentation
Processes (research and writing)
Assessing the situation
Strategies (for negotiating the process of research and text production and for better assessing of the occasion for writing)

3. Assessing the situation
We do this at the beginning of our process to get a sense of what we’re in for, what’s involved.
Aristotle would organise the assessment of the writing situation around five topics:
The occasion for writing
The topic
The audience
The purpose
The writer
Presented here is a framework that can be applied to any writing situation. Our situation is an academic context, where we write for academic assessment. In other situations such as in creative writing situations or workplace writing, our assessment would tell us that we might have to rethink our process and some of the strategies that we normally apply in an effort to negotiate that process. Though we might talk about some of the same topics in these new situations, our reason for doing so would be different, as most likely might be our audience and their needs. So good writers begin their process by looking at their situation first, sussing it out, thinking about what kinds of texts typically emerge in these situations and thinking about what it is possible to do given the confines of the context.

4. The Occasion: The FYP
The FYP is an academic research project on which the student reports.
A good FYP demonstrates the author’s ability to :
identify relevant issues in the field,
research the work that has already been done on the issue identified and summarise that work in a coherent, logical way,
develop a method of inquiry that is appropriate for the questions asked,
execute the inquiry and analyse the findings,
discuss the findings in the context of what was learned from consulting both the literature and what has been learned in the past four years in the author’s discipline,
come to conclusions that are consistent with what has already been established in the literature, what the findings revealed and what has been learned over the course of the programme.
The occasion for writing an FYP is an occasion that is unique to an academic context. Typically, a good FYP highlights the research and reasoning skills of a student soon to graduate with a Bachelor degree or its equivalent. The FYP is a testament to the intellectual growth of the learner benefitting from three or four years of study at third level in their field. It is a measure of what the student is walking away with in terms of discipline-specific knowledge, critical scepticism, reasoning abilities and cultural knowledge.

5. Research in an Academic Context (1)
Two typical activities of academic researchers:
Taking a position on a point of contention, or
Filling a gap in the field of knowledge
This is not a comprehensive list of what academic researchers do, but in terms of assessment, this is largely it. Research is about finding something out. Understanding it well enough to take a side or well enough to hypothesise its raison d'être.
Naturally, we welcome any challenges to the claim above. If anyone wishes to expand on what we present here or wish to debates the accuracy of our claims, we welcome the conversation.

6. Research in an Academic Context (2)
The inquiry can take a number of typical forms:
Claim  Defence
Question  Answer
Problem  Solution
Hypothesis  Test  Affirmation/Negation
Again, this is what we see. Is there any assignment that does not fit into one of these four categories?
Even a “describe the process by which X occurs” is an argument if you consider that the steps in the process that you outline might be points of contestation or subordinate steps in larger steps the hierarchy of which you were expected to know.
A claim has to be defended, but so do answers, solutions, and how you came to affirm or negate the hypothesis. At the end of the day, the validity and soundness of every assertion needs to be defended.
When we decide that we wish for our paper to defend a claim or answer a question or solve a problem or test a hypothesis, we are already deciding the structure of the argument. At least at the broadest level, we know that the paper that starts with a question will end with an answer. The paper that begins with a hypothesis will end with an affirmation or a negation of the hypothesis.
Naturally, the steps one must follow to answer the question or to solve a problem—these affect how the argument will be organised and structured—its framework.

7. Research in an Academic Context (3)
It is not only about what you know, but also about whether you have demonstrated that you are a good scholar…a good scientist.
Good scientists get to the bottom of things: they choose problems that are difficult to solve, questions that may even be unanswerable—still, they try to understand the nature of things.
The goal of the research is not about being right, it’s about coming to know the nature of things through sound, methodical inquiry leading to supportable, reasoned conclusions about the world and how it works
—consequently, hypotheses tested and negated are as valuable as hypotheses tested and affirmed.
The biggest mistake that students make is to think that they need an indisputable defence or answer. These students engage in hyperbole in making the case: “This paper, then, proves without a shadow of a doubt that socialists go straight to hell when they die!”
Good academic work, good research, is not about taking indisputable positions or asserting unchallengeable (universal) truths. Scholarly research seeks to reveal the nature of things, a better understanding of our reality. We practice good science. That is not to say we are all positivists, convinced that knowledge is something that can only be accessed through scientific method, but we reason like scientists in that we try to explain what we observe and we base or reasoned explanation on what we already know or assume to be true. And our assumptions are scrutinised as well in order to guard against bias and subjectivity.
We are not trying to be right. When we examine something, we want to understand what we do not know or to verify what we already know or to know something more deeply.

8. More about the context How many words do you need to write? (space)
What is due? When? (time)
–both crucial to know for planning purposes
What do people in your field argue about?
What are their values? E.g. What constitutes knowledge? Who has access to it?
How do they support their claims or evidence their conclusions?
Who are the experts in your area? The major leaguers?
Answer these questions and you are already making progress.

9. The Topic
As demonstrated earlier, the topic in an academic context is a problem. It is either
something about which people disagree or
something that is not well understood, some gap in the field of knowledge.
Who talks about this problem?
What did they do to address it?
How did they do it?
What did they discover?
What remains problematic?
When you think through the past three or four years of study, what problems in your discipline most engaged your interest?
It is good to write about things you are interested in, things you want to know more about. If you can learn more about this aspect of your discipline, you not only enjoy the pursuit of that knowledge because you are motivated to know, but you are getting a good grade as well. Two birds. One stone.
Who talks about the problem. If you do not know, go into Google Scholar. Enter the name of the problem. If you get a ka-trillion hits, add terms that might narrow the field. Get the hits down to between 75 and 50, narrower a band if possible. You can read the titles of 50 articles and books and eliminate quite a few just by their titles. Narrow the search by restricting it to the last five years—this is the latest research on the problem.
Choose four or five good titles. Look over the reference pages in each of the articles or books. Who appears in all five articles/books? READ THEM too!!!
Then answer the questions above.

10. Thesis Statement A writing exercise:
In one sentence, state the problem that your FYP will defend, answer, solve or affirm/negate.
This is your thesis statement.
The defence of the claim, the answer, the solution or the affirmation or negation is what organises the argument, hence organises the paper.
Try this. Recall that as you develop your thesis, this statement will grow in detail and better reflect what it is you are trying to discover.

11. The Audience Those who assess the FYP
What do they want to know about what you know?
Evidence that you can perform the programme goals
Evidence of your ability to perform many of the learning outcomes of the modules you have taken over the course of your programme
Evidence of high-order cognitive processing appropriate to your level (undergraduate degree) (See Bloom’s Taxonomy)
Evidence that you have engaged with the discourse of those in your field who talk about problems that interest you
Those in the field who talk about the problem you tackled
Are you engaged in the conversations out there?
Do you sound like them?
Do you demonstrate your understanding of the values of those in your field, etc.
The more engaged you are with the conversations in the discourse community to which you belong, the more you are communicating your membership, even if it is as a novice. I have always found that talking back to those I am reading is a factor in my getting good grades. Knowledge is specific to situation, so engaging with the community allows you to acculturate to the field’s culture, habits and ways of asserting truths, ways of conceding to opposing views, ways of organizing, even authoring, texts, etc.

12. Your Purpose To get an A …and maybe more…
It is as simple as that. When handed an assignment, the question should be: “What do I have to do to get an A? And there’s all kinds of clues. There are learning outcomes stated on your syllabus. There are expectations of graduates in your programme on the school or department website. There are the unwritten expectations of deeper learning and higher order cognitive processing of information. There is the grading criteria and any accompanying descriptors. There is feedback on drafts submitted for teacher feedback.
When I write a paper, I try to keep in mind what the assessor wants to know about what I know. Should I explain this concept? Should I define this term? Should I make the relationship between these two ideas more explicit? Should I provide an example of this? Should I provide a synthesis of these three articles when summarising? Would the assessor prefer that I am more precise in my evaluation? Should I explain how I got there? Etc.
Lastly is the maybe more. It is possible to have ulterior motives. Maybe you want to impress the teacher of the module because you want that person to mentor you in a postgraduate programme. Maybe you’d like to use that teacher as a reference for a job you are eyeing for the summer or for after graduation. Etc.

13. The Writer What do you already know about the topic?
What are your strengths and weaknesses as a
Researcher?
Reader?
Writer?
What do you know about your process? Your strategies?
Given what you know about yourself, what part of this task causes you concern?
What should you prepare for?
And what can you do to get ahead of the problem?
Knowing something about the topic does not necessarily save you time. However, if you can see a way to include that knowledge without compromising the research—in other words, not just including it gratuitously and confusing the reader, it may save you some reading time.
Being self-reflective about what you do is a strategy that good writers employ. The more they know about what works and what doesn’t, the better they can isolate issues and adopt new, workable strategies.

14. A Writer’s Process (1) The initial stages of the process, good writers
Assess their situation,
Plan,
Work to identify a problem to investigate, and
Begin to gather information (from the literature—secondary sources—and from research that they design and conduct—primary sources)
Make notes—while recording the source of information
Start scratching out an outline, dividing the paper into spaces
Begin filling in those spaces
…all in an attempt to figure out what it is that they’re trying to say.
This is Writer-based Writing
Some disciplines require students to locate problems to talk about in the literature. Others might assign the student a problem to investigate. Either way, first, evaluate the situation.
Figure out how many hours you have work on the assignment, then plan.
Once you have a sense of the topic, you can begin reading and taking notes. Knowing the problem you are going to investigate helps you search for articles and books and narrowing your hit rates on databases and Google Scholar. Ask yourself, who talks about this problem? Put the question in the search engine, or put the name of the problem in a search engine.
Identify four or five articles that report their treatment of the problem. Look at their reference pages. Who appears in all of the reference pages. READ THEM! They are the experts that everyone dealing with the problem go to. What are you waiting for?
When you draft, just try to figure out what you are trying to say. Don’t be surprised if you find your research question going through a refinement process. Narrowing your question or re-centring your focus. This is you trying to find your focus and how you will proceed toward an answer you can stand over.

15. A Writer’s Process (2)
It is important to get your ideas down in the Writer-based Writing stage of your process.
It is important not to waste time worrying about how prosaic your expression is or how grammatical your text is or whether you spelled that or that word right or whether it is even the right word—just get the ideas down on paper.
Generate text. Fill space.
It is easier to edit a page full of words than to start with a blank sheet of white A4 paper
Generate text. You can always edit out what you aren’t going to use. What, what, what am I trying to say? What hypothesis am I trying to test? How will I do it?

16. A Writer’s Process (3)
Eventually, thoughts come together. The plan for the defence is clear. You have an argument and an argumentative framework.
Now, you move into Reader-based writing! Here, you know what you want to say, but you begin to be concerned about whether your meanings are clear to your audience. You begin to be concerned about how to say what you mean.
Here we’re looking at style, format, logical flow from section to section and paragraph to paragraph and sentence to sentence.
Concision, precision with language. Explicitness. Etc.
You’ll know when it is time to move into reader-based writing. Some parts of your text may remain in a drafting state where you are still trying to figure out what you are trying say. For instance, you may know that you need to include an explanation of a particular concept, but are struggling to articulate it yet, even to yourself. The rest of the section may be in a revision mode, whereas this bit explaining the concept is still in an drafting mode. You may even still be going back and forth between your resources and your paper with respect to this explanation.
When in the revision mode, you know what you want to say, but are attempting to understand how the reader is hearing it, making sense of it. You may also be thinking rhetorically. How could I make my case more persuasive within the confines of the context?
Typically, revision moves from global changes to more local changes: over all structure of the argument to organisation of ideas within the sections to logical flow of ideas across paragraphs, across sentences within paragraphs, to sentence structure, phrasing, word choice (register).
The over-riding question for the writer: will the reader get my intended meaning? Will the paper do what I want it to do once I set it free to do its job?

17. A Writer’s Process (4) Reader-based writing focuses on
Global revision
The structure of the defence
Local revision
Editing, proofing
Nobody’s process is linear; writing involves iteration and reiteration, advances and retreats, moving back and forth between planning and revision, revision and drafting, editing and gathering information. It is a back and forth process.
Everyone’s process is unique because their strategies for negotiating the process is what works for them.
It makes sense to address global issues first as there is no point in addressing word choice or sentence-level meaning-making strategies if it is determined that the structure of the argument needs a rethink. It is entirely possible that, in the process, entire sections of the argument might end up in the rubbish, so why edit what you won’t be using?
How we negotiate the process has to work for us. When a strategy is working, don’t go back on it. We all have to find out the best way for ourselves to proceed. What works for us? There is no correct process, though there are some things all good writers do:
They assess their writing situation; they consider the time available and they plan; they find a way of making the topic interesting to themselves—maybe finding a particular aspect that is of intrinsic interest, helping with motivation; they monitor their process, thoughts, feelings and social context and make adjustments when progress is threatened.
I shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a person’s process being linear, by the way, though it seems highly implausible. Even if it doesn’t happen on paper, iteration, reiteration, abandonment and replacement of ideas and order occurs in the mind of the writer.

18. Strategies
Borrowing from Rebecca Oxford , we talk about writing strategies using her categories to talk about language-learning strategies.
Metacognitive
Procedural
Cognitive
Affective
Social
Oxford, R. (1990). Language learning strategies. London: Longman.
Metacognition is reflecting on one’s choices. Choices could include a decision to work in the evenings rather than the mornings, inserting this word instead of that, deciding not to include some additional information for fear that it would detract from the argument, …etc., ad infinitum.
Good writers pay attention to those choices and monitor their thoughts and emotions as well. When negative thoughts or debilitating emotions creep in, good writers have ways of turning the messages or feelings off or around so that they can get on with the task.
Including or excluding others from your process is a social strategy. Sometimes, finding a place and a time to write involves negotiating with others to get that time and space. Good writers involve others in their process by offering to read others’ work or to give feedback in exchange for getting the same in return.

19. Writing to prompts (Murray 2005)
“A topic in my discipline that I would like to research is …” (Why?)
“What am I arguing? And am I taking a position similar to some in the literature or verifying something that we already know? Am I proposing new knowledge? Taking a position that is unique when compared to positions taken in the literature?”
Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes.
Write in sentences.
Do not edit or censor your writing.
Discuss what you have written in pairs.
Murray, R. (2005). Writing for academic journals. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
What do you know about this area/topic? Who talks about it? And what kinds of problems are associated with it?
Regional Writing Centre

20. Regional Writing Centre
Writing a ‘page 98 paper’
My research question is …
Researchers who have looked at this subject are …
They argue that …
Debate centres on the issue of …
There is work to be done on …
My research is closest to that of X in that …
My contribution will be …
Murray (2006, p. 104)
Murray, R. (2006) How to Write a Thesis, 2nd Edition. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Early: to establish direction/focus
Associate your project with the literature
Distinguish your project from the literature
Build on research question/hypothesis
Focus reading/thinking
Manageable writing task: 325 words
To develop thinking about your thesis thesis?
Late: to focus thinking as you draft conclusion and revise your introduction
(Murray, 2006: 105)
Regional Writing Centre