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University of Cape Town

Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

University of Cape Town via Coursera

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Overview

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Throughout the world, writing serves to express, record, and even create meaningful moments. In academic spaces, writing becomes the bridge between ourselves and the world of ideas. In this course, we provide practical insights into how to write an academic essay. We show you how to develop the academic skills needed to be a competent academic writer. You will have an opportunity to engage with texts written by academics, and to see how some of the ideas in these texts are used by students in constructing an academic essay. We address some of the challenges these students face with respect to academic writing and offer you the opportunity to practice and to develop your own writing style. For this course, we centre our lessons around a specific topic - the concept of identity, since it forms such an important feature of how we locate ourselves in an ever-changing global world. In other words, this course teaches academic writing skills through getting you to write and reflect on your understanding of identity. So if you are thinking about studying at a tertiary institution, or if you just want to brush up on your academic essay writing skills, this course is for you!

Syllabus

  • Starting to write: Understanding definitions of identity
    • We begin by considering practical aspects of academic writing, such as structure and the importance of defining key terms in an essay. The term we will focus on 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.
  • Developing an argument: shifting identities
    • We continue developing 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. 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. We identify key features of an introduction, then look at introductions written by our three student writers, and provide them with constructive feedback.
  • Supporting the argument: situating identity within culture
    • We discuss culture and its relevance when individuals become mobile, moving between geographical and social contexts. We look at a case study of a student to help 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. 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. We offer practical guidelines on paragraphing, coherence and cohesion. We introduce the core aspects of referencing in essays.
  • Starting to finish: writing the first draft
    • We focus on 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 final discussion is on the ideas of the four thinkers you were introduced to in this course, namely Woodward, Sichone, Blommaert and Thornton.

Taught by

Gideon Nomdo and Aditi Hunma

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Reviews

5.0 rating, based on 3 Class Central reviews

4.7 rating at Coursera based on 262 ratings

Start your review of Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

  • Anonymous
    I am finding the course very interesting. As somebody who is preparing to go to university soon, I found I very helpful in providing a step by step breakdown on how to write an academic essay while using a fascinating case study. I am taking this year off and this course has really helped me get back into a more academic headspace while also helping me learn the valuable skill of acedemic writing.
  • Anonymous
    A well-thought course that imparts the necessary skills in academic writing. While it is extremely useful to those who are new to academic writing, it is also a good refresher to anyone who has experience. The course also incorporates critical thinking skills as it looks into the main theme of identity and mobility. Assignments are also manageable and allow participants to dive into writing a proper essay. Highly recommend this course.
  • Anonymous
    A well-thought course that imparts the necessary skills in academic writing. While it is extremely useful to those who are new to academic writing, it is also a good refresher to anyone who has experience. The course also incorporates critical thinking skills as it looks into the main theme of identity and mobility. Assignments are also manageable and allow participants to dive into writing a proper essay. Highly recommend this course.
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