my supervisor says I need help with my writing

Great way to be proactive about writing help

Think Ahead Blog

Dear Thesis Writer,

Thanks for contacting me and for being proactive about developing your writing!

My first question is to ask you whether you have got specific and detailed feedback from your supervisor(s) about what they think and how you can improve? Have you talked to them about the feedback they have given you, so you can understand how to move forward? This is the most personalised and relevant way to improve writing, as it is within the context of your discipline area, and specific to your learning needs. It’s well worth a chat if you haven’t already, as it means you aren’t operating on assumptions about what they think.

If you have had this discussion about your feedback, and agreed with your supervisors(s)that you need further opportunities to develop — below are some ideas you can try out:

Are you taking into account that writing at this level needs…

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Publishing about publishing: a review of ‘Global Academic Publishing’ (eds Curry & Lillis)

By Cally Guerin

Mary Jane Curry & Theresa Lillis (eds), (2018). Global Academic Publishing: Policies, Perspectives and Pedagogies. Studies in Knowledge Production and Participation: 1. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

In response to increasing pressure from institutions and funding bodies for academics to make their research public, there is a great deal of advice—and anxiety—for those seeking to publish their research. Doctoral writers, too, are often caught up in this ‘push to publish’ and, as emerging scholars, they are likely to be even less well informed about the challenges and nuances of navigating the system than seasoned researchers. When I saw that Mary Jane Curry and Theresa Lillis had published a collection of essays about publishing, I was keen to get some fresh insights into the current state of play in this vexed area—and I have learnt a great deal from their new book.

How many hours writing for the doctorate?

By Ian Brailsford, Postgraduate learning adviser, Libraries and Learning Services, University of Auckland.

The rose-tinted view of the leisurely doctorate taking as long as it needed to complete (if it ever really existed) has been consigned to history with global drivers for ‘timely completions’. But it’s fair to say that doctoral candidates have more flexibility in determining their work schedules than most other ‘knowledge workers’. So, in determining this schedule, how much time should doctoral candidates devote to the business of writing a thesis?

The Perfect Coat: Form and Function in Thesis Writing

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Wring style, writing structure

By Dr Anaise Irvine (Auckland University of Technology) and Dr Ian Brailsford (University of Auckland)

Anaise works as a researcher development coordinator at Auckland University of Technology, ensuring that the university offers opportunities for researchers to develop their skills. She has been providing writing tips via AUT’s Thesislink blog for a few years, and gives writing feedback to all students who submit abstracts for AUT’s Postgraduate Symposium. Ian works as a postgraduate learning adviser at the University of Auckland, supporting postgraduate student learning. He has had a long career working with postgrad students in mostly workshop and orientation sessions.

In her new book Developing Research Writing: A Handbook for Supervisors and Advisors (co-edited with Susan Carter), Deborah Laurs points out that learning advisors like ourselves “see many more instances of postgraduate writing than any one supervisor” (p.43). While supervisors become well-versed in the writing standards of their discipline, we witness the writing struggles that occur across disciplines. This equips us to engage in ‘big picture’ thinking about principles of good academic writing that transcend disciplinary norms.

We find it useful to translate these big picture ideas into metaphors and heuristic techniques that enable students to process the discipline-specific advice they are already (hopefully) receiving from their supervisor/s. If supervisors are giving detailed feedback on thesis drafts, then these heuristic techniques can help students to make sense of details by understanding the general writing principles underpinning the feedback they receive.

Through recent collegial coffee conservations, we’ve devised a metaphor to help students grasp the fundamental notions of thesis form and thesis function. We offer it here, in the hope that it can be useful in our colleagues’ conversations with students.

Mental health, doctoral study and supervision: Can ‘troubles with writing’ mask other problems?

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Mental health and doctoral writing, mental health and supervision

By Claire Aitchison

Corridor conversations often reflect problems more widely felt. Recently a friend, just back from dealing with a particularly difficult student-supervisor issue, revealed how concerned she was about the mental health of both parties. She had been called in to help because the student reportedly was having ‘trouble with her writing’.

For those of us who regularly work in the space between supervisor and student, being called in to help is likely to expose us to a disproportionate number of ‘troubles’. Whether identified by supervisors, research committees or students, I have come to expect a relatively predictable range of ‘troubles with writing’. These ‘troubles’ can often be sheeted back to the following:

• unhelpful feedback (typically inconsistent, contradictory, incorrect, uninformative, inappropriately delivered);
• neglect (typically little or no feedback, no formative feedback, feedback too late to be developmental);
• student resistance to taking advice;
• writers’ block.

As a literacy adviser and/or academic developer across different institutions over many years, I have also learned that such ‘writing troubles’ often coexist with intensified emotional states. Writing is a deeply personal and emotional activity – and doctoral writing is particularly fraught because the stakes are so high. For supervisors and students alike, much is riding on the ability to explain one’s work eloquently and to argue convincingly for significance. The research has to be sound, but so does the medium for conveying this good work: the writing.

But I am interested here in the co-existence of ‘writing problems’ and mental health.

Writing groups, writing retreats, boot camps and other social writing events for doctoral writers – a call for posts

By Claire Aitchison

The editors of this blog have long been keen advocates for doctoral writers to come together to do, and share, their writing – whether that be in regular small writing groups, or in writing retreats, boot camps or the like. Over the years we’ve had numerous conversations about running and attending such groups and written here and elsewhere on the subject.

Not only have we frequently facilitated such groups, as academics and personally, we continue to be convinced of their benefits for getting writing done, for learning about writing and for developing valuable networks. In fact, Susan Carter and I first met back in 2011 when I was lucky enough to join her on her annual writing retreat. You can read about this wonderful week-long event that continues to be held in New Zealand biennially. In addition, Cally and I have written and presented about writing in groups.

Given our enthusiasm for these kinds of writing practices, it is curious that, to date, we have given them so little space in this blog. We’d like to make amends – and hence this post, which is also a call for blog proposals.