Academic Writing Workshop (Part Final)
On June 3, 2023 VDMI continued the final part of Academic Writing Workshop, with the topic “Paraphrasing and Quotation”. Attended by nineteen participants (twelve grantees and seven alumni), the session discussed writing a draft, punctuation, paraphrasing and citation/ quotation.
In academic writing, a draft is needed to be prepared. Draft on an essay consists of three elements: 1). Introduction; 2). Body paragraph or content; and 3). Conclusion. Introduction described what the text is all about with one or two sentence (s). Most often, a body paragraph or content consists of three sentences as a viewpoint; two sentences for the positive sides and one sentence for the negative side. Conclusion only needs one sentence to summarize the whole information in the text. Writing in English is challenging. There are certain rules that must be followed, one of which is punctuation. Punctuation will make the sentences easy to read and understand. The use of punctuation should not be arbitrary, because the function is different. For example we can use full stop (.) to mark the end of the sentence; question mark (?) to show that it is a question; slash (/) to separate letters, numbers, or words; and comma (,) to separate items in series.
Academic writing is evidence based writing. Thus, we have to add other sources in our writing. Copying a passage of someone else’s words and crediting the source means quoting. Quotation functions to avoid plagiarism, strengthen the writer’s ideas or arguments, prove an opinion of writing, show the quality of scientific work and improve the aesthetics of writing. We use direct quotation to rewrite someone else’s idea originally. On the contrary, when we take others’ ideas then arrange them in our own words, it is called indirect quotation. The most common quotation styles used in Indonesia are American Psychological Association (APA) style, Modern Language Association (MLA) style and The Chicago Manual of style. Each style has a different structure to cite, for that, we have to make sure the citation style used in our university and follow the rule of the style to cite the sources.
In academic writing, writers can paraphrase a source by changing the wording while preserving the original meaning. It is an alternative way to quote by copying someone’s exact words and putting them in quotation marks. In an essay, we also have to pay attention to writing the references. References are an acknowledgment of the source of the information we used in our essay. Participants were asked to write the references based on their preference citation style and presented in the main room. In general, most of the groups use APA style, except one group that uses MLA style. Ardiansyah (alumnus from Surabaya Institute of Technology) shared that MLA style has a different way to write the references. The most distinguished is on the publication year of the cited journal. MLA put the year of publication at the end of the sentence, while APA put the year of publication after the author’s name.
This workshop continues with discussion about peer editing. Peer editing gives opportunities to get feedback from others and allows us to see other’s perspectives on our arguments or ideas. To do peer editing we can start by reading our partner’s essay several times. On the second reading, go more slowly and look at specific parts of the writing and make notes. We don’t need to look for grammar or spelling mistakes. Just pay attention to the content and organization of the work.
Next, a group of participants were asked to read and give feedback on other group’s work. Representative of group two, Awwaliyah Nur Fadhilah (grantee from Surabaya Institute of Technology) gave feedback for group three that wrote about Chat GPT. Group three can add research analysis about user opinion regarding the positive impact of Chat GPT. Another feedback comes from representative of group four, Febriani Putri Keren Goni (grantee from Medan State University) to group five that discussed mental health. Group five have to add the sources cited in their essay including the references as well. At the end of the workshop, the facilitator encouraged participants to keep on writing. Not to be perfect at the beginning. It will be a long process with revision and feedback, but it will be satisfying when it is done.
