How To Write Your Seminar Paper

How To Write Your Seminar Paper

1. How to write your seminar paper

2. What we’re going to look at

« The Writing Process

« What to aim for when you write

« Writing at the Paragraph Level

« Writing at the Document Level

« Revision of the Paper

+ Some Tips on How to Write “Real Good”

© Donald J. N. Smart

3. The Writing Process (1)

+ What method do you use when you start to write?
+ The personal approach
— Asking questions such as:
— Why am I doing this?
— What is the problem etc?
+ The list-maker's approach
Write an outline
— Expand the outline
+ The "moonshine" method (involves distillation)

© Donald J. N. Smart

4. The Writing Process (2)

+ Writing always involves the following cycle
+ Write
* Read
* Discard some
+ Write again
+ Read
+ Discard some more etc. (5x, 10x, 20x YMMV)

© Donald J. N. Smart 4

5. Good Writing (1)

+ On good writing, Sir Peter Medawar wrote:
+ Brevity,

* cogency (convincing reasoning)

« and clarity

+» are the principal virtues and the greatest of
these is clarity

© Donald J. N. Smart

6. What to aim for when you write

(2)

« People who write obscurely :
— are either unskilled in writing
— or up to some mischief

© Donald J. N. Smart

7. What to aim for when you write

(3)

+ Some cultural differences between Finns
writing in Finnish and Speakers of English
writing in English

— Native Speakers of English write English with a
respect for a reader’s time

— Native Finns write Finnish with a respect for a
reader’s intelligence

— Please write with respect for a reader’s time

© Donald J. N. Smart 7

8. The Paragraph Level (1)

+ Every paragraph you write should have the
following features:

— It should only express one idea or theme

— It should start with a sentence which clearly
states this idea

— It should be coherent
— It should contain variation

© Donald J. N. Smart

9. The Paragraph Level (2)

« Every paragrah should only express one
idea or theme
— The main sentence of a paragraph is known as
the topic sentence
+ It usually comes first in the paragraph

+ The topic sentence can be supported by other
secondary sentences

© Donald J. N. Smart 9

10. The Paragraph Level (3)

« Every paragraph should be coherent

— Paragraphs should have ordered patterns, i. e:
* An enumerative pattern (first, second, etc)

+ A chronological pattern (on the first day, on the
second day etc)

- A spatial pattern

+ A logical pattern

+ A general-to-particular pattern
+ Etc

© Donald J. N. Smart

11. The Paragraph Level (4)

« Every paragraph should contain variation

— You can achieve this by
+ Varying the length and structure of your sentences

+ Using the stronger active voice rather than the
passive (more on this later)

« Putting the more important words at the beginning
or end of the sentence

© Donald J. N. Smart il

12. The Paragraph Level (5)

+ It is important to make smooth transitions
between sentences in paragraphs
— To do this, use some of the following
transitional words

, Le on the other hand
in addition
likewise
then

© Donald J. N. Smart

13. The Paragraph Level (6)

+ An example of a good paragraph

e town's traffic problems are appalling. Fora]
start/First/To begin with the town lies on a major

ommercial route| Second/Next/In addition] it
generates its own rush-hour traffic.
Moreover/Furthermore it is near enough to
London to be caught by the capitals weekend
traffic. Anyway/Besides/In any case the narrow
streets were not built for today's cars and lorries.
action is urgently needed.

oobaniesentence is

14. The Document Level

+ A paper usually has the following sections:

— Abstract

— Introduction

— (Materials and Methods)
— (Results)

— Discussion

— References

© Donald J. N. Smart

15. Revision of the Paper (1)

+ When you check your completed paper:
— Revise for content
— Revise for clarity
— Revise for completeness
— Revise for conciseness

© Donald J. N. Smart

16. Revision of the Paper (2)

« Points you should look for when revising for
content:
— Does every sentence say something?

— Are you too caution when you draw conclusions?

+ It is quite usual to show uncertainty about some of your
findings, but don’t overdo it!

— Look out for ambiguous sentences

© Donald J. N. Smart

17. Revision of the Paper (3)

+ Points you should look for when revising
for clarity:

— Does every sentence say what you want it to
say? Usually, we know what we want to say,
but may write it down in such a way that only
we know what it means!!!

© Donald J. N. Smart 17

18. Revision of the Paper (4)
+ Points you should look for when revising
for completeness:

— Make sure that your every thought is complete

— Can any of your pronouns be confused as to
what they refer to?

— Look out for sentences where the reader might
have problems interpreting what you mean

© Donald J. N. Smart

19. Revision of the Paper (5)

+ Points you should look for when revising
for conciseness:
— Throw out phrases such as:
» It should be noted that
« It is interesting to note that
— Throw out unnecessary prepositions
— Do not overuse the passive

© Donald J. N. Smart

20. Revision of the Paper (6)

+ Use of the passive voice:
— Writers should use the active voice when
possible, because:
* The active voice gets you closer to your readers

* You use fewer words when you write using the
passive

© Donald J. N. Smart 20

21. Revision of the Paper (7)

+ Use of the passive voice:
— However, you may still use the passive for the
following:
* To get more variety in your writing

« For situations where you don’t want to be identified
as the culprit

© Donald J. N. Smart 21

22. Revision of the Paper (8)

Beware of spell checkers:
* Look at this paragraph which would have gone
through a spell checker unchanged, and remember to
never depend totally on a spell checker!

I rote a text witch I ran threw a spelling checker. Sins
their where know mistakes in the hole paper, it must bee
perfect. I sawed the fail on may computer and I can use
it whenever I wont two shoe that I can right good
English.

© Donald J. N. Smart

23. How to Write “Real Good” (1)

+ Watch out for articles (a, an, the and ©)
— This is hard because the rules for the use of
articles in English are so difficult to formulate
— The situation is so bad that over the last ten
years, there have been at least four Ph.D’s at
the English Department of Helsinki University
on the use of articles in English

© Donald J. N. Smart 23

24. Flow Chart for Articles

ENTER 1. continuing depletion of domestic fossil fuels
solar energy
important part of these decisions

NOUN

es Use the*
Does this now nave a ra
unique referent? > (the continuing depletionof
domestic fossil fuels)

no

PS ye =
6) @)
Is it a countable noun? Is it singular? Use a or an (an important
part of these descisions).
no no
2)
Use mo article (solaremmy) Use no article

*Or a demonstrative adjectiv (usually (his or these) under certain special conditions .

FIGURE 1 8-2 Use of wow chart for choosing the correct article

Donald J. N. Smart 24

25. How to Write “Real Good” (2)

Watch out for American and British

Spelling

— Even though the Americans are taking over
everything in the world these days, apart from
making efficient voting machines

— The British still hold on to their way of spelling
words

—So

+ Use either one of the other forms in your thesis
© Donald J. N. Smart

26. How to Write “Real Good” (3)

« Bone up on the rules for the use of
punctuation in English

+ The English comma is particularly difficult to pin
down

+ We’ll now look at some punctuation marks and their
uses

© Donald J. N. Smart 26

27. The comma

+ Used between words in a series
+ Used between phrases in a series
« Used between clauses in a series

© Donald J. N. Smart

28. The Semicolon (;)

+ The semicolon is usually used in long complex
sentences. It gives a longer period of rest than a
comma, but a shorter rest than a full stop.

+ It is used to separate clauses which could have
been two sentences, but have a similar meaning
and are of equal importance e.g.

— I saw him the other day in the broad light of day, he
was almost as I had known all those years ago;
although he was much fatter.

© Donald J. N. Smart

29. The Colon (:)

+ This punctuation mark is used to signal something
ahead rather than separating or stopping the
reader. We use it:

+ To introduce a list

+ To introduce direct speech: He said: "I like it
here.”

« To introduce an explanation, or some other aspect
of the first part of a sentence e.g.

— Thad three problems with it: with its size, its ability to
cope, and its inventor.

© Donald J. N. Smart 29

30. The Dash (—)

« It is used to mark a pause, like a comma

© Donald J. N. Smart

30

31. The Hyphen (-)

« This is used when we form compound
words such as a 7-year-old boy, or in
numbers such as twenty-seven.

© Donald J. N. Smart

32. The Apostrophe (*)

¢ To form plurals of expressions which
usually don’t have plurals, such as the
1990’s, this can be also written as the 1990s

« To form plurals of numbers and letters, e.g.,
2 s’s or 2 20’s make 40.

« To form the possessive case e.g., Seppo’s
books

© Donald J. N. Smart 32

33. The Apostrophe (*) (2)

« However note that possessive pronouns do
not take an apostrophe, note the difference
between the it’s and its in the following
sentence.

— It’s (it is) commonly known that its colour is
blue.

© Donald J. N. Smart 33

34. How to Write “Real Good” (4)

+ Beware of typical Finnish errors in English,
such as:
+ “Shortly”, when the writer means “briefly”
+ “On the other hand” and “on the other hand”

© Donald J. N. Smart 34

35. How to Write “Real Good” (5)

+ Finally, pay no regard to that well known
mathematician and cabaret artist, Tom Lehrer
when he says in his song, Lobachevsky:

I am never forget the day I first meet the great
Lochevsky.

In one word he told me secret of success in
mathematics:Plagiarize!

© Donald J. N. Smart 35

36. Happy Writing: “Real Good”

+ Let's now do a couple of exercises to start
you off writing your papers.
Donald Smart

email: [email protected]

© Donald J. N. Smart 36

37. Which versus That

* Which is always used in a nonrestrictive relative clause (one that could
be omitted without changing the meaning of the basic sentence):

— The most common examples of panel methods are the
aerodynamic codes of Hess and Smith (ref. 26), which were
originally developed for nonlifting surfaces.

« That is used in restrictive relative clauses (one that cannot be omitted
without changing the meaning of the basic sentence):

— This is the house that Jack built.

© Donald J. N. Smart 37