Academic writing and being critical

Academic writing is daunting. Capturing all your thoughts and analysis and putting them down onto paper in some sort of understandable fashion is a challenge. Did you know we have resources in our Cranfield Study Skills Hub to make this process easier to manage?

It is important to think critically when writing. Use our Critical Thinking section to learn more about this process and find examples of the critical questions you should be asking when you gather information and prepare to write.

Our Writing Critically section helps you expand from being merely descriptive to showing the significance of your findings, providing your interpretation of the evidence and source material, building a critical argument and demonstrating your own understanding and position on the topic.

The Academic writing section brings you the essence of writing;

• styles of writing (descriptive, critical or reflective) and their characteristics,
• the writing process including reading and planning,
• overcoming writer’s block; which is very common and can be overcome,
• the writing stages including clarifying, linking your key elements together, and things to watch out for!
• conducting a literature review,
• and starting to write using a thesis template, finding existing thesis examples for inspiration, and looking for training and self-help.

Looking for a training workshop? There are ‘Academic language support’ workshops in DATES on various aspects of writing, including how to avoid plagiarism, what it means to write critically and in an academic style, and how to structure a text to improve flow and clarity.

Photo by Dan Dimmock on Unsplash