How to improve your writing: A guide for PhD students and academics
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Published 2022-10-31
Writing is an essential skill for any PhD student or academic, but it's also a huge source of stress. This is partly due to the scale and complexity of the task, but also due to a general lack of training in writing.
Many of the most common pieces of advice (like, "just get words down and sort it out later") simply do not work. In this lecture given at the University of Tübingen in October 2022 I explain some key principles of structure and process that can be applied to any project.
All Comments (21)
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If you like this video, check out this other live talk on The Basic Principles Every PhD Student Needs to Know: 👉 https://youtu.be/VrMwAOtB9S4
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I want to thank you for posting this video. It has got many information that I find valuable.
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So extensive guidance. Glad to listen to this video. Lots of important tips and the speaker has immense patience.
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Your talks are so good, wow!!! Well done. I am in my first semester of my Master's degree in Genetics and now I am writing my research proposal, this is so helpful. THANK YOU!!
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Thanks for your video, it helps me so much for academic writing skill!
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Writing up my PhD thesis now. Many thanks.
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He missed “crying under your desk” in his process section
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It is great to witness wisdom in a testimony, masterclass talk. Metacognition talks help a lot. Thank you for the inspiration.
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Really liked the fundamental problem around 8:10 - made me feel a bit better about the current tangle!
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Im a research scientist in industry and I found this incredibly helpful. Particularly about how other aspects of the research might be causing the issues in writing. Thank you!
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Amazing presentations! It is indeed very important to learn to select from numurous evidence to tell a comprehensive story.
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Thank you so much for your lecture, Dr. Hayton! I will apply the skills you taught us in Portuguese! Greetings from Macau! :)
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Thank you so much. I take notes a lot.
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Eulissa Harvey I totally agree, one should have details. For me, gathering details gives me the the oportuinity to communicate effectively.
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I can't get enough of these lectures. Mr. Hayton, thank you so much!
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Good applicable points. Other than structure I find that tone is also an important yet underrated aspect of academic writing. Of course some disciplines might enjoy more liberty than others but I find that many academics writes in a needlessly boring style. When I began writing my PhD dissertation I would also feel obliged to write in a style where I would distance myself from the writing and strive to make myself invisible as the author of the text in some misunderstood attempt at objectivity. When I read through my dissertation around a 100 pages in I found it to be terribly boring and felt like it could have been written by someone else. So, I decided to scrap the whole thing and start over and write it in a more personal style with humor and excitement and I hoped that it would not be dismissed as being less scientific. It was much more fun to write and edit the new version and at the defense it turned out that the assessment committee really valued the personal style of writing. One even said that it had been such a joy to read and that it would make assessment work much more delightful if more dissertations would feature creative and unique styles of writing.
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Found this on my feed. I regret that Youtube didn't recommend this soon when I'm still in uni :(
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Your lectures are extremely helpful, thank you for posting these! Believe it or not, writing has been my favorite part of my undergraduate degree so far. I'm sure these tips will help me improve!
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Thank you, Dr. Hayton, It's a great video. I will try to apply in Indonesia. Cheers!.
