Université du Cap

Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

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Throughout the world, writing serves to express, record and even create meaningful moments. In academic spaces, writing becomes the bridge between ourselves and the world of ideas. In this course, we provide practical insights into how to write an academic essay. We show you how to develop the academic skills needed to be a competent academic writer. You will have an opportunity to engage with texts written by academics, and to see how some of the ideas in these texts are used by students in constructing an academic essay. We address some of the challenges these students face with respect to academic writing and offer you the opportunity to practice and to develop your own writing style. For this course, we centre our lessons around a specific topic - the concept of identity, since it forms such an important feature of how we locate ourselves in an ever-changing global world. In other words, this course teaches academic writing skills through getting you to write and reflect on your understanding of identity. So if you are thinking about studying at a tertiary institution, or if you just want to brush up on your academic essay writing skills, this course is for you!

À partir de la leçon

Supporting the argument: situating identity within culture

This week begins with a discussion of culture and its relevance when individuals become mobile, moving between geographical and social contexts. We look at a case study of a student from the United Kingdom who comes to Johannesburg, South Africa. The case study helps us to think about who owns culture and how different or similar we are across contexts. Next, we consider Thornton’s arguments about culture. He argues against the view that there are many cultures and notes that there is only culture. Thornton considers culture as a resource to which people have different degrees of access. Some examples of cultural resources are clothes, money, beliefs, ideas. Individuals draw on these to construct their identity, but unequal access to these resources that are valued gives some people more possibilities to construct identities that are dominant and more valued. This creates a semblance of difference between groups of people. As people move across borders, these differences may become heightened, because some of the cultural resources that an individual carries with her, may cease to be relevant or may be seen as threatening. So, when supporting one’s argument about what happens to identity as individuals move across borders, it is important to delve into culture and how culture creates differences, how it may accentuate boundaries, and how these may or may not impact on identity. Writing paragraphs in support of one’s argument requires close attention to how the paragraphs link with the position, and with other ideas across the paragraphs. Hence, we offer practical guidelines on paragraphing, coherence and cohesion. We give an example of a well-written paragraph and analyse its form to see why it is good. We then review paragraphs submitted by our three student writers and note what is strong and what could be improved in each. We introduce the core aspects of referencing in essays. We also explain why referencing is an important part of academic writing when we are referring to different people’s views (or voices) and distinguishing these from our own.

Writing paragraphs3:32

Quotes and paraphrasing3:06

In-text referencing4:11

Coherence and cohesion3:18

Student writers drafting their paragraphs8:52

Giving feedback on Ada’s paragraph5:14

Giving feedback on Ziggy’s paragraph5:51

Giving feedback on Joey's paragraphs3:11

Rencontrer les enseignants

Gideon Nomdo
Lecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development
Aditi Hunma
Lecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development

Let us now have a look at Ziggy's paragraphs.

Remember, last week, Ziggy introduced identity in terms of

black African identity and spoke about the dehumanizing effects of colonization.

In his first paragraph here,

he goes on to identify himself as a proud black Zulu man and a

born-free that is someone born after the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa.

He uses his personal identity as an example to illustrate that identity is fixed.

He then traces the history of his ancestors in

the South African apartheid era and describes the erosion

of identity when they were forcibly removed from their homes.

He then demonstrates how in the post-apartheid era the Zulu people moved across

political and social boundaries and how despite

this erosion still proclaim their proud Zulu heritage.

While the idea of erosion does signal that identities change,

Ziggy still holds on to the idea of

a core Zulu identity that may get lost but not get transformed or be fluid.

This is good because this idea is consistent with

his thesis statement in the introduction that identity is inborn and fixed.

He writes, "One does not always need to cross

international borders to experience a loss or violation of one's identity,

as the story of my ancestors illustrates.

Identity is therefore at our core;

it is what holds us together as distinctive social groupings and

it's what gives us as individuals a sense of purpose in our lives.

(Woodward, 1997).

Ziggy's second paragraph looks much more broadly at

the global context and what happens when individuals move across national boundaries.

He could have strengthened the link between

the second paragraph and the previous one by adding a linking phrase

at the beginning of the second paragraph which then forces

the reader to consider what was stated in the previous paragraph.

For example, if we use the following linking phrase taking this further in

the broader context then the impression is

created that Ziggy is building on what he has said earlier.

This would read as follows.

"It took blood, sweat and many tears for

my family to establish a successful black-owned business,

and I am extremely cognisant of the types of sacrifices that were

made to get us here to once again proclaim our proud Zulu heritage.

Taking this further in the broader context of

our fast-paced and globalizing world we have reached a stage of

mobility that allows us to cross a number of borders

nationally on the continent and internationally in a matter of hours."

This second paragraph presents

an interesting and nuance view on what happens to identity as people move across borders.

Evidently here, Ziggy shows that border crossing

affects how individuals view and enact their identities.

This seems to contradict his previous position that

identities are fixed and can only get lost or remain the same.

So Ziggy might have to revisit that.

Also, Ziggy has not mentioned

Thornton who speaks quite a bit about the ways in which boundaries or

borders are constructed to deny or promote access to people from different groupings.

Thornton shows quite nicely how the meanings associated with

particular identities tend to change in the process of crossing borders.

Ziggy's use of Thornton would have created a strong link

with Sichone's arguments about xenophobia.

His third paragraph introduces the essay and

this could obviously have featured in the introduction as the roadmap.

"In this essay I draw on Woodward's (1997) theorising of identity and

Blommaert's (2005) concept of mobility

and what it means to move from one context into another."

If we view Ziggy's consolidated introduction now,

it presents quite a strong personal narrative with respect to

the theme of identity and the issue of black identity in particular.

Ziggy provides a nice context for the reader to

locate his views on identity in relation to the essay topic.

He introduces us to the authors and their work and the ways in which he

wishes us to engage with them around the question of identity and mobility.

Ziggy occupies a very strong position with

respect to the argument he wishes to put forward.

So in short, he provides quite a nice roadmap for the readers

here in terms of what he wants them to keep in mind as they read his essay.

So in terms of strength,

we would say that Ziggy's reference to

his personal experience and the local context gives

his essay social relevance and generates

more interests than a predictable or abstract discussion.