Report for the Writing Group Meeting (1:00-2:00pm, 28th December)

Dear my friends

Nice to have a pleasure time with all of you! And it is very wonderful to exchange ideals and experiences!

Now I just simply use my awkward English to try to record some interesting proposes and topics rising in this discussion. Hope all of you can benefit somewhat from it.

(1) Review and Give comments to one’s writing through email or blog
This is an excellent way to know other’s opinion to both our research and writing, then to improve our writing skills greatly. If you have anything wanted to share with us, you can just put it on our blog or circulate it through email.
By the way, Nicol has her own blog http://nicol2007.edublogs.org and welcome you to give comments on it.

(2) Put an abstract on your research topic on our blog
We would know more about your research direction which would pave a better way for our discussion.

(3) What is a good academic writing and what is its difference from other writings?
Need it be as simple, logic as possible? Or with “literary grace”?

Karri said that “different author have different flavors”, and Nicol said that “a good academic writing is trying to make a good framework to convince your audience”. What are your comments on this idea? Feel free to let us know!

(4) Many times we need to trace back the original sources of our literature (books and journal articles), even though there are a good review of them.

Please contribute on the possible missing points of this summary!!

Best Wishes
Wenyu

My goals: Dec 18th-28th

Hi Super Writers:

I wish you all enjoy Christmas Break and refreshed yourselves for your writing goals.

I initially set up my goal as finishing my paper draft. Now, it was achieved already. So I would like to add another goal: to write up a summary of a few papers on narratives & identity.

Cheers

Issa

My goals and best wishes

Dear friends,

Thank you all for your warm welcome and insightful experience sharing!

In view of the fact that I didn't reach the goal I set last week, I believe it will be good for me to target a much more realistic and reasonable amount of work in this week. Hence, two aspects of specific objectives are expected to be completed:

1) Qualitative: Keeping reading and making notes everyday;
2)Quantitative: Reading at least 4 papers and writing a review with more than 1000 words before next group meeting.

Hope I can finish these on time!

Wish you have a carefree holiday in the joyous mood of Christmas and a fruitful new year!

Emily

Super Writer Today

Hi everyone,

I wanna thank you for your active participation and review what we have discussed today.

I think as a first year student in a new academic environment, most of us are still at a loss for what ours study and research shall be at the moment. But just as Issa said, this is a process everyone needs to go through. And fortunetely, we got such a warm supportive group to help each other which our senior colleagues might not have before. So enjoy the unique jumbled period, you gonna miss it later:)

I just collected some sensible sentence as follow:
* Writing is a way of thinking.
* Let reading follow your thinking.
* Start out with a mind-map when writing.
* The rationale of presenting an argument is just like those trivial things in our daily life.
* A judgement is based on an extensive and intensive reading.

Please make a supplement if I left out anything. And if you have some experience, please don't hesitate to post your opinion. :)

Here I got a question: What is the appropriate load for us to read and write per day?

Writing goal from Wenyu (from 18th December to 28th December)

Dear all superwriters,

I am trying to set a realistic writing goal for the next week (about 10 days).

I will try to write one subtopic in my literature review which is supposed to be about 3 pages.

This time my strategies is concerning more on the quality than quantity of the writing!

By the way, the communication in this group meeting gave me a lot of inspiration and encouragement. Thanks for all of you!!!

Best Wishes

Wenyu

my writing goal (later posting)

Dear all,

Warmest wellcome to Emily and Best Wishes to Meilan!

I am sorry to post my writing goal of previous week for that i had a messy head those days.

To write one pages of literature review on my reseach especially the broad background of my research topic is my writing goal for last week.

Looking forward to seeing you and sharing with you!

Best Wishes

Wenyu

,Thank you, my dear friends,I am still a member of super writer(Meilan)

Hello,dear friends,
I have to say bye-bye to you,but I still a member of the family of super writer,I will keep on writing and continue to exchange my writing experience with you.
In the past week, I finish my writing task I set last time but it was not a perfect piece of work.
My goal for the next week's writing is :
1) revise my literature review part to make it more perfect, try to add about 400 hundred words;
2) write a book review of the book:Collabrative Action Research for English Language Teachers
Wish you happy everyday !

My goals: Dec 11th-18th

It seems that when the weekend is coming, when looking forward to the next week, I always think of the Super Writers first: have I posted my goals? how am I doing this week? Posting the goals is like to make a promise to myself. There is certain pressure there.
I have set two writing goals for this slot of time: 1) writing for PPT; 2) writing for paper draft. So far, half is done. See how much that I can finish by the next meeting.

Happy to be a super writer!!

Dear everyone,

How are you?

First, I would like to thank Wenyu for her kindness to invite me to join this writing group. It's my great pleasure to be one of you, my excellent peers.

Also, I can't help saying that our group discussion yesterday was very very useful and inspirationally stimulating, although it was the first time I attended this activity. I believe we will benefit enormously from it and also make a lot of progress in our writing skills so long as we keep it on.

Finally, I am very happy to be the first one to set a writing target for this week as: a) revising the review (written in Chinese); b) jotting down all the reflection while reading, and trying to organize all the thinking fragments themetically at the end of the week.

Good luck to everybody!

Iris

First of all, as the chairperson of the meeting today, I'd like to thank the seven super writers - Jun Jin, Lucia, Issa, Emily, Wen-yu, Mei-lan, and Alam- for their attendance and active participation in the meeting. I am also very happy to find that we had a new member today. You are very welcome - Emily :)

In the meeting, each of us reported what we had written in the past week and whether we had achieved our goals that we set last time. Although most of us except Wen-Yu found that we didn't complete exactly what we had planned to write, the positive side is that we all kept on writing something :) For myself, I wish that I would really carry out the plan and achieve the goal as Wen-Yu did :P

Many people talked about the importance and difficulty of keeping balance between reading and writing. We find that if we don't read enough, we don't have much food for thinking and writing; but if we start writing only after we read much (there may be no such things of reading enough) , we may have forgot most of what we have read. Someone suggests that it is critical to find the right point to start to write. But what is the right point? Can any one give some opinions or comments on this?

All right, it's time for me to set the writing goal for the coming week.
1. Write short summaries of a few articles that I've read;
2. Draft the "summary of research proposal" for the application form for the ethical approval.

My goals: Dec 4th-10th

It seems there are a lot of things to be finished as follows:

1) a paper draft
2) supervision record
3) revising writings for action research
4) PPT for PRC

I don't know how many of these items could be finished. Try my best!
Issa

Photos

Hi everyone,
Here are the photos. We have a lovely family! :)

Next meeting: Dec. 11th

Hi Super writers,

We had a great sharing on Tuesday! Thank Karri very much for chairing the meeting and Iris will chair the next one.

We also decided to meet up at 1pm every Tuesday in the common room in HOC building. For those who could not attend the meeting, we could still meet up in our blog. Isn't it great?!

Issa

Writing goal from Wenyu (Cathrine)

Dear Superwriters:

My tentative writing goal is trying to finish an about 5 pages literature review on my thesis.

Look forward to meeting you at the next meeting!

Best Wishes

Wenyu (Cathrine)

Karri's goal Dec 4

It's my pleasure to join this group. We are all super writers. Let us keep up the good work (I mean keep writing and reading).

My goal for this week is to revise my Introduction and Literature Review parts for my MEDD assignments by next Monday night.

Talk to you all next time.

Lucia's goal

Hi, good to catch up with you guys at the last ten minutes of the meeting:D And it is cheerful to talk with all of you. Following is my goal for writing: Finish the introduction with at least 10 pages. Difficult for me, so give me some more courage, please!

Hi everyone

Hi, sorry for the delayed participation since it's been quite hectic at work. I think I'm the only part time student in the group.

I make this up to you by already solving the multiuser problem. Check your email and you should receive an invitation to join this blog.

My own research writings is hosted on my own research study blog. I'd like to invite you all to read it and comment on my blog: http://nicol2007.edublogs.org

Happy writing and blogging, everyone!

My goals

I set up my goals from Nov. 24- Dec. 4 for writing when we met last time as follows:

1. Revise the writing for newsletter
2. Write the outline for PRC presentation
3. Write the thesis synopsis
4. Write an abstract for conference
5. Write for action research project

It is a bit late to post the goals. :)

Issa

My goal -Alam

Dear All,

I must thank to Issa for introducing and expediting this academic idea. I do appreciate the initiative led by Iris to open a platform to post and discuss the issues of academic writings. I also thank her to give an appropriate name of the group. Specially, I welcome active participation of all members ( super writers) of this group. I also welcome to Jun for coordination of group activities.

I am sorry for late posting of my goal on writing. My goal was to complete a draft course assignemt by 5 December 2007 and write a abstract for a conference.

I hope this group will move forward to it's goal.

Iris wants to reset a more practical writing goal.

My dear Super Writers friends, how are you ? I must confess that the goal now seems to be too ambitious to be achieved. (Although it is quite embarassing to confess that, as you may imagine:P). So I am wondering whether I can give myself a more practical and manageable writing task. Anyhow, by next time that we meet, I'll sure have some written work done :)

P.S. Pls be remined that you must log into the blog first and then you can add your articles or comments or anything you want on the blog. Looking foward to meeting you here :)

Iris

Hi, my dear friends, so glad that we finally take actions toward becoming Super Writers! Many thanks to Issa for initiating the brilliant idea, for getting us together, and for bringing us to the wonderful Thai restaurant :)

Okay, now I'll speak out my writing goal for the next meeting:

I'll read 4-5 articles by Harlen and then write a review based on the reading.

Please give me applause if I complete what I promise when we meet next time :)