SUSAN MITCHELL
WRITING RETREAT
This two-day Writing Retreat is designed for early career researchers to
enhance their academic writing whilst working towards writing a paper or a
thesis. The Retreat provides opportunities for participants to develop
professional writing and self-editing skills within a well-organised academic
framework, to apply what they have learned and to gain feedback on their
own prose – all free from the usual work distractions.
The first day consists of intensive tuition and gives participants immediate,
useable methods of improving prose, developing organisation, and avoiding
common errors. The day involves instruction, group exercises and
discussion, all designed to increase participants’ confidence in their own
writing skills.
The second day gives participants the time and space to work on their own
academic prose, both individually and in small groups, with support from the
experienced tutor.
PROGRAMME: FIRST DAY
09:00 WELCOME
09:10 – 12:30 EFFECTIVE WRITING:
introduction - writing for your readers;
altering text - editorial techniques;
differences between written and spoken English;
removal of redundant words and phrases;
active versus passive sentences;
common grammatical errors;
common punctuation, capitalisation and spelling errors;
confused and misused pairs of words;
proofreading and checking for readability and accuracy.
12:30 – 14:00 LUNCH
14:00 – 14:15 HOW TO AVOID OFFENDING YOUR READERS:
style, jargon, bias and political correctness.
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SUSAN MITCHELL
14:15 – 16:00 ORGANISATION OF INFORMATION:
solving writers' block;
emphasising the 'message';
ten basic ways of organising information;
paragraphs;
description, explanation and persuasion;
organisational clues – signpost words;
advantages and disadvantages of structural repetition;
adding text - examples and analogies.
16:00 – 16:45 WORKSHOP:
learning from other people's mistakes;
plan for tomorrow.
16:45 E ND OF COURSE
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SUSAN MITCHELL
WRITING RETREAT
PROGRAMME: SECOND DAY
09:00 WELCOME
09:05 – 09:50 INTRODUCTION:
09:50 – 11:00 WRITING 1: GENERATING WRITING (70 MINUTES)
11:00 – 11:20 BREAK:
11:20 – 11:30 DISCUSSION:
11:30 – 12:30 WRITING 2: STRUCTURING WRITING (60 MINUTES)
12:30 – 14:00 LUNCH:
14:00 – 14:15 DISCUSSION:
13:35 – 15:00 WRITING 3: JUST WRITING (45 MINUTES)
15:00 – 15:20 BREAK:
15:20 – 15:40 WRITING 3: CONTINUED: JUST WRITING (20 MINUTES)
15:40 – 16:10 WRITING 4: POLISHING WRITING (30 MINUTES)
16:10 – 16:30 DRAWING TOGETHER WHAT HAS BEEN LEARNED
16:30 – 16:45 CONCLUDING THE RETREAT
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SUSAN MITCHELL
WRITING 1:GENERATING WRITING
Private Writing
What writing have you done in the past? (30 words)
What writing are you doing in the present? (30 words)
What writing would you like to do in the future? (30 words)
What is your favourite book and why? (50 words)
Free writing
Four sides of A4 paper.
Write about your research until you reach the end of the fourth side. Don’t
worry about full sentences, good grammar, etc. The one rule is that you must
not stop writing.
Questions
Questions about what you are writing now.
Who are your readers? (20 words)
What did you do? (50 words)
Why did you do it (50 words)
How did you do it? (50 words)
What happened? (50 words)
What does this mean in theory? (50 words)
What does this mean in practice? (50 words)
What is the research’s key benefit? (50 words)
What remains unresolved?
Active verbs
Write a sentence connected with your research for at least 25 of these active
verbs.
Demonstrate, reveal, question, show, confirm, illustrate, suggest, argue,
identify, highlight, provide, compare, contrast, clarify, outline, conclude,
support, provide, maintain, consider, state, answer, explain, acknowledge, list,
find, inform, review, imply, assemble, refute, focus, reveal, agree, disagree,
seek, influence, produce, synthesise, establish, focus, change.
Signpost words and phrases
Write a sentence for each of these signpost words/phrases
Firstly…secondly…, originally, recently, in addition, for example, in short,
therefore, because, in conclusion, however, on the one hand…on the other
hand, surprisingly.
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SUSAN MITCHELL
WRITING 2: STRUCTURING WRITING
Structural pyramid
Draw a structural pyramid
Your research
Research that your research is based upon
Underlying principles.
What have you found out and so what?
Write down your most important finding.
Write down why this is important.
Find a partner
Find a partner and talk for two minutes on your research. During this time you
have to convey your most important finding and why it is important. At the
end of the talk the other person has to write it down and then read it back to
you. (Feel free to use the white board to plan it out.) Then write down the
three most important findings of the research.
Methods of organisation
Consider the possible ways of organising material and choose at least three
to use when writing a section of your work. Draw plans to illustrate how they
might work.
Chronological
Deconstruct, define and reconstruct
Generalspecific
Specificgeneral
Complexsimple
Simplecomplex
Most importantleast important
least importantmost important
Compare and contrast
Cause and effect
Problem and solution
Plugging the gap
Why other research is wrong and mine is right
Any other method of organising material
Key words
Think of five key words.
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SUSAN MITCHELL
Writing 3: Just Writing
Write up a section of your research
Read through your generated text and either write a first draft of a section or
re-write/edit one that you have already written.
Break down your headings into sub-headings if you need to do so.
If you get stuck on one subheading then start another and come back
to the first one later on (or try chatting to me or others about what you
really want to say).
Check for good writing practice from what you have learned.
Check for coherence of argument.
Check against editor’s and peer reviewers’ checklists.
Resources: Manchester Phrasebank. Handout of rhetorical devices.
Writing 4: Polishing Writing
1. Choose a paragraph and shorten it by 5 words. Give the paragraph to
your partner and they have to see if they can shorten it further.
2. Choose a page and check for flow. Map the beginning of one sentence
and the end of the next. You will probably need at least one instance
of flow per page.
3. Check for good use of signpost words.
4. List topic sentences – they should provide the ‘story’ of your writing.
5. Identify areas where you have used anadiplosis and parallelism. Try
out two or three further rhetorical devices.
6. Check sentence length and active sentences.
7. Try reading a section out loud.
8. Proofread a section, not forgetting to check for common errors.
9. Think of a strong concluding sentence.
10. If you have time at the end please write a 4-12 line poem or rhyming
verse on your research – just for fun.
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