Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

…and for any kind of persuasive writing.

Sure, great writing may take talent and innate creativity. And hey, you’ve got something to say, right? No matter your current level of experience or skills. With a little gusto in your writing step, you can make the reader feel something, take an action, or be more informed than before.

A few tips below to show you how.

Most writers have experienced it at one point or another in their careers: staring at an empty document on their computers or a blank page in their notebooks, and nothing happening. Playwright Paul Rudnick described it as follows: “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write.”

The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) is an educational website that offers tons of excellent free writing resources for students and writers. OWL,  which belongs to Purdue University, has a huge online library that features a wide variety of materials covering different writing-related topics such as grammar and mechanics, professional writing,

One of these skills is, writing. Writing helps one to reflect and to clarify ideas which may otherwise be transient and consequently lost to the learner. Writing helps one to make sense of our experiences, our learning and how one can best relate the learning experience to the world outside the classroom.  In many ways, the act of writing, of reflecting, is learning by doing - something all learners need to have experience of. 

Helen Kara responds to our previously published guide to writing abstracts and elaborates specifically on the differences for conference abstracts. She offers tips for writing an enticing abstract for conference organisers and an engaging conference presentation. Written grammar is different from spoken grammar. Remember that conference organisers are trying to create as interesting and stimulating an event as they can, and variety is crucial.

Peer review not only helps to maintain the quality and integrity of scientific literature but is also key to a researcher’s development. As well as offering opportunities to keep abreast of current research and hone critical analysis skills, writing a peer review can teach you how to spot common flaws in research papers and improve your own chances of being a successful published author. To coincide with the recent launch of the Publons Academy – a free, online, practical peer review training programme for new academics – Jo Wilkinson asked an expert panel of researchers what steps they take to ensure a rigorous and robust review. Their advice has been compiled into the following 12 steps, relevant to both first-time peer reviewers and those keen to brush up on their skills.

What’s the secret to a productive spell of writing? Chris Smith shares insights gleaned from interviews with a diverse group of academics, from which a number of common academic writing habits stood out. These range from the simple acts of scheduling and setting self-imposed deadlines, to both formal and informal accountability partnerships and the use of “freewriting” techniques which help authors write their way out of blocks.

There are so many tools that will help students with the writing process. Some of these tools help organize research while others help students organize their thoughts or locate grammatical errors. 

What do you do when your students procrastinate: writing their essays until the very last-minute? You want to help them succeed. You want to see them grow. How can you help them when there is no essay to criticize? Life of a student is very busy. They just have so much going on in their lives. A typical day of a student starts with maybe a decent amount of sleep. Some exercise. A home cooked healthy meal, or not. Some reasonable hours of study time. So to squeeze in those extra hours to write a compelling essay is hard for them.