Three steps in academic writing

Last year I had a student who was great at writing reflective examples, but often, often, often forgot to first define the theory they were working with; they didn't define what their theory was; or why it was important for what they were doing. They could reflect like a champion though. 

However, in academic writing we need to follow a logical, step by step process. My personal view of this process is what I call: state; define; and connect. To further explain what I mean by this is, I have defined each step a little more:

1. First state the theory behind each aim we are working towards, how it relates to our particular corner of the world, our project, our aim, or our end goal, and cite.
2. Define the theory in terms of its relationship, its importance, its suitability to our aim/goal/outcome, and cite.
3. Connect the learning outcome strongly to our personal aim/goal/outcome using reflection, editing to tie it in to our exploration of the theory, so the links between our personal illustrator and the base theory clearly shows.

Where my former student went wrong was they did not state; and did not define. They missed out the first two steps in creating their academic argument. Despite the fact that they would connect, and connect well, each piece of written work had little to nothing for them to connect their examples to. They had effectively only done a third of the work each time they came to the page.

See the very short example to briefly illustrate what I mean:

This project takes an interpretive approach where “the researcher is part of what is being researched, cannot be separated and so will be subjective” (Dudovskiy, 2018, p. 36). The research project focuses on human behaviour which keeps on changing with the passage of time. The research data will be subjective in nature, which may limit the generalisability, but, as I will triangulate my findings with peer-reviewed secondary articles and books, the limitations should be largely avoided (Dudovskiy, 2018).

I hope this is useful!

Sam

Reference:

Dudovskiy, J. (2018). The Ultimate Guide to Writing a Dissertation in Business Studies: A Step-by-Step Assistance (January 2018 ed.). Research-methodology.net.