Category: writing advice

2022 in review: Academic Writing

This post brings together ten of the best pieces focused on the practice and particularities of academic writing published on the LSE Impact Blog in 2022. New AI tools that can write student essays require educators to rethink teaching and assessment A…

2018 in review: round-up of our top posts featuring advice on academic writing and presentations

Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity 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 […]

The Materiality of Research: Creating a community of writing practice in the classroom

Despite most students being partly or wholly assessed on their writing, very few would consider themselves to be writers. Nonia Williams Korteling explores how students might be supported in feeling more confident about writing processes and practices in the classroom, focusing on two methods that can help students begin to see themselves as part of a community of writers: freewriting, […]

Understanding the frustration of academic writers

Have you ever found yourself unable to complete a piece of writing because something else got in the way: a more urgent commitment, a lack of crucial information, an inability to find the right words? If yes, then you are probably well acquainted with frustration, an emotion commonly felt by academic writers but seldom explicitly discussed or examined. When Helen […]

Writer’s block is not a struggle with your writing but with your thinking. Write your way out of it

Most graduate writers who are struggling with their writing are actually struggling with their thinking. It isn’t a psychological block, but rather the intellectual confusions endemic to the process of communicating sophisticated research. To Rachael Cayley, these confusions are real and can have deleterious consequences for writing, but when we treat these problems as conceptual problems in our thinking we […]

Six academic writing habits that will boost productivity

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 […]

2017 in review: round-up of our top posts on academic writing

“Remember a condition of academic writing is that we expose ourselves to critique” – 15 steps to revising journal articles Before having your paper accepted for publication you’ll almost certainly be required to revise it at least once. For less experienced authors this may not feel so straightforward. Deborah Lupton has compiled a list of tips for authors who have been asked […]