Developing your writing skills

Writing is but one aspect of entering into academic discourse. Through the development of a written argument you will be able to present what you know about an issue and your perspective on it. Written assignments demonstrate your ability to participate in a discipline’s particular style of communicating; for instance, the humanities rely on essays whereas engineering relies heavily on reports, as do business and science. This chapter takes you through various aspects and looks at how you can develop good writing skills. The first stage of your writing task involves reflection and reasoning. The introduction, generally one paragraph, should tell the readers what to expect right from the beginning so that he or she will be able to make the connections necessary to follow the argument as it is evolved. When you are first developing your writing skills it is often helpful to start at the paragraph level before working up to the whole text.