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Recommended Reading for New English Literature Students
Cover via Amazon Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research, Third Edition (London: Chicago UP, 2008). This celebrated guide offers an extraordinarily lucid account...
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Advice for New Students of English Literature
English Books (Photo credit: Dave Kleinschmidt) Read Widely Perhaps the most important advice for English literature students is to read widely. While you will certainly be doing a great deal of...
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The Sources at Your Disposal
PRINT SOURCES BOOKS In the contemporary study of language and literature, single-author books customarily run to around 250 pages because that is generally just about the length needed for a highly...
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Prewriting: The Three Questions
Academic essays at university level arenʼt just a form of assessment. Academic essay writing is part of the learning process itself, and the research that you will undertake is a part of your...
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Drafting: The Reader Sees / The Writer Sees
Essay (Photo credit: emilybean) Once you have finished the draft of your first essay and you are happy with your work, leave it for a few days and move on to something else. Then, when you come back...
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Topic/Theme Analysis
Mrs Dalloway (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The main focus of any essay should be your argument about the text or texts that you are studying. So, how do you form an argument about a literary text? It is...
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Analytical Evidence
TCLC – Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (Photo credit: CCAC North Library) Textual Analysis, or ‘close reading’ You might be surprised to discover that the academic discipline of English...
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The Art and Science of Academic Writing
(Photo credit: nashworld) Academic writing is both an art form and a science. Various conventions of style and argumentation have emerged because they tend to produce clear, effective pieces of...
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7 Questions to Help Students Use and Understand Secondary Sources
(Photo credit: tclibrary) The university-level study of English is paradoxically both an individual and collaborative effort, with students developing their own analytical skills while simultaneously...
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Developing Student Self-Reflexivity In Secondary Source Research
(Photo credit: herzogbr) Yesterday I wrote about how I introduce secondary source research to students. Those 7 questions, are, of course, only the starting point for helping students to get the full...
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Refining Technique in Academic Writing
I wrote briefly last week about the importance of technique in academic writing. Academic writing is, above all else, a specialised form of communication, which remains true whether we are...
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