Writing and Reading
Be a critical writer
In New Zealand, students are trained to go directly to the key issues, definitions and parameters of a topic. In other cultures, this may seem too direct, and students might write the introduction more indirectly with more description or repetition of authoritative sources.If you are writing an essay at Victoria, you will be given a question and there will be no one answer to the question. You will be required to:
- read about the topic.
- decide on your own answer.
Then, as you develop your essay, you will support your answer with evidence from your reading. On the next page you will see a paragraph from the body of the alcoholism essay. Notice that the first sentence of this body paragraph gives us the main idea for this paragraph, and the other sentences support this idea with evidence from readings.
Note: All of this evidence—the ideas and information you got from your reading of books, electronic sources, the internet, lectures, tutorials—needs to be carefully referenced. Otherwise you can be accused of plagiarism. Plagiarism and referencing are described in the next section.
Be a critical reader
Reading should be a critical activity too. While you are reading, try to ask questions about what you are reading. Try turning the subheading into a question. Or say to yourself: Do I agree with this? Does it match what I already know? or What have I read elsewhere? Does the author have enough evidence for the argument?Another way of reading critically is to create a mindmap like this one. Doing this will help you to analyse the argument in the reading and to represent it in another way.
"At first I found it was difficult to think critically about things that I read, but soon I got used to this and now I am really grateful I learned this skill. "
