Assignment Task

This assignment requires you to develop an idea through free writing, refining your free writing, and researching your idea using a journal article. You can choose to “free write” about and research any idea or topic you are curious about. This could be a sport, music, a hobby, books you enjoy reading and so on.

It is important to start with something you are interested in, because this will make the assignment much more enjoyable and easier to complete. If you are not sure what you are interested in, have a think about your hobbies, your usual reading material, or perhaps the genres of music you enjoy; are there any aspects of these constants in your life you would like to know more about?

Start making some notes for yourself now; writing down your random thoughts in a dedicated place will make this assignment much easier. When you think you may have a topic that you want to explore in this assignment, start the process below. This assignment has a several steps. Follow these closely.

1. The Freewriting Process

Follow these steps:

1. Open a word document on your computer and set a timer for 15 minutes.

2. Free write for 15 minutes about the idea you are interested in. This can be anything; the important point is to let your ideas flow and keep writing for 15 minutes.

3. Save the document, even if it is messy, has spelling mistakes, or typographical errors.

4. Take a break for 10 minutes.

5. Go back to your original free writing idea. Read it.

6. Set your timer for 15 minutes.

7. Refine your original idea into a research topic that you can express into one or two paragraphs. Write these paragraphs out under the original idea.

8. Take a break for 10 minutes.

9. Create a question out of the topic you have refined. This could be something you want to explore further, find out more about, enhance your understanding and knowledge.

10. Set your timer for 10 minutes and condense your research question into three (3) keywords. (You are going to use these keywords to search for a journal article that is relevant to the topic that you wrote about, and that you are now going to explore further or “research.”)

2. Finding a relevant journal article

Good research is the process of finding, evaluating, and processing information (Dwyer & Hopwood, 2015, p. 329), and is one where critical thinking is demonstrated by the author(s). In this part of your assignment, you are going to “research” your topic of interest through reading a journal article. Note that it may take you a while to find a journal article that suits you. The first one you find may not suit you after a skim read. If so, go back and find another one that may be more suitable.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to the UNE Library home page search.

2. Enter your keywords into the library search.

3. Find one peer-reviewed journal article that relates to your keyword search.

4. Download the journal article as a PDF and save it.

5. Evaluate the article following the process described below.

3. Critiquing your journal article

You will need to read your chosen article two or three times. The first read will be a “skim read” where you become familiar with the article, the second and third reads will be where you evaluate the article. You may want to highlight the parts you think are most important.

To evaluate the research, you will need to ask yourself the following questions. 

1. What is the aim (purpose) of the article?

2. What are the main ideas of the article? List these and reference these ideas back to the original journal article

3. What is the quality of the article? Was it published in a peer-reviewed journal?

4. Has the author provided any evidence of previous research or data?

5. Does the author cite or acknowledge where their information came from? “Attention to academic honesty improves not only your writing but also your reputation and credibility. Citations and referencing show the extent of your research and your capacity to present ideas, paraphrase, develop an argument, and evaluate and balance viewpoints” (Dwyer & Hopwood, 2015, p. 342).

6. What sort of language has the author used? Academic writing does not always follow the plain English writing style. It can be difficult to write in simple English whilst maintaining style (Rai & Rai, 2008, p. 323). Passive (opposed to active) voice and third (opposed to first) person are often used in academic writing. Short sentences are often used as they are easier to understand (Rai & Rai, 2008, p.324). That said, your chosen article should demonstrate most of the following (see Dwyer & Hopwood, 2015, pp. 488, 615):

a. Clarity

b. Readability

c. Punctuation

d. Paragraphs

e. Objective language, not emotive language.

7. How is the article structured? “Good academic writers think about their topic to identify the issue, problem or gap in knowledge as precisely as possible” (Dwyer & Hopwood, 2015, p. 611). Academic writing must integrate a lot of information into a logical and lucid order. Can you follow the author’s argument?

8. Having answered the questions above, what are the main strengths and weaknesses of the article?

4. Reflecting on the assignment process

On the same word document you have used throughout this assignment, now answer the following questions:

1. Did the free writing exercise boost your writing confidence?

2. What did you learn by using the UNE Library search to find information, compared to using a search engine like Google? For example, were you more confident about the veracity of the information you found on the UNE Library search engine compared to information found via Google?