Is English not your first language? When you submit an article to a peer-reviewed journal do the reviewers advise having the article professionally edited? Does the information you’re imparting get lost among the words or tangled in syntax? Join us Thursday, October 15 from 2-3 p.m. ET for the TAA Webinar, “Expressing Yourself Clearly in (Academic) English”, where Jane Mackay, owner/editor of Janemac Editing, and freelance writer and editor Amanda R. Smith, will share tips for polishing your prose and expressing yourself clearly, teach you how to recognize typical problems, and give you techniques for fixing them. Register
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: October 9, 2015
I think everyone needs to print this quote and tape it someplace clearly visible on his or her desk, computer, or writing space. Look at it every time you sit down to write. Quiet the voices of negativity and just write. You are capable of writing well, of writing that is worthy of others to read, you just have to believe it and shut down the voices that tell you otherwise! One of my favorite quotes, and one that fits perfectly here, was said by Muhammad Ali, “To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.” Believing in your abilities to write is half the hurdle. Once you believe that, getting words onto the page will become easier. Happy writing!
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: October 2, 2015
Happy October! Are you staying on track with your fall writing projects? Whether you are or you aren’t, Jodi Picoult’s advice—”You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”—seems an appropriate reminder. We may not always write things worth keeping or it may need heavy editing, but at least it is down on paper. Something is there that is workable and moldable. A blank page cannot offer that.
GUEST POST: 4 Ways to work-life balance in 4 minutes
Perhaps you’ve heard the term “work-life balance” so often that it makes you want to punch someone in the face — but you don’t have time to do that because as you read this, it’s not even 8 am, you’re late for a deadline, you have a class to teach, your daughter’s soccer coach wants to talk to you later today, you have 24 unread emails, and you forgot (again!) to pack a healthy snack for your daughter to eat before practice.
The most useful textbook & academic writing posts of the week: September 25, 2015
Most often in this series the posts I find from week to week are on many different topics. This week, however, there are two overriding themes “referencing” and “organizing,” with just a sprinkling of other topics to enjoy.
Featured Member Kathleen King – Motivation, marketing & the ‘easy fix’
Kathleen P. King, professor of Adult and Higher Education at the University of South Florida in Tampa, is an award winning author of 30 books, most recently 147 Tips for Emerging Scholars and The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology, and more than 175 journal articles and research papers. She is known for her sessions and innovative topics and is a popular international keynote and conference speaker, mentor, and professor. King’s areas of research include instructional technology, faculty development, and mentoring. Here King shares what motivates her to write, tips on marketing your works, and the ‘easy fix’: