The Writing Matrix: Balancing Structure and Chaos in Literature

gfreestoneLeave a comment

In academic writing the role of chaos is often underestimated, however in reality the interplay between structure and chaos forms a critical dynamic that shapes literary works. This article introduces the concept of a writing matrix, a theoretical framework that explores the tension between order and disorder in literature. Whilst the piece does not focus on chaos as such, by highlighting its place in the matrix it hopes to show how it is as valuable facet of writing as structure, information and form.

The Axes of the Writing Matrix

The writing matrix consists of two primary axes: a vertical axis representing the spectrum from aesthetics to information, and a horizontal axis depicting the continuum between structure and chaos.

Vertical Axis: Aesthetics and Information

  1. Ascending Vertical Axis (Aesthetics): This dimension encompasses poetic metaphors, vivid descriptions, and evocative prose. Writers ascend this axis when crafting sentences that resonate on emotional and imaginative levels. While often minimized in academic writing, it may still be employed for occasional descriptive passages.
  2. Descending Vertical Axis (Information): This realm is dominated by raw data, facts, and straightforward communication. Scientific reports, encyclopedia entries, and dictionary definitions inhabit this space. In essays, this axis ensures that counterarguments are cogent and contain the necessary information to support the central thesis.

Horizontal Axis: Structure and Chaos

  1. Leftward Movement (Structure): This direction represents order, blueprints, and architectural precision. Structure ensures coherence, logical progression, and readability. It forms the backbone of essays, manuals, and legal documents. Writers move leftward when they outline, organize, and adhere to conventions.
  2. Rightward Movement (Chaos): This realm embodies the wild, untamed muse of creativity. It introduces unexpected twists, disrupts patterns, and breathes life into the mundane. Writers venture rightward when they break rules, experiment, and embrace spontaneity.

The Role of Chaos in Writing

As mentioned, chaos is often undervalued in academic writing, yet it is still needed. We cannot and do not totally function within tightly controlled planning. We need to be open to unexpected insights and differing evidence that may not match where we thought we were headed. When we notice that established concepts aren’t functioning quite as tidily was we thought they might we need to recognise these moments as chaotic interruptions that can work towards breaking conceptual stagnation. If you thought it, probably someone else did too.

Some functional interactions with chaos in writing are:

Fostering Innovative Thinking: In academic writing, controlled chaos can lead to the generation of novel hypotheses and unconventional research questions. It serves as a catalyst for interdisciplinary connections, encouraging scholars to explore unexpected linkages between disparate fields or concepts. This approach can result in groundbreaking theoretical frameworks or innovative methodologies.

Breaking Conceptual Stagnation: Excessive adherence to established paradigms can lead to intellectual stagnation within academic disciplines. Introducing elements of chaos can challenge entrenched ideas, fostering critical re-evaluation of long-held assumptions. This process can invigorate research fields, opening new avenues of inquiry and pushing the boundaries of existing knowledge.

Embracing Complexity: In academic research, controlled chaos reminds scholars that oversimplification can be detrimental to understanding complex phenomena. It encourages the exploration of multifaceted issues, acknowledging the inherent messiness of real-world problems. This approach leads to more comprehensive analyses that capture the intricacies of the subject matter, resulting in more robust and applicable research outcomes.

Facilitating Serendipitous Discoveries: Chaotic elements in academic inquiry can orchestrate serendipitous moments of insight. By allowing for unexpected connections and alignments of ideas, researchers may stumble upon unforeseen patterns or relationships in their data. These serendipitous discoveries can lead to paradigm shifts, new research directions, or innovative solutions to longstanding problems in the field.

Applying the Matrix

The writing matrix serves dual purposes:

  1. As an Analytical Tool: By mapping different elements of a text onto the matrix, literary analysts can gain deeper insights into an author’s use of structure and chaos.
  2. As a Guide for Writers: Understanding the interplay between structure and chaos allows writers to make more conscious decisions about their work and avoid common pitfalls.

The balance between structure and chaos may vary depending on the genre and the writer, for instance, poetry may rely more heavily on chaos and experimentation whereas academic writing typically requires a greater emphasis on structure and clarity, whilst fiction often strikes a balance, using structure to provide a framework while employing chaotic elements to engage readers and drive the narrative. Complementary to this of course is the author themself. As an individual they too will have a a tendency towards one of these quadrants. By reflecting on oneself and acknowledging that the chaos part does not need entirely repressing in academic writing, writers may be able to gain a better understanding of their wrting style and how to improve it.

Reflections: the Student vs. the Teacher.

Molly BrooksLeave a comment

As a postgraduate student, being an academic writing advisor for the University of Lincoln has been a highlight of my journey at university. I have a part-time role within the Writing Development Team, based in the Library Support Services – we offer a range of on-campus, online and chat appointments.

The role requires giving one-to-one feedback per appointment on different forms of writing, most commonly I give feedback on essay drafts, essay plans and how to improve feedback from tutors. Though I also see a lot of students who want help with longer term projects such as case studies or dissertations.

During this feedback, I give my general thoughts on a piece – applying the strengths and weaknesses of each assignment, and then we use the session to focus on a part of the assignment that the student feels they would most benefit looking over. The most common things I look at in this regard are introductions, conclusions and applying secondary criticism to individual research.

My most given piece of advice is to be confident in your writing, which I know sounds self-explanatory, but more often than not appointments offer reassurance over anything else. Confidence can be manifested through highlighting parts of your essay in line with the mark scheme, checking your grammar yourself and through readily available tools such as Word Editor, and reading your work aloud. Once you feel that the reading is smooth (as in you don’t have to stop or pause because of awkward expression) it should sound like your own voice.

Applying worthwhile explanations can also be achieved by comparing your writing to a scenario where you are making a contribution in a seminar – would you say this aloud? And how would you explain your point if pressed by a peer or a tutor? Gradually by applying these ‘real world’ contributions to your essays, the content and voice will naturally strengthen.

In terms of introductions and conclusions, they should be treated in conjunction with one another. The conclusion should be a reflection of the introduction, and a summary of the main content of your essay. This can be achieved once you master the art of writing the introduction. Number one – no surprises. DO NOT surprise your examiner, in your introduction you will want to very clearly pinpoint what you will be discussing in your essay. You also need to include context about your topic, how it applies to your subject and the thesis of your argument. Often students seem unsure on how to do this when trying to maintain an academic, third-person tone – here are some phrases you could use:

  • ‘This essay will discuss….’
  • ‘In relation to YOUR TOPIC, the idea of YOUR THESIS STATEMENT, can be seen in YOUR KEY EXAMPLES’
  • ‘This assignment will draw on YOUR EXAMPLES to discuss YOUR THESIS STATEMENT’

Once you get used to formal writing, it will be easier to draw on stock phrases and examples to help you push forward with other assignments. However, this only goes so far – the most noticeable question I always get asked is how can I be more critical in my writing?

This relates to use of secondary material and how you engage with it. What you choose to feature in your essay says a lot to the examiner about the amount of research you’ve included in your assignment, this doesn’t mean have an overwhelming long bibliography – nor does this mean tackle all the most recognised theories in your field. It means applying it to your argument – where do your ideas fit in relation to your subject? Make sure to compare and contrast their ideas, it is not simply about quoting people but using their ideas to expand your own. Though it might seem scary, to get the higher marks it is also worth including ideas that you don’t agree with – but make sure you use evidence not just opinion! This brings nuance to your argument, and authority to your ideas.

It’s worth bearing in mind that this differs across disciplines, and different tutors always have a different idea of what should and shouldn’t be included. First and foremost, get to know your mark scheme – and if in doubt, always check in with your tutor or subject librarian for academic queries. As far as writing is concerned, the main differences are between referencing, how you engage with sources, and what sources are appropriate. For example, in a nursing report it is ok to use first person as long as it is in a formal way, reflecting on your own experiences and applying theories to support this. However, in an English literature essay, you should always use third person and evidence from the text – engaging with multiple sources to both undermine ideas you reject and expand your own. Commonly though, essay structures are all the same as in the fact you need to engage with theory and use plenty of evidence – whether that’s from a text, a study or a set brief.

One of the benefits of being a student whilst being a student writing advisor is that I can use my own current experience to give tips and advice, I understand the frustrations of the mark schemes and the delay in feedback from academic tutors. While it has been easier for me to help people in a similar situation because of my own, this job has also given me value experience of working within a small team environment that is academically focused. More so, it is the first time I have ‘led’ an appointment – I have learnt how to structure my time and focus my energy in a more valuable way for my own sake, and those I am advising.

The flip side of this means I often struggle to take my own advice within my own academic practice, the stress of deadlines means that it is often easy to skip crucial steps. For me, I often rely on the editing – like I say to many people who are in the same situation, make sure to review your own work alongside the mark scheme, and in terms of writing, against a clear academic structure. My main takeaway from this is that there is no rule book when it comes to writing well, we all have different approaches – it is not about how you get there or how long it takes, it is about reflecting and being critical of your own ideas (not yourself!).

Influential teachers in reading and writing – who inspired you?

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

In a conversation with an esteemed colleague, we started discussing influential teachers at school. We may forget the names of many people in our lifetime, but influential teachers hold enduring resonance.

My inspiration, the one who really got me into reading and writing, was Mr. Edwards, a Welsh teacher in a primary school based in Runcorn, Cheshire. It was a difficult time. I had missed out on significant amounts of schooling owing to moving house and emigration. I struggled to read and had, at times, received reading interventionist strategies and a potential screening for learning differences. There was nothing conclusive, but in all honesty my reading ability took years to catch up. Three eureka moments spring to mind when I think of Mr. Edward’s influence.

  • Creative writing. Mr. Edwards particular stroke of genius was to write a sentence on the blackboard during lunchtime which was the first line of a creative writing essay. My friends and I were so enthralled by this thread that we peered into the portacabin’s window and tried to read what he had written. We discussed the endless possibilities in continuing the story. It was an immediate trigger for our imagination to be let loose. That class got me into writing.
  • Silver Sword: Furthermore, Mr. Edwards read Silver Sword by Ian Serralier. It was an absolutely gripping tale. I was there, living the experience with them as refugees on the run trying desperately to find their parents; the fabled Nostos theme originating from the Odyssey. I now recognise the serendipity of that moment. At the age of eight or nine, this escape story held me on the edge of my chair for weeks. I longed for more books. As a family we had moved from place to place, country to country, house to house. Serralier’s more exciting story was set in wartime, escaping Poland’s apocalypse to the safe neutrality of Switzerland, perilously on the run from Nazis like hunted animals. Uprooted, they longed for safer borders free from terror and anxiety. To a child’s unfettered imagination, it was magical. At that age, there is a transitional period between magic and the beckoning dawn of reality, so brilliantly captured by Halldór Laxness in Independent People; that becoming self-aware from the innocent shelter of early childhood, you start growing up. That book got me into reading.
  • Book clubs: A monthly book club also came to Mr. Edward’s class. As his dedicated pupils, we eagerly sifted through a catalogue of book covers that electrified our imaginations. The book club got me into reading escape stories and adventure books as I continually rekindled that sense of uprootedness and Nostos within me. Even though I work in a Library and books are easily borrowed at no cost, I have always enjoyed buying and owning a book. Possessing a book always seem to be satisfying, like anchors reassuringly holding everything together, as we drift through life trying to find meaning and seize something more tangible.

Mr. Edwards had a significant impact on me. English was my strongest subject at school. Now, in Writing Development, I can help others like Mr. Edwards helped me. Who inspired you at school to read and write?

Inviting a welcome friend: using text-to-speech software to read assignments

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

AI is everywhere now. Some hail the positives, while others concede the negatives of job losses and increased automation of the workforce, seemingly unstoppable since the Industrial Revolution. Personally, I’d rather go to a till staffed by a friendly employee than use a self-checkout machine in a supermarket. Society needs human contact, which is essential for our emotional wellbeing, mental health, and a sense of belonging. One of the positives to come out of AI is undoubtedly text-to-speech software which converts text into spoken words, effectively reading it for you. As our awareness of neurodiversity grows, so too our knowledge and appreciation of assistive technologies. Text-to-speech has come a long way since it was first developed in the 1930s.

Development of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech has surprisingly long origins. The first computer-based speech-synthesis systems emerged in the 1950s, yet the earliest known text-to-speech programme was VODER , developed by Bell Laboratories in 1939 and was demonstrated at New York’s prestigious World’s Fair. In a fascinating blog post Grundhauser (2017) described that this first attempt at replicating the human voice apparently spoke ‘like a robot demon’ and ‘could create 20 or so different electric buzzes and chirps, which the operator would manipulate using 10 keys, a wrist plate, and a pedal’. It is even credited with inspiring Numbers by Kraftwerk that transformed musical genres as diverse as techno, hip-hop, new wave, and early rap (Sanusi, 2023). A general English text-to-speech system was developed by Noriko Umeda in 1968 at the Electrotechnical Laboratory in Japan.

Sounds like a real human

In recent years text-to-speech has drastically improved since the mechanical narration it used to render. There are some exceptions to this innovation like eBook text-to-speech, for instance, which need some development. We have named some of the pros and cons in our Library Wellbeing guide. The deliciously-named IceCreamApps site provides a list of eight recommended eBook screen readers, if you are interested. The fundamental issue is that there is no universal screen reader that works for everything online. That aside, the revelation is Microsoft’s Speak text-to-speech feature. It reads like a dream. Or rather, like a human voice. The ’voice’ is female, well-spoken, annunciating to give emphasis, giving pauses where needed and is easy on the ear.  If you are not happy with the ‘voice’ then you can go to Microsoft’s Speech Platform enabling you to choose a different voice package. It’s a bit like choosing your speech choice on a SATNAV when you drive a car. Text-to-speech software has been humanised, the ultimate acclaim of any person-centred AI technology.

Drawbacks are minimal. Homonyms are occasionally an issue like the word ‘reading’ (e.g. reading text) pronounced as ‘Reading’ (the Berkshire town located west of London).  I have also caught myself anthropomorphising the ‘voice’ as a person (‘her’). There are many benefits to using text-to-speech.

Benefits on literacy

Although few studies indicate whether text-to-speech increases literacy, rates of listening comprehension was found in a study by Brunow & Cullen (2021) to be beneficial, although it is not comparable to the interventionist support of a human teacher. Research conducted by Svensson et al. (2019) have found that reading ability, motivation, and performance increases with the use of text-to-speech. These suggest that text-to-speech is supplementary, rather than comprehensive, and does not substitute human involvement in the educational process (Wood et al., 2018).

Visual stress

One of the benefits of using text-to-speech is to alleviate visual stress, reducing eye strain. This function is necessary when someone has a neurodiverse condition like dyslexia or ADHD. Text-to-speech relies upon auditory skills rather than the complexity of visually reading a page. This is a revolutionary step for dyslexic students struggling to read text on the screen.

Editing and proofreading

For the purposes of editing and proofreading the immediate benefits of text-to-speech are huge and impactful, allowing for error detection, spelling and grammatical mistakes, awkward sentence structures and consistency and coherence.  I have found it particularly useful in identifying word misplacement.

Writing style analysis

Even though I am not dyslexic I use MS Speak. I used it repeatedly for this blog post, both in Word and in WordPress. What does my writing sound like? Are there any errors, misplaced words, gaps, too many words..? How does it flow? What is the personality of my writing voice? These are simple questions and text-to-speech, I feel, has the ready answers. Such writing style analysis identifies your writing voice using natural language processing (NLP) tools, analysing writing patterns, sentence structures and other linguistic features.

The allyship of text-to-speech software

Text-to-speech software has become an indispensable ally in writing. Will you invite this accessible technology into your assignments and check your writing? Nowadays I would not write a longer piece of writing without it. Text-to-speech is a welcome friend in that regard.

References

Brunow, D.A. & Cullen, T.A. (2021). Effect of Text-to-Speech and Human Reader on Listening Comprehension for Students with Learning Disabilities. Computers in the schools: Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice, Theory, and Applied Research, 38 (3), 214-231.

Grundhauser, E. (2017). The Voder, the first machine to create human speech. Available from: The Voder, the First Machine to Create Human Speech – Atlas Obscura [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Icecreamapps.com. (2024). Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps. Available from: Best Text To Speech Book Readers 2024: Top 8 – Icecream Apps [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Sanusi, T. (2023). From Hawking to Siri: The evolution of speech synthesis. Available from: From Hawking to Siri: The Evolution of Speech Synthesis | Deepgram [Accessed 15th May 2024].

Svensson, I., Nordström, T., Lindeblad, E., Gustafson, S., Björn, M., Sand, C., … Nilsson, S. (2021). Effects of assistive technology for students with reading and writing disabilities. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology, 16 (2), 196–208.

University of Lincoln. (2024). Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln. Available from: Screen Readers – Screen Readers and Accessibility – Guides at University of Lincoln [Accessed 21st May 2024].

Wood, S.G. et al. (2018) ‘Does Use of Text-to-Speech and Related Read-Aloud Tools Improve Reading Comprehension for Students with Reading Disabilities? A Meta-Analysis’, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 51(1), 73–84.

AI and Academic Writing

gfreestoneLeave a comment

Where are we with AI and academic writing? Frankly the situation is a little chaotic. The institution line is still often that of ‘academic offence’, even though the institutions know this would be extremely hard to enforce. One reason for this being that anti-plagiarism software like Turnitin are in a perpetual catchup mode with the AI available, so unless everyone sticks with chatgpt (free on openai (they won’t)) then Turnitin’s detection algorithms will be outpaced by newcomers and rephrasers. Another one is that sometimes students write in styles identical to (an) AI. The common form of this is the very capable second (or more) language student; owing to the academic way the language is often learned, these students follow precise rules and sometimes do it extremely well. In turn, they follow the rules into stylistic use and end up sounding sufficiently like chatgpt that the software (and sometimes staff) pick it up, in turn they end up hauled in front of some disciplinary body just for being extremely smart.

This means that enforcement is hard to achieve, as one has to coordinate appearance of AI like style with some other evidence e.g. sudden alteration is style. This is possible, but time consuming for academics and if the student goes straight in with using the AI throughtout, then no style change detection will be possible; rephrasing software compounds the issue. Bearing in mind we’re in the total infancy of this technology, this is a difficult situation. I say difficult with no little thought; the situation is difficult not because of a negative connotation of difficulty, but rather because it is literally difficult to know what to do from here.

The essential question being ‘is assessment by academic writing in its current form a dead horse that we need to stop flogging?’ and if it isn’t dead yet, how long before it is dead (if indeed it will be dead at some point)? How will we know? Personally I would say it isn’t dead yet, but its death is probably between 2-5 years away. How will we know? We’ll know because the ability of AI to construct academic writing for students (and staff) will have permanently outstripped our ability to detect it either with software or with our minds.

That is, both in content and style, AI will produce work for students who wish to use it that will mean, if they don’t want to, then at least for the written components, their engagement with the material can be pretty much nil. Furthermore any student who, let’s say for integrity reasons, chooses to write their own work, may find themselves penalised by handicapping themselves to their human writing skills. Thus their integrity will get them quite possibly a lesser grade than their AI using colleagues.

But as we’re not there (yet) what can we do in this strange hinterland? This issue itself seems related to the future of AI and our interactions with it. That is, how guilty we feel about the interactions that we encourage, turns partially on what it will become. However since we cannot know where we are headed we don’t know how guilty to feel. What do I mean by ‘feeling guilty’? I mean this sense that we are cheating when we get AI to do work for us. Isn’t this a kind of crucial border, this meeting place between a legitimate productive use and losing part of ourselves which we possibly need to preserve?

Maybe we can sketch out two broad trajectories. In one, AI supplants our need for writing skills as it can produce any text we need more accurately and with greater detail than we can achieve. In another, writing skills continue to be needed because AI continues to fail to capture human synthetic abilities to generate insights. Because these insights were formed from human generated cognitive concatenations (consciously or unconsciously) the argumentative structures cannot be automatically written up by the AI and hence the ability to lay out the argument etc is still needed.

What is obvious is the blur of these heuristics. The former seems strange insofar as it indicates that whatever we want to write on, the AI can do it for us. This aligns this trajectory roughly with what some (mostly undergraduate) students might use it for, whilst the latter one seems more indicative of research usage.

The blur occurs because in the first case the student will still have an idea that they want the AI to write the essay on (admitting they also might not). Either way they have to engage with the AI and unless they literally want to hand in the first thing it writes, they have to do some thinking and engaging. No one is saying this minimal engagement is a good thing, it just means that even the laziest version has to have some effort in it. The second trajectory suggests that writing is still needed, however once the researcher has had this synthesising insight, whilst the AI may not be able to reconstruct their argument by itself, it can certainly help if you give it the different propositions and ask for paragraphs to be constructed around them. The point generally being that with the second trajectory, unless the academic is a kind of purist, doesn’t deny that AI could be used to help out with the writing.

It seems fairly clear that trajectory one we want to avoid, yet trajectory two could easily encompass quite a lot of AI written input. It seems to me the crucial part here was the academic’s synthesising idea. This idea was only made possible by the reading and thinking (conscious and unconscious) that the academic did. This reminds us that of course what is important in the educational/research process is actually comprehension. The first option strikes us as so bad, because comprehension is extremely low. I tried to highlight how the redeeming part or trajectory one is that it is on a gradient on which some students will at least have an idea on the topic, that they then get the AI to write the paper and then they read it to make sure it’s good. This redeeming aspect is their thinking engagement and comprehension.

Going forward with AI we need to find ways to emphasise comprehension of subject matters. We also need to accept the potential of AI to write for us, to help us write our ideas. The danger does lie in the lack of comprehension, but arguably there is a lot of lack of comphrension already, AI is just bringing out of the system the latent lack of student integrity and exposing it.

Academic writing in the traditional sense may well be ultimately largely supplanted by AI, but academic reading (and all other forms of learning, argument formation and thinking) cannot be allowed to do so. Indeed, in exposing the possible lack of motivation in the system, we can use this to think of new ways to engage students in understanding their subjects and helping them want to understand their subjects. The best the AI can be for us is probably be a new interlocutor. As soon as we have our new research insight, it goes into the system (the available research). From here it can be accessed by the AI to help other researchers, who must think carefully and through their own multiple inputs create new insights.

So the guilt issue should not be view so much as an issue with writing; it’s an issue with comprehension. We need to absolve ourselves of this nebulous guilt by the best practice of writing with AI and ensure that we remain active comprehenders, processors and producers of information —as opposed to passive receivers of AI insights. So long as we are exercising our capacities to think and comprehend to the best of our ability, then the AI becomes a partner that could be incredibly empowering. The danger lies in our, handing cognition and production over to it.

Podcasts and social confidence

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Podcasts. I love them. The range of subject matter available is astonishing. I listen to several, ranging from esoteric to travelogues to sport on a regular basis. Each have their own personality: some quirky, others informative, and if you are lucky – both.

Soaring in popularity, over forty percent of internet users listen to at least one podcast a month in the UK alone (Götting, 2023).  UK podcast demographic data is revealing too: listeners tend to be younger males, higher earners, looking for innovation, urbanised, into sports and fitness, keen to learn new things, and politically left leaning (Götting, 2023). They also have greater informational needs too, as well as experiencing a heightened sense of community (Ellwood, 2022). The market is huge and accessible with YouTube, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Wondery, Sticher, Spotify and BBCiPlayer occupying some of the main platforms. Yet their influence goes beyond consumerist tastes or self-identity.

Podcasts can also boost our social confidence. Like reading, podcasts can influence us subconsciously. Their conversational style can be infectious. For when I am presenting or in a meeting, I am mindful of the way I sound, conscious of the use of my voice and energy generated in the room. Have you ever sat in a lecture or a meeting and sensed the energy of the person who is speaking? It has an instrumental quality. Each of us have a projection of some kind. Radio, podcasts, the listening ear all have a duty to perform. Tobin & Guadagno’s (2022) illuminating study into podcast listening elicited positive outcomes such as parasocial relationships and social engagement, and fulfilled basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Their research also found that listening to podcasts improve active listening skills and subconsciously they may influence the way we act socially.

Since Covid, many of us started to present online for the first time, which is something which felt very alien to begin with. Podcasts are one way to think about the way we want to present ourselves. Chatty, friendly, engaging, social, adaptable, podcasts are a brilliant way of entering a space where the possibilities of being demonstrably authentic and comfortable in our skins to a broader public. Examine the way some presenters engage with their audience, or how they deal with someone asking a difficult or challenging question, it is often something to admire and absorb. These are the tools of the trade when presenting with social confidence, which are, perhaps, subconsciously channelled via podcast listening.

What podcasts do you listen to? Do they orientate your worldview or conversational style?

References

Ellwood, B. (2022). Listening to podcasts may help satisfy our psychological need for social connection, study finds. Available from: Listening to podcasts may help satisfy our psychological need for social connection, study finds (psypost.org) [Accessed 29th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2022). Leading podcast platforms in the U.S. 2020, by age group. Available from: Top podcast platforms in the U.S. 2020 | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2024). Podcast listenership: selected countries and regions worldwide 2022-2026. Available from: Podcast listeners worldwide by country and region 2022-2026 | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Götting, M. C. (2023). Podcasts in the UK – statistics & facts | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk). Available from: Podcasts in the UK – statistics & facts | Statista (lincoln.ac.uk) [Accessed 26th April 2024]

Tobin, S. J. & Guadagno, R. E. (2022). Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening. PLoS ONE 17(4). Available from: Why people listen: Motivations and outcomes of podcast listening | PLOS ONE [Accessed 29th April 2024]

Looking beyond the cover: Becoming what you read

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Being free, unshackled from the rigours of expectation, is important when you want to develop your writing voice and express things in your own way. When I was an undergraduate at Essex, a lecturer said to me that I had some good ideas and nice turns of phrases now and then, but my writing style was sometimes wooden. Ouch. It was a low blow, and I have never forgotten that remark. How would I improve and write in a way that was less awkward?

Reading is essential in unlocking that stuck gear. Hitherto, it’s important to enjoy what you read rather than viewing reading as a purely educational task; in the past I fell into the self-identity trap that I wanted people to think I was clever by the books I read. After I graduated and got a job in a London FE college I used to egotistically show off what I was reading to fellow commuters like the Thought Police were going to raid the Tube at any moment and check whether the cover was commendable enough to evade arrest. Certain authors spring to mind warranting immediate arrest.  An Orwellian or Kafkaesque dystopian society which nobody wants to live in. It was largely a false projection; an image of self that personified vanity but did little in the way of reading for pleasure. Yet anyone recall that beautifully dreamy scene in Raging Bull by the swimming pool when Jake LaMotta first meets his wife? Perhaps I had that in mind. Showing off book covers is hardly a sensible endeavour, yet as a mature student at that time I was making up for lost time and had to prove myself.

Choosing what you read is key to influencing your style of writing. What writing do I now enjoy? It can be much dependent on my frame of mind, but when arriving at a sweet spot I want to indulge as much as I can. Over the pandemic I devoured the works of Thomas Hardy. Gorgeous stuff. Nowadays it might be travel or sports writing, autobiographies or social history. Whatever it is, it must be suitable for a long train commute and the reading mood has to feel right – like wearing appropriate clothing for the weather.

What writer would I like to emulate nowadays? I’ve always had a soft spot for travel writing. As a child I moved around a lot, different towns, counties, even countries; travel was the shifting sands of my childhood. Perhaps that’s why I like travel writing, and a particular sort mixed with cultural history, intelligent humour, keen social observation and a side order of insightful reflection. I especially like reading about societies. What is it like to be there? Standing in a strange town square people watching, taking it all in as a casual observer yet Día morphically embedded in that society. A book can take you there. Learning about Le Flanuer in my undergraduate days has inspired many book purchases and many a read.

I recently read The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman: a bone-shaking tour through cycling’s Flemish heartlands, which I adored. It had all the right components. I sat enthralled on the train journey home anxious that I was not going to miss my stop – easily done when glued to a book, absorbed in its world; a kind of joyous escapism in 300 pages. Offbeat and humorous, intelligence bordering on the academic, it showed me the way I wanted to go as a writer, and reading for pleasure showed me the way. It seemed like the perfect idea to go down the road I wanted to, and not to meet the opinions of others.

Perhaps we are what we read? Rather, it is discovering ourselves in the process that matters, not the vaunted benediction of others; an internal study – not a social mirror. Yet it is a two-sided activity. Consider what Alexei Sayle (2010, 26) observed about his father’s varied book collection:

‘…the hundred or so volumes housed in two wooden bookcases in the front room all dated from before the war and provided a vivid picture of the life of a working-class radical in the 1930s. Though Joe never got to speak much about what he felt even in the brief silences when Molly wasn’t shouting at the neighbours, these books were like geological rock strata that revealed the evolutionary layers of his personality’.

References

Sayle, A. (2010). Stalin ate my homework. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

Starting from scratch: Delivering Thematic Analysis sessions for the first time.

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Starting Thematic Analysis (TA) is a daunting task for most first-time researchers. TA is not something I have personally undertaken as part of my studies, yet it grew organically as most things at work do, taking root in the job and slowly but surely gaining ground. What had previously been taken for granted was now being overtaken with new ideas, fresh inspiration. Why did I decide to start running sessions for Writing Development on this type of qualitative analysis? It’s a slightly unusual story.

I had applied for an internal job at the University and one of the interview questions the panel asked me was ‘what methodology can you teach?’ I struggled to find an answer. It was a hot day and I felt under pressure to perform. It didn’t work out – I failed to get the job. I had to face reality – although I felt that I had bounteous experience supporting students with thematic analysis, it was never formalised. I never afforded myself the time to set aside and plan a session on thematic analysis as I was always too busy with back-to-back student appointments in my job as an Academic Subject Librarian for the Lincoln International Business School. I only worked for Writing Development three hours a week back then – not enough time to plan a new session or grapple with new concepts. Routinely I taught reflective writing or report writing year after year for Writing Development, with little option to broaden my wings and soar into unchartered territory. Starting as a full-time Writing Development Advisor last year gave me that opportunity.

That standalone interview question inspired me to think things anew.  Gone were days that the same old format would fit the bill. Writing Development needed new ideas, fresh approaches. Statistics about sessions on topics that we have not covered before far exceeding older, more established workshops. Students needed eye-catching variety, not an unquestioned itinerary of events. Our concept of the student experience is often far different than student needs and standing still could mean the format goes stale after a while.

How did I start? I conducted some preliminary research, pulled together some slides and met an academic from the Lincoln International Business School. We met and shared content, discussed ideas. What were the seminal works on Reflexive Thematic Analysis? Do you need to be a visual learner to carry out thematic analysis? Would this presentation work? It was a promising start: ‘I think students would really benefit from your workshop’ she said. Everyone needs encouragement, especially when embarking on something untested. It ignited my hopes of doing something different. I called it ‘Thematic Analysis for the first-time researcher’. No pun intended. Then I recorded the session and added it to the Writing Development site, before delivering a webinar on the slides. I subsequently adapted the slides and researched some more, adding richer depth to the content. I believed in a practical, step-by-step guide, envisioning students going through the same tentative stages as myself. During the first webinar, students popped questions into chat, generating ideas and different perceptions.

Diversifying what you offer is a key response to today’s unpredictable Higher Education climate. Statistics in this data-driven era has never been more scrutinised. What began as an unanswered question in a job interview eventually helped others embark on their research journey while sending me on a road of discovery which made the role more interesting and fulfilling as a result.

Ego Problems in Writing Support

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The ego is sometimes used to mean a kind of self-agrandizing principle of the psyche. Ego-centric can also mean that we focus on ourselves at the expense of others; this is a related but not identical meaning to the first sense. These differing meanings are related insofar as they both entail some psychic action by which we seek to prop up ourselves as individuals, one by self-promotion, one by self-interest. Both generally are related to a degree of insecurity in the individual in question. All people are different and have different histories; the ego level is contingent up various factors related to these differences.

A one-to-one support session is necessarily a meeting of egos. There is an imbalanced power relation between the student and the support worker. This is not an ego-trip itself, but a position of necessity. The student wants help with their writing and the writing support worker theoretically has the skills/knowledge to help them. This means it is not only a position of necessity but a position of responsibility, that is, the writing support worker is responsible for the student. Interestingly this means the power relation is more complicated than it first appears, for from this perspective the student is actually in control. They place the burden of their writing problems upon the support worker, whom they expect, to a greater or lesser extent, to solve them.

The initial manifestation of the support worker in this relation will be varied, but we all can be seduced by the desire to please, to be liked. Much more important than being liked though, is needing the student to trust us; this means we need to have (some) confidence in ourselves. If we project confidence, the student will trust us —unless we screw up so much that it’s painfully laid out for them to see. There is a difficult borderline (depending on our ego-structures) between the successful projection of confidence with the aim of inspiring trust and the confidence which inspires ‘being-liked’. We’re not supposed to care about ‘being-liked’ but because of the borderline, it can sometimes be hard to not do so.

I have often found myself lost in the early stages of a consult. Worried I won’t know where to go with it. Listening to the student, scanning the work. Looking to convey a mixture of honesty, but not so much honesty to give away the rising sense of ‘what to do with this?’ whilst also bringing the aforementioned confidence. I referred before to periods of quiet reading in the session that help let the problems in the work show themselves. These periods enable me to find a space in which any desire to be ‘liked’ can largely be eradicated as I get deeper into the work. Slowly seeing the problems emerge from the reading and talking about what they are trying to say, brings has a satisfaction that is not egoistic but only has its own satisfaction, like finding the solution of a puzzle on one’s own.

However this is not the end of the struggle. If the problems are successfully identified and a path forwards (that is not too disheartening) is found, then the student will often be very pleased. This pleasedness is then projected onto the the support worker in the form ‘being-liked’. Which is worse now, as it is not artifical (in the sense of inspired by the projection of confidence) but a genuine pleasure that their writing problems (for now) are resolved. It is course hard not to take some excess of pleasure in the pleasedness of the student, however it is to be avoided as much as possible.

The reason for this is that the classical issue of hubris is a very real one. If we allow the either spoken, or unspoken praise of the student to go in, then we may generate an attitude that will serve us very badly on another occasion. The projection of confidence, secure in the knowledge this is a contrivance is one thing, but the real thing is perilous. The tempered projection of confidence, should always contain the possibility of admitting to not know the way forward —a piece of writing for another time- whereas when hubris crashes into such difficulties the result will be an embarrassing mess, leaving the student lacking faith in the service and the support worker with another level of ego crisis to resolve.

Signposting dyslexic students to Wellbeing

Daren MansfieldLeave a comment

Reflective insights from a three-point map

Over the years I have frequently encountered undiagnosed dyslexia during 1-1s. Lately I have been reflecting on my own responses when a piece of writing exhibits traits of dyslexia, breaking them down into three parts. Not that I am an expert. These are purely general observations gleaned through years of experience. A feeling or perception, in other words. In a meeting with a student common dyslexia characteristics may become known from the first or second paragraph. Little signs that might explain the student’s difficulty with writing an assignment, indicating that further exploration is needed and the three-point map is carefully unfurled.

These three steps that I recognise as my approach to signposting students to Wellbeing and advise them about obtaining a screening for dyslexia are a regular reminder that although I am not an expert, or sufficiently qualified to diagnose dyslexia, there are brilliant services available to students at the University helping them to progress in their studies through correct diagnosis. If they are diagnosed with dyslexia, students may receive funding for an accessible laptop or obtain software like Dragon Naturally Speaking.

1st step: Initial signs

When I first met dyslexic students, I was looking for such tell-tale signs as misplaced word order or spelling, but I am increasingly aware that these are not the most common traits. Nowadays, tell-tale signs are more likely to include spending ages on an assignment, difficulty with translating their ideas onto paper, disorganised structure, confusion around capitalisation, and muddled syntax.

These broad observations lead to a short series of leading questions, which might illuminate the path ahead.

2nd step: Leading questions

The second stage in the process of considering signposting a student with potential dyslexia to Student Wellbeing might involve the following:

Q. ‘So, how long did you spend writing this 2000-word essay?’

A. ‘It took me all night to write two paragraphs’ or ‘I spent all day in the Library and produced nothing’.

Q. ‘Have you struggled with writing?’ (i.e. an open-ended question.

A. ‘Yes, when I was at school…’

Then we may comfortably enter into a discussion about screening: ‘have you ever thought you may be dyslexic?’

I would then point out where Student Wellbeing is located on the Brayford campus and their drop-in times.

As I indicated earlier in one of my blog posts, establishing the therapeutic relationship is essential in sensitively handling this discussion and attuned to whatever the student is saying through employing active listening skills (not interrupting, listening not responding, withholding judgement, and so forth). Otherwise, such a discussion might upset the student and discourage them from seeking further help.

3rd step: Learning strategies and signposting

Following on from this stage, we might discuss blue-sky thinking, problem solving, mind maps….getting the student to think visually; exploring ideas, not sentences.  LinkedIn has recently championed Dyslexia Thinking as a skill, not as an impediment.

Writing sentences can be a great inhibitor for a dyslexic student. Hurdles in word form. Breaking a sentence up into constituent parts drawn from ideas or images from a mind map is a great way of formulating a sentence. Bullet points can also kick-start an essay; an easy way to get started without worrying about the mental block of paragraphs. Think of small starts, but with big ideas.

It is often a relief for the student to realise that there is an issue where their struggles at school and college could be explained. Such a moment can be life-changing. Dyslexia is often hereditary. One of the student’s parents might be dyslexic. It may be common knowledge that they struggled in school and experience the same issues as their children, but it can be largely unspoken in family circles. Understood, but not officially diagnosed. As society moves on from the notion that dyslexia is an obstacle – as LinkedIn has recently done – students can feel confident at achieving academic success, and look forward to a brighter future.