SEE THE ATT BELOW
Recommendation Section
Provide a draft of the recommendation section of your paper. It should include evidence-based suggestions for future policies and practices related to the issue, or for ensuring a future for the type of organization that promotes equality and well-being, depending on the type of paper you are writing. This section draft should be at least 1,050 words. Review the final paper outline provided in Week 6 for guidance regarding content.
NOTES FROM THE PROFESSOR
Week 4 brings to fruition the purpose of your research – your recommendations. Up until now, you have chosen a topic of interest, conducted research, and analyzed and discussed the data. But what does it all mean? You are now at the end of your master’s program, and you have the skill set and knowledge to be a change agent. Wearing the mantel of a change agent, you will be identifying and evaluating evidence-based recommendations on your topic. Evidence-based recommendations are not opinions, but are ideas conceived through reflection, mindfulness, and critical thought. The recommendations are based on the data collected, analyzed, and synthesized. Finally, the conclusion of your paper tells the reader about the implications of your paper. The conclusion is the bThe writing style you use when writing academic papers should be different than other writing styles you may be used to. When you write a paper for your classes at Ashford you should not write it like you’re writing a text message or an email to a friend, you also shouldn’t write it like you’re writing a blog post or an opinion piece. Academic writing requires you to assume a more formal writing style, one which differs from conversational ways of speaking and writing that include: slang, contractions, colloquialisms, and other informalities. On the Ashford Writing Center page “Academic Voice”, they describe academic writing as “a formal way of writing and speaking that is clear, straightforward, and professional without sounding fancy or using unnecessarily complicated vocabulary words.” Let’s discuss some major components of academic writing:
Use Declarative Statements: One of the most important components of writing with your academic voice is making declarative statements. When you’re writing an academic paper you want the reader to focus on the material you’re writing about rather than thinking about you as the author or themselves. You want to write in third person (him, her, they) rather than in first person (I, we) or second person (you). Here’s an example that illustrates how to change an “I” statement to a declarative statement:
“I” statement: I think that obesity is a social problem because of our corporately controlled food supply.
Declarative statement: Obesity is a social problem because of our corporately controlled food supply.
You can easily change your sentence to declarative statements by removing the “I” part of the sentences. Writing in an academic way, you want to make authoritative statements and declare your points!
Enact Your Authoritative Register (voice): “A ‘register’ is the type of language you use in a specific setting. For instance, you speak differently to your friends than you do to your boss, your professor, or your faith leader. In each setting, you use a different register based on what you understand is appropriate behavior for that environment. There's a reason people don't swear in church: It is the recognition that certain types of speech are not appropriate for certain situations.
Students should strive to develop an authoritative register. To have authority over a subject is to know that you have done your research and can support your declarative statements. As students become content experts in their fields of study, they should adopt an authoritative register. This eliminates casual language and relies on informed, declarative statements” (from Ashford Writing Center, Academic Voice)
Avoid Casual Language or Informal Phrases: This is one of the biggest problems I see in student writing at Ashford—the use of casual language, informal phrases and colloquialisms in academic writing. You should work to model your academic writing off the writing you see in textbooks, articles, and other scholarly sources. Work to eliminate contractions (don’t, can’t, won’t—change to do not, can not, will not), avoid using slang or other commonplace phrases, and do not use colloquialisms (such as “go bananas” and “y’all”). Again, the language and writing style you use to write a paper should be completely different than the way you speak to a friend or write a text message.
Coherent Logic and Structure to a Paper: In academic writing, your reader’s should know a lot of information about the first two paragraphs, including: your overall argument or thesis statement, general themes that will be discussed by the paper, findings/conclusions. Your academic paper’s should not read like mystery novels where we don’t know what is going to happen until the end of the story—you want your reader to know exactly what position you’re taking and what information you’re going to cover before they even start the paper. Every academic paper should have a “road map” composed of a thesis statement and one to two overview sentences that tell the reader more about the content and direction of your paper. Your paper should be organized as follows: introductory paragraph that includes a thesis statement, body paragraphs supporting and explaining your thesis statement, and a concluding paragraph that restates your thesis and explains the significance of your essay. We will talk more about this next week in Week 4’s writing tip!