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Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

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University of Cape Town

Writing your World: Finding yourself in the academic space

44 classificações

Throughout the world, writing serves to express, record and even create meaningful moments. In academic spaces, writing becomes the bridge between ourselves and the world of ideas. In this course, we provide practical insights into how to write an academic essay. We show you how to develop the academic skills needed to be a competent academic writer. You will have an opportunity to engage with texts written by academics, and to see how some of the ideas in these texts are used by students in constructing an academic essay. We address some of the challenges these students face with respect to academic writing and offer you the opportunity to practice and to develop your own writing style. For this course, we centre our lessons around a specific topic - the concept of identity, since it forms such an important feature of how we locate ourselves in an ever-changing global world. In other words, this course teaches academic writing skills through getting you to write and reflect on your understanding of identity. So if you are thinking about studying at a tertiary institution, or if you just want to brush up on your academic essay writing skills, this course is for you!

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Supporting the argument: situating identity within culture

This week begins with a discussion of culture and its relevance when individuals become mobile, moving between geographical and social contexts. We look at a case study of a student from the United Kingdom who comes to Johannesburg, South Africa. The case study helps us to think about who owns culture and how different or similar we are across contexts. Next, we consider Thornton’s arguments about culture. He argues against the view that there are many cultures and notes that there is only culture. Thornton considers culture as a resource to which people have different degrees of access. Some examples of cultural resources are clothes, money, beliefs, ideas. Individuals draw on these to construct their identity, but unequal access to these resources that are valued gives some people more possibilities to construct identities that are dominant and more valued. This creates a semblance of difference between groups of people. As people move across borders, these differences may become heightened, because some of the cultural resources that an individual carries with her, may cease to be relevant or may be seen as threatening. So, when supporting one’s argument about what happens to identity as individuals move across borders, it is important to delve into culture and how culture creates differences, how it may accentuate boundaries, and how these may or may not impact on identity. Writing paragraphs in support of one’s argument requires close attention to how the paragraphs link with the position, and with other ideas across the paragraphs. Hence, we offer practical guidelines on paragraphing, coherence and cohesion. We give an example of a well-written paragraph and analyse its form to see why it is good. We then review paragraphs submitted by our three student writers and note what is strong and what could be improved in each. We introduce the core aspects of referencing in essays. We also explain why referencing is an important part of academic writing when we are referring to different people’s views (or voices) and distinguishing these from our own.

Writing paragraphs3:32

Quotes and paraphrasing3:06

In-text referencing4:11

Coherence and cohesion3:18

Student writers drafting their paragraphs8:52

Giving feedback on Ada’s paragraph5:14

Giving feedback on Ziggy’s paragraph5:51

Giving feedback on Joey's paragraphs3:11

Conheça os instrutores

Gideon Nomdo
Lecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development
Aditi Hunma
Lecturer
Centre for Higher Education Development

Following are three student writers as they draft their paragraphs for the essay.

Observe how they discuss the theme of identity,

linking it to mobility and culture in their paragraphs.

Do you find the evidence presented convincing?

Are you persuaded by their ideas?

Let's look at what they've written for their first drops of their paragraphs.

You can either listen to the lecture as the student writers read their drafts,

or you can download their essays and read their work yourself.

Let's look at Ada's draft,

where she discusses her identity as someone whose parents have crossed racial borders.

Growing up, I've always known I was different,

even within my own home and family context in Nairobi.

Having a German father and a Kenyan mother meant I could also speak fluent German,

and because of my white German father I looked

different to the other children I grew up with in my neighborhood.

It took a long time for them to accept me as one of them,

even though I could speak Swahili,

I knew all of the local games and underwent all of the cultural rites of passage.

As far as I was concerned I was African,

just like my older sister who was born out of

my mother's previous marriage to a Kenyan teacher,

who had passed on when my sister was eight.

My sister was 10 when I was born and she has helped me

overcome many challenges as a child who looked different in our neighborhood.

As a married couple,

my parents had crossed a racial border and I

bore the brunt of that racial crossing as a child,

and also later as a student and as an adult working in

a foreign country in a highly competitive and cut-throat environment,

where I had to learn how to fit in,

how to compromise on things I held dear to me in order to survive and succeed.

It has not been an easy journey for me,

and now that I am also a mother,

I want to make sure my child is spared some of the trauma that I underwent.

I still bare those childhood scars and it has taken me

nearly 40 years of crossing different types of physical, psychological,

and even spiritual borders,

to learn how to grapple with an identity that's mine,

that I own, that has allowed me to say that I am comfortable being me.

In this essay, I wish to show that identity is not static,

it does not remain the same when it crosses from one space into another space.

Parts of one's identity does not change where one is

confronted with the enormous challenge of being a minority, an outsider.

I wish to argue that it takes courage and hard work to retain

a true sense of self in foreign context and that one is often at

a great risk of completely losing one's true sense of self

if one does not have a strong sense of home identity to draw on.

So, as much as identity changes when crossing borders,

there's also a part of identity that is unique to

you and that gives one a sense of "this is me."

In this essay, I'll draw on the works of the Sichone and

Blommeart to show how in the process of crossing borders,

the boundaries surrounding identity are policed,

how these identities are perceived by others and redefined,

how they become politicized,

and how they value changes even though some things stay the same.

Crossing the border carries great risk and

also possibility: the risk of losing any sense of who you were

and also the possibility of rediscovering a new

you that will allow you to feel at home and at peace with yourself.

Now, let's look at Ziggy's who defines himself primarily in terms of a black Zulu man.

I identify as a proud black Zulu man.

I was born on South African soil as part of the born-free generation.

I have escaped much of the hardships that my ancestors

had to endure under the oppressive apartheid regime,

where they were stripped of their identities as proud black Zulu men and

women and systematically reduced to the status of being a servant boys and girls,

in the eyes a racist and oppressive white system of the law.

The history of my people shows that my forebears were forcibly removed from

their homes under the apartheid government and sent to live in impoverished Bantustans,

where they were nothing more than a cheap source of migrant labour,

saving the white-owned mining industry in the very country of their birth.

These once proud Zulu men,

who had earned their right in the true Zulu tradition to be called men,

found that as they moved in and out of

the borders that defined their Bantustans to stand to work in the mines of SA,

their Zulu identities were accused by the apartheid government to

the simple nameless status of "a black migrant worker".

It took blood, sweat,

and many tears for my family to establish a successful black-owned business,

and an extremely cognisant of the types of sacrifices that were made to get us here,

to once again proclaim our proud Zulu heritage.

In our fast-paced and globalizing world,

we have reached a stage of mobility that allows us to cross any number of borders,

nationally, on the continent,

and internationally, in a matter of hours.

This has placed immense strain on

our identities and has made the concept of migrancy a global phenomenon.

When our own African continent,

those entering South African borders in seek of work have been

subjected to extreme xenophobic attacks (Sichone, 2008).

This movement from familiar to strange places changes the meanings of

things we are familiar with and which we regard as part of our identity.

(Blommeart, 2005), crossing borders

therefore affects the ways in which individuals view and enacts their identities.

As in the xenophobic attacks in South Africa,

reactions to foreigners and migrants can be extreme,

expressing itself in black-on-black violence.

In this essay, I draw on Woodward's (1997) theorizing of identity and

Blommeart's (2005) concept of "mobility"

and what it means to move from one context into another.

I want to look at the issue of black identity in particular,

and I want to argue that,

black identities that are mobile and that are engaged in border crossing to seek work,

are far more at risk of being devalued and negatively stereotyped, (Sichone,

2008) than that of white identities that are also border crossing.

The historical artifacts of white privilege and

black suffering therefore persist and must be confronted at all times.

Last up, we have Joey,

who provides a perspective on what it means to hold on to

a particular sexual orientation that is frowned upon by mainstream society.

So crossing borders is something I want to chat about today.

The LGBTQIA community, have walked

a very fine line with respect to revealing and hiding their identities,

and very often, they simply had no choice in the matter.

I want to make people aware of their own prejudices towards gays.

Sichone (2008) states quite nicely how prejudices towards outsiders can lead to violence,

as is the case of xenophobia.

We need to learn how to value each other,

even though we are different.

And I want to engage (Blommeart,

2005) to show that even though the meanings of things and

symbols can change and value when a person moves around from place to place,

that the choice to change one's identity must rest with the individual,

even though it is difficult to do so.

One ultimately has to live with the decisions one makes

about who one is and how one wants to identify.

Ada, Zigi, and Joey have presented

very interesting perspectives of identity, mobility, and culture.

In the next lecture,

I will give them some feedback on their paragraphs and

specifically the positions that they've

taken and how they have used evidence to support their stance.

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