about us

This blog is created to meet the academic writing and research skills needs of EFL students. It is a good platform that has the basic guidelines that help EFL students develop good research skills. Students are encouraged to read each post and comment by adding additional tips on each skills or an opinion about the posts.
Knowledge sharing, interaction and critical thinking is highly recommended!

what to write about

What to write about or topic choosing is the first very important step in writing. 
It is essential that you choose a topic that is of interest to you. 
There are a few tips that you could you use and might help you choose the right topic to write about. First, brainstorm as many ideas as you can and decide on a theme that you feel you can write about. This could be broad, for example; you can write about environmental, economical, social, political or religious issues that might be of interest for you feel you can extensively read, analyze and write about.
Second, you need to narrow down your theme to a specific topic. You can't discuss all environmental issues, for example, in one research paper. You can, for example, stick to air pollution, one narrowed topic on-environment, a broad theme.
Third, make sure you know how to raise a question that could be of interest to reader of your topic and make sure you have some suggestion to answer the question you raise.
Fourth, make it interesting! A lot of people write about different things everyday but everyone has their own voice. So, be present in your topic and make it different by adding your original ideas to it.

Look at the following image.It gives an idea about brainstorming your topic and organizing it into sub-ideas.

gathering information

This page will give tips and guidelines on how to find background information, articles and different resources for your topic.

There are many resources that you can get information from. You can use:
1- Books
2- Encyclopedias
3- E-Journals
4- Videos 

For people's opinions you can use:
1- Surveys
2- Questionnaires
3-Interviews.

There are different approaches to using each of the above mentioned resources.

Paraphrasing

citing and referencing

Here are some very useful links on APA referencing:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

http://library.uws.edu.au/uws_library/sites/default/files/cite_APA.pdf

http://www.waikato.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/51632/APA_Referencing_6th_ed.pdf

useful links

Here are some useful links:

Research Process
http://www.library.illinois.edu/learn/research/researchprocess.html#Share

Note taking
http://www.academictips.org/acad/literature/notetaking.html

Organizing Your Writing
http://www.ncte.org/library/nctefiles/involved/dayonwriting/organizingyourwriting.pdf

Organizing Your Ideas
http://www.cgu.edu/PDFFiles/Writing%20Center/Writing%20Center%20Resources/Organizing%20Your%20Ideas.pdf

Paraphrasing vs. Summarizing
http://www.uc.utoronto.ca/paraphrase

Useful Dictionaries
www.onelook.com

Note Taking

Note taking is very important in the writing process. Some students use different colors to write about different ideas. Some use their notebooks and other use Word.

Tell us about the techniques that you use.

tips on paraphrasing

Different students use different techniques to paraphrase.

Here you can share the techniques that work for you with your classmates.

Themes

People in each community have their own interests, concerns and issues that they usually discuss using different communication channels.
What is/are the issue/issues that people in your society are concerned about these days?