Most people who become good at an activity develop their expertise by studying the work of recognized experts in their field ( or their own personal favorites!)
By studying and mastering foundational skills, they are then able to make flexible use of these skills in their own work.
Bach is (arguably) the greatest classical composer in history, however he spent his early years studying the work of other composers, even though he was already past them in both technical and compositional ability. He would copy, by hand, the work of other composers to more closely analyze how they had formed their work. Sometimes, he would use components of their work in his own – it is fascinating to look at/listen to how he used work from others to create new work that still contained references to the old…
In writing scholarly papers, we can take a similar approach. We can search out pieces of writing that have been influential, or resonate with us for some other reason, and analyze the strategies used by the writer.
- What are their writing goals? Who is their audience?
- How have they introduced their topic, and organized their information, specific to their writing goals?
- How do they engage the reader?
- Is there evidence of the use of SUCCES (Heath & Heath, 2007; Schimel, 2011)
- How do they establish authority/develop trust?
- What references/citations are used? Why?
- How much space is allocated to the different sections of the paper?
- Consider the need to be effective but efficient
- How do they focus the reader’s attention on the most important content
- How did they introduce/foreshadow these writing goals in the Introduction?
- What writing strategies do they use that we could adopt in our own work?