Many good questions are asked in the writing consultation at the TU Dresden Writing Center. To the question "How do I make sure that readers can follow me without losing sight of my own?"Tobi, a trained writing peer tutor since 2022, gives a first answer:

As a writer of scientific texts, it is important to convincingly convey one's own thoughts, arguments and analyses on a topic to the readers. This means that your own positions must be presented in such a way that they are comprehensible to others without great difficulty, leaving as little room as possible for misunderstanding. But how do you achieve this goal without losing sight of your own thoughts?

Texts are acts of communication. As a writer, you want to communicate, and of course you hope that there will be readers to whom you can communicate your own thoughts. In science, this communicative level of written work is particularly important, because new findings can only be secured through a regulated exchange of information between researchers. Therefore, it is helpful if you are aware of the perspective of a reading person in the writing process. According to Bräuer (2014), this works best if you divide your text production into two stages:

In the first stage, you write down everything you are trying to express with your text. What arguments do you want to make, what (analytical) results do you want to present, what conclusions do you draw, or even what questions have you asked yourself? The first thing to do here is to develop a self-understanding for your own text and to perceive it as such. This does not have to be wrapped up in beautiful words - what is important is that you are clear about the idea behind your text.

In the second stage, you revise your rough draft with regard to the previous knowledge and expectations of those who will read your text. Try to put yourself in the position of a person who does not know your text idea. How should your work be structured so that readers can follow your thoughts? Is it clear why you find one argument more convincing than another? Have you given all the information before presenting your conclusions? Can you see why you prefer one technical term over another? Here you should also pay attention to links between your sentences and your linguistic expression.

Presenting your idea or text to others is, of course, the best way to check how comprehensible your writing project is. This will also help you incorporate outside viewpoints that you may not have had on your radar before. No one is asking you to be able to anticipate and address every perspective right off the bat. But being aware that there are others and being able to see your own point of view from the 'outside' are half the battle for a well understood.

Sources:

Bräuer, Gerd. „Grundprinzipien der Schreibberatung: Eine pragmatische Sicht auf die Schreibprozesstheorie“. Schreiben. Grundlagentexte zur Theorie, Didaktik und Beratung, herausgegeben von Deyfürst/ Sennewald, UTB, 2014.

© privat

Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft

Name

Tobias Dittrich

Schreibberatung, Evaluation, Unterstützung Workshoporganisation

Send email

Send encrypted email via the SecureMail portal (for TUD external users only).

Contact Information

Organization Name

Writing Center of TU Dresden

Writing Center of TU Dresden

This post appeared on the occasion of the Febuary 2023 Writing Center Newsletter. This and other newsletter issues are linked in the Writing Center Newsletter Archive.

© TUD

Name

Writing Center of TU Dresden

Send email

Send encrypted email via the SecureMail portal (for TUD external users only).

Contact Information

Address work

Visiting address:

Fritz-Foerster-Bau, room 571 Mommsenstr. 6

01069 Dresden

Show map of this location.

Address postal

Postal address:

TUD Dresden University of Technology Zentrum für Weiterbildung/Career Service
Schreibzentrum

01062 Dresden

work Tel.