Academic writing resources

The resources below are useful to new research students and early career academics.

Editing and writing skills for research students

Introductory exercises 

These should be of particular use to research students writing in English as a second language, or those who find they struggle with grammatical and spelling errors.

Additional editing exercises and possible solutions 

These exercises show the writer how to develop a direct writing strategy.

Advanced editing exercises and solutions 

These exercises are more challenging and could be attempted if you wish to assess your editing and writing skills.

Advice to research students 

This covers editing roles and responsibilities and common stylistic and grammatical errors. One commonly used structure for research papers for journals is presented. Some tips on how to improve your own editing and get best value from editing support provided by Supervisors, are also included. Web links to useful resources developed by other organisations are provided.

Editing tools for research students and staff

Editing strategies

Involves a system of numbered types of writing faults within documents and drafts written by students. This can be used alone or in combination with replacement text for some or all of the stylistic errors made by the student. The aim is to allow supervisors to edit less but explain more.

Supporting materials:

Numbered faults

Lists and briefly explains the numbered faults and editing symbols and provides a quick grammar lesson.

Explaining the numbered system

Provides multi-layered explanations of each fault, along with corrected examples that may in turn also be written in a more direct style. Also available as an interactive web tool.

Downloads

  • Introductory exercises (PDF File71.9 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/69094/Introductory-writing-exercises.pdf
  • Introductory exercisesPDF File, (71.9 KB)
  • Solutions to introductory exercises (PDF File127.0 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/69095/Solutions-to-Introductory-Editing-Exercises.pdf
  • Solutions to introductory exercisesPDF File, (127.0 KB)
  • Additional editing exercises and possible solutions (PDF File89.2 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/69096/Additional-editing-exercises.pdf
  • Additional editing exercises and possible solutionsPDF File, (89.2 KB)
  • Advanced editing exercises and solutions (PDF File44.4 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/69097/Advanced-Exercises.pdf
  • Advanced editing exercises and solutionsPDF File, (44.4 KB)
  • Advice to research students (PDF File207.9 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/69098/Advice-to-research-students.pdf
  • Advice to research studentsPDF File, (207.9 KB)
  • Editing strategies (PDF File104.3 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/69099/Editing-strategies.pdf
  • Editing strategiesPDF File, (104.3 KB)
  • Numbered faults (PDF File87.4 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/69100/Numbered-writing-faults.pdf
  • Numbered faultsPDF File, (87.4 KB)
  • Explaining the numbered system (PDF File214.7 KB)
    http://www.ecu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/69101/Explaining-the-numbering-system.pdf
  • Explaining the numbered systemPDF File, (214.7 KB)