We begin by considering practical aspects of academic writing, such as structure and the importance of defining key terms in an essay. The term we will focus on is identity. After hearing Kath Woodward’s ideas on identity, our three student writers, Ada, Ziggy, and Joey will write their own definitions of identity. Emphasising that writing is a process, we will give feedback on the students writers’ definitions.

We continue developing the concept of identity by considering the effects of mobility on one’s identity. Throughout history, as individuals moved across borders, they were either welcomed or perceived as an outsider or a threat. To help you formulate ideas on such concepts in your essay, we now consider the features of a good academic essay focusing on the introduction. We also introduce a three-part strategy to approach your readings: preview, overview and inview. We identify key features of an introduction, then look at introductions written by our three student writers, and provide them with constructive feedback.

We discuss culture and its relevance when individuals become mobile, moving between geographical and social contexts. We look at a case study of a student to help 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. 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. We offer practical guidelines on paragraphing, coherence and cohesion. We introduce the core aspects of referencing in essays.

We focus on crafting your final essay draft. We recap the building blocks of writing an academic essay, relooking at the features of an introduction, body, conclusion and the purposes of cohesion, coherence and referencing. We also consider and provide engaged feedback on the draft essays written by our three virtual students. There is detailed feedback on the strengths, improvements and opportunities for further improvement on the essays. The final discussion is on the ideas of the four thinkers you were introduced to in this course, namely Woodward, Sichone, Blommaert and Thornton.