This book, Howard Becker’s “Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article” is an excellent volume and should be read, though as I warned in my thread, must be read primarily by those who are Becker’s peers: doctoral students’ advisers. Because of the memoir style that Becker uses (a la Stephen King’s On Writing), those who will be best positioned to understand where he is coming from are those who have conducted the same activities as he has: supervising doctoral students. I do not believe this book is targeted for those who are still undertaking their doctorate.
Becker’s Writing for Social Scientists is a memoir-style book (a la Stephen King’s “On Writing”, or John McPhee’s Draft No. 4), but the way Becker delivers his insights is entirely for DOCTORAL STUDENTS’ ADVISORS. He shares how HE supervised/s students, and issues they face/d. Becker’s book is NOT written for doctoral students, in my opinion. And therefore the title is misleading (“How to Start and Finish your Thesis, Book or Article”). In my view, students need to read “The Clockwork Muse” by Erubavel, or “Authoring a PhD” by Dunleavy, or Bolker’s “Writing your Dissertation in 15 Minutes“.
Yes, *of course* you will find gems and pearls of wisdom that are written for students (see this extract on doing index cards for note-taking) – but the vast majority of his text is geared towards those who share his duties and experiences (e.g. PhD advisors) pic.twitter.com/orveIwfwUI
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 8, 2018
Becker does offer many suggestions for how to write well (his experience is in Sociology so that’s where he draws examples from) – this book offers amazing advice (though I caution that if students read it they should read other books more geared towards students first) pic.twitter.com/aOq1LAT9ME
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 8, 2018
The great thing about Becker and his auto-biographical approach is that he shares all the things he’s done right and wrong. I am like him. I don’t like wasting my words. If I cut from a paper, I save those words for another paper. I once got 1 chapter, 2 articles this way. pic.twitter.com/HudWyXDqjB
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 8, 2018
Brutal honesty from Becker (and yes this is a 1986 book reprinted in 2007, still has some great gems). “Reading this book won’t solve all your writing problems”. You improve your writing by writing, kids. And by reading. And then writing more. And so on. </thread> pic.twitter.com/Fn34JwV6kI
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) August 8, 2018
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.