Academic Writing Consultant
Welcome to the Faculty of Business and Law Academic Writing Consultant's Website. Dr Greg Maguire's role is to help research students (PhD, Masters by research and Honours) and staff with improving their academic writing. I often work with overseas students who are refining their research proposals but can look at any academic writing from any research student or academic, time permitting. I work closely with Supervisors and attempt to reduce their workload by allowing them to focus more on content than style issues. The success of this strategy depends on the writing skills of the student and their commitment to improving their skills.
How can the Academic Writing Consultant assist researchers?
I assist them to improve their approaches to editing their own documents:
- Appropriate structure of documents
- Grammar
- Writing in a more concise style
- Writing in a more easily read style
- Editing without changing the meaning
- Understanding publishing and editing opportunities and responsibilities
- Seeking and receiving feedback
As with other writing consultants, I do not do electronic editing and do not edit an entire thesis (but will provide detailed comment at an entire draft journal manuscript or book chapter). My role is to build your writing skills rather than being an editing service. Mostly, I edit outside of my specialist research area but this is not a problem as my role is to deal with structure and style not content.
Activities and workshops
I help research students through the following activities and workshops:
- Individual and small group consultations
- Workshops open to all research students enrolled in the faculty
- Workshops arranged with specific Schools
- Orientation sessions for particular research courses
- Online support for external students
- Resources available via this website
- Referral to reliable commercial proof readers
I also work with individual staff or groups of staff but research students take priority.
How to make an appointment
To arrange an appointment you can contact Dr Greg Maguire by email or telephone, or by dropping in at my office (see below). It helps greatly if you send a draft document in advance of an appointment so that the meeting is more productive.
How to arrange a small group workshop
Get a relevant academic staff member to contact me by email or telephone. It is important that you are clear about what you want the workshop to achieve. For some schools the number of research students will necessitate that a workshop approach be adopted rather than individual consultations.
I am based at the Joondalup campus but spend the last Friday of each month at the Mount Lawley campus in 13.102B. I work Wednesday pm - Friday for the Faculty of Business and Law Room in JO 2.243 ph (61 8) 6304 5395 fax (61 8) 6304 5271.) My mobile is 0404 991 245 and my email is g.maguire@ecu.edu.au. (I also work in the same role from Monday - Wednesday am in Faculty of Computing, Health & Science Room JO 21.523. ph (61 8) 6304 3436.)
My background
Please see my BLOG at www.research.ecu.edu.au/grs/blogs/blog.php?id=gmaguir2.