REVIEW: WORK WONDERS – COMMON MISTAKES BY JASMINE KYRIAKOU
Lecturer – Dr Matthew Birchwood – Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Date – 21/10/11
Matthew Birchwood held the second week of the ongoing series ‘Work Wonders’ events which aims to help students of all years in the University with their oral and writing skills. Each week discusses a different topic in order to cover each element within the standard essay of a University student; with this week being ‘Common Mistakes’ Matthew began with a clear outline of what we would be covering, creating a sense of awareness within the group, which was obvious as I saw many students including myself talking about the subject.
As the event began we were all given numerous sheets: two examples of sample essays, an assessment sheet for the department of English and a feedback report. This immediately demonstrated a strong structure to the event, as Matthew not only introduced to us his own lecture material, but also allowed to us to become involved by giving us literal examples of essays where we were able to search for such ‘common mistakes’. As a student I found it extremely helpful to have these examples and an assessment guide to compare them with as it got the whole group participating, working and arguing each of their individual points.
As Matthew continued I began to find the lecture not only incredibly interesting but entertaining. I could see that he wanted to keep the group focused and alert at all times and not have students drifting off into their own thoughts. In order to achieve this Matthew created a balance between his own discussion as a group and our involvement in his discussion; he never at any given time talked continuously for over ten minutes, allowing his audience to frequently ask questions and converse among themselves about the topic. Matthew included a video clip from www.youtube.com by Stephan Fry ‘On Words and Language’. This clip was a great source for academic entertainment as we were able to hear from another point of view the ‘common mistakes’ not only students make in their grammar, syntax, punctuation and so on but also many adults of all ages make around the world.
Matthew repeated a significant line to the group, ‘we are all professional writers, writing in an environment which requires commonly agreed conventions of written communication’. This stood out to me as a student and I feel everyone around me as we all came to university to learn and hopefully succeed further in life. Diverse amounts of people apply to university to further their studies and improve their education and they are all able to do this no matter what age they are.
Overall Matthew’s event was extremely successful; he covered every aspect of ‘common mistakes’ made by us as students within our essays. I found the lecture helpful and satisfying and I will be attending the ongoing series of Work Wonders in order to overcome the difficulties I have myself as a writer. To find out more about Work Wonders lectures you can visit Student Space through the Kingston University website or even better you can come along yourself and enjoy the inspirational and rewarding sessions!
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