Beginning the First Draft and Trying to Structure the Report
This week has been the real start of actually writing the Critical Report, and I will be honest, it has felt harder than I expected. I have spent weeks pulling research together, collecting quotes and building an understanding of the themes around dialect, identity and design, but turning all of that into a structured piece of writing is a completely different task. It feels like my brain knows what I want to say, but the challenge has been working out how to organise it so that it reads clearly and academically.
Most of my time this week has been spent trying to get the introduction and methodology into a first workable draft. The introduction especially took a while because I wanted it to clearly explain the question I am exploring without sounding too casual or too academic. I kept going back and forth between bringing my personal connection to Barnsley into the writing and keeping the tone formal. Writers like Hall and Crystal helped give the structure some stability, but it still took a lot of rewriting before I was even remotely happy with it.
The methodology draft has been another challenge. I knew I wanted to use Schön’s reflective model, but putting it into words and explaining why it suits this project took longer than I thought. Writing about limitations was also uncomfortable but necessary, so I kept reminding myself that this draft is not the finished version. At this stage it is more important that everything is on the page so that I have something to refine later.
One thing I have noticed is how difficult it is to move from collecting research to actually using it properly in my writing. I keep revisiting sources like Tlostanova, Klein and Rose to make sure I am interpreting their ideas correctly. I have also been trying to avoid overloading paragraphs with too many references. Finding the balance between research and my own argument is taking time, and it has made the drafting process slower than I planned.
Overall, Week 11 has mainly been about getting started and trying not to panic about the size of the task. It has not been the most productive in terms of word count, but it has helped me pin down the structure and understand how the argument needs to develop. My goal now is to keep writing throughout the next two weeks, even if the progress feels slow. This draft will definitely take Week 12 and Week 13 to sort out properly.
LSJ DESIGNS 
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