Many students write in a 'nursery' style quite inadequate to formulate the complexity of their ideas. Others confuse the disciplines of journalism with those of the academic. Some think they need to dramatise their arguments as if they were writing a story.

Consider the differences in approach between these four versions of the beginning of that familiar story, Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Identify which is in a nursery style, which a journalistic style, which novelistic, and which academic.

1. Human beings have interfered with bears' natural habitat ever since Goldilocks was on the scene. Remember how she carried on while the three bears were out walking in the woods? They thought they could come back and find everything as they had left it, except that their porridge would be just the right temperature to eat. No such luck. There had been an uninvited visitor.

 

2. Once upon a time there were three bears. There was a daddy bear, a mummy bear and a baby bear. They all lived together in a little cottage in the woods. One day, mummy bear made some porridge for breakfast but it was too hot to eat. "Let's go out for a walk while it cools," Daddy Bear said. "Yes, let's," Baby Bear said. So the three bears went for a walk in the woods.

 

3. One lovely sunny morning, while Father, Mother and Baby Bear were having a stroll to give their porridge time to cool, a little girl called Goldilocks pushed open the unlocked door of their cottage in the woods.

 

4. "This porridge you've made is too hot." Daddy Bear said to Mummy Bear. "Why don't we go for a walk while it cools? It's a lovely sunny morning."

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