Friday (8/4/22), the Center for World Trade Studies (CWTS) Universitas Gadjah Mada held an online writing workshop which was attended by UGM PSPD interns from various departments. On this occasion, PSPD UGM invited Raras Cahyafitri, M.Sc as the head of the Research Division of PSPD UGM who is experienced in journalism and writing as a speaker. This workshop aims to improve the writing skills of interns and PSPD UGM staff to be able to produce quality and trustworthy writing. The material presented includes discussions related to techniques and how to write for various outcomes.
The workshop was opened with a discussion regarding the important and main steps in starting a writing, namely writing the main sentence. In her presentation, Raras said that there are two types of placement of the main sentence, namely inductive (placed at the end of writing) and deductive (placed at the beginning of writing). To make writing more interesting, writing with comprehensive and coherent paragraphs is needed. Raras introduced three ways of composing paragraphs known as SMS––sort, match, and structure, namely sorting information, grouping, and determining the writing structure.
At the end of the session, the workshop participants were taught how to process data in a text and put it into a written framework to be developed into paragraphs by providing space for the workshop participants to practice this. In this session, participants learn how to present scientific statistical data into an informative and easy-to-understand reading. Some workshop participants had difficulty putting this into practice because the participants had to understand well the data presented and practice drawing general conclusions. However, these skills are important for interns to have, especially in terms of presenting data-based information in various outputs at CWTS UGM.
The workshop activities were enthusiastically followed by the participants, which was shown by the active participation of the participants in the question and answer sessions and practice sessions. In the presentation session on material related to processing data into writing, the intern on average had difficulty putting the material into practice. Thus, reflecting on this activity, it is expected that in the future there will be similar programs that can help improve the ability of writers.
