Use of the first person in writing

Mon, 12 Oct 2026 08:22:59 GMT

by Paul Hutchings.

Another good question asked that I want to share with the group through this Q&A forum:

"...when writing against the myth am I able to use language such as “I believe”, or “I think”, to explain anything in the myth..."

Something important to note here - this relates to one of the more academic MLAs as opposed to reflection, which we would expect to contain references to the self (I will be doing a session on reflection later in the module and will explain how to carry out what we call 'critical reflection').

The APA 7th style guide now allows references to the self... but they should be used sparingly and usually in specific circumstances when writing in academic style, such as when you carry out a research project and you actually do something such as create materials. The House Rules document covers this further so you can find more information there.

In the above example I would avoid using such language as it weakens your argument - what you believe or think is of limited value (outside of reflection), it is all about what the weight of evidence suggests. In the Myths MLA the only one I can think of that would be acceptable would be if you were to say 'based upon a, b, and c I conclude z'.

pbh

List of MLAs

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 11:41:41 GMT

by Paul Hutchings.

Hi all,

I was asked this question as part of a wider conversation so whilst it wasn't posted here I thought it would be a good one to have in the Q&A forum...

The question was 'will there be a list of the MLAs so that I can decide which ones to focus on for my assessment?'

The answer to this is 'Yes there will be' but there are a couple of reasons why I haven't made it available yet (and won't until at least next week).

The first reason is logistical - with things like Student Union, Wellbeing etc., being booked into the sessions it can be difficult to judge what needs to remain and what needs to come out (if you remember last week I had to skip a task because of time constraints) - so I want to make sure that the MLAs have enough time for adequate coverage and to do this I need to get all of the additional bits scheduled in.
The second reason is much more important. I don't want people to focus on a particular MLA task in the session because it is important for their assessment, I want them to focus on the MLA because it is important for their development - in this module that matters more than the assessment does. We have built plenty of time into the module sessions themselves for you to engage with the MLAs, even if it means going back to some of them at a later date. So we deliberately won't rush this - that way, as you carry out the tasks you will find that the assessment starts to write itself!

pbh

Q & A forum

Use of the first person in writing

List of MLAs