There are three stages in producing an academic essay or report: planning, researching and writing up. In each of these stages there are a number of smaller steps.

Activity 4-1: Explaining the process of academic writing

The following passage explains the process of writing an essay. Read it carefully and complete the flow chart that follows.

The first step of essay writing is to decide on a topic, and prepare a schedule of work for the available time. Then the topic should be brainstormed and a draft outline prepared. Next, possible sources have to be evaluated critically and the most relevant selected, after which you can start making notes, using paraphrasing and summarizing skills. When you have collected enough material to answer the question, the first draft of the main body can be written from the notes, taking care to avoid plagiarism.

Subsequently you can write the first draft of the introduction and conclusion, ensuring that a logical approach to the title is developed. After this the whole draft must be critically re-read and revised for maximum clarity and accuracy. The penultimate stage is to prepare a final list of references, appendices and other items such as tables and figures. Finally the whole text should be thoroughly proofread before handing in the assignment on time.

What You should Know

As an example of advanced writing, academic writing can be defined as the type of writing used in an academic environment for a number of special purposes including doing research, writing reports, preparing term papers, reviewing books and articles, and completing theses and dissertations. Among the varieties of academic writing, research paper and report are the most common ones.

Academic writing usually follows a particular style. Here are some guidelines:

Be formal. Avoid slang e.g. cool, and language that is too casual e.g. pretty awful. Use full forms rather than abbreviations, e.g. does not, rather than doesn’t. Consider the use of nominalization rather than verb structures.

Be objective. Academic writing should be objective, so personal pronouns(e.g. I, me, my, we, us, our, you) should normally be avoided.

Be cautious. Do not use words and phrases in academic writing that are too strongly opinionated. Think carefully before using words like “definitely”“undoubtedly” “should” “must” “absolutely”. Words like “possibly”“probably” “likely” “seems” “may” and “could” tend to feature in good academic writing.

Despite many variations in the format of research articles, the following plan can be used by a beginning student researcher for both a quantitative as well as a qualitative approach. The elements of structure include: (1) Title, (2) Abstract,(3) Introduction, (4) Literature review, (5) Results, (6) Discussion, (7) Conclusion,(8) References, (9) Appendices. These elements of structure will be defined and analyzed in detail in the following units.

Academic writing is a process. It starts from understanding the writing task, then goes on to doing the research and reading. The next stage is planning and writing various drafts, and this is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this should lead to the final text.

Language Focus

Grammatical Features of Academic Writing

(Hamp-Lyons & Heasley, 2006)

Assignment

1. Visit the website http: www.york.ac.uk/asis/writing.htm in which there is an audio file about the academic style. Listen to it and learn more about the features of academic writing.

2.Rewrite the following paragraphs in a more academic style.

I would call Wagner a subjective artist.What I mean is that his art had its source in his personality; his work was virtually independent, I always feel, of the epoch in which he lived.

On the other hand, I always consider Bach an objective artist.You can see that he worked only with the forms and ideas that his time proffered him. I do not think he felt any inner compulsion to open out new paths.

3. Look at your most recent written work, for example, the term paper of a course you took last semester. Underline the words or phrases you think might not be in an academic style and make improvement.

4. Read the research article your teacher has assigned to you. Study its overall structure and identify its linguistic features.