ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES

Academic writing is a process that starts with posing a question, problematizing a concept,
evaluating an opinion, and ends in answering the question or question posed, clarifying the problem,
and/or arguing for a stand. Academic writing has a specific purpose, which is to inform, to argue a
specific point, and to persuade.
Academic writing is thinking; you cannot just write anything that comes to your mind. You have to
abide by the set rules and practices in writing. You have to write in language that is appropriate and
formal but not too pretentious. You also have to consider the knowledge and background of your
audience. You have to make sure that you can back up your statement with a strong and valid
evidence. Writing academic papers requires deliberate, thorough, and careful thought and that is why
it involves research.
Consider the following areas as you write:
 Content: clarity of the purpose and the thesis statement, relevance of the supporting
points to the thesis statement, knowledge on the subject matter.
 Structure: coherence and logical sequence of the ideas
 Language and style: word choice, sentence construction
 Mechanics: grammar, punctuations, capitalization, formatting, documentation
Critical reading
“Critical reading is an active process of discovery”
Critical reading involves scrutinizing any information that you read or hear. Critical reading
means not easily believing information offered to you by a text. “Read not to contradict and confute;
nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider”
Critical reading is an active process of discovery because when you read critically, you are not
just receiving information but also making an interaction with the writer. The interaction happens
when you question the writer’s claims and assertions and when you comment on the writer’s ideas.

Ramage, Bean, and Johnson (2006) identified the following requirements in critical thinking:
 The ability to pose problematic questions.
 The ability to analyse a problem in all its dimensions—to define its key terms, determine
its causes, understand its history, appreciate its human dimension and its connection to
one’s own personal experience, and appreciate what makes it problematic or complex.
 The ability to find, gather, and interpret data, facts, and other information relevant to
the problem.
 The ability to imagine alternative solutions to the problem, to see different ways in
which the question might be answered and different perspectives for viewing it.
 The ability to analyze competing approaches and answers, to construct arguments for
and against alternatives, and to choose the best solution in the light of values,
objectives, and other criteria that you determine and articulate.
 The ability to write an effective argument justifying your choice while acknowledging
counter-arguments.
Four ways to be a critical reader:
1. Annotate what you read.one of the ways to interact with the writer is to write on the
text. You can underline, circle, or highlight words, phrases, or sentences that contain important
details or you can write marginal notes asking questions or commenting on the ideas of the writer.
2. Outline the text. In order to fully engage in a dialogue with the text or with the writer of
the text, you need to identify the main points of the writer and list them down so you can also
identify the ideas that the writer has raised to support his/her stand.
3. Summarize the text. Aside from outlining, you can also get the main points of the text
you are reading and write its gist in your own words. This will test how much you have understood
the text and will help you evaluate it critically. A summary is one paragraph long.
4. Evaluate the text. The most challenging part in critical reading is the process of
evaluating what you are reading. This is the point where the other three techniques—annotating,
outlining, summarizing—will e helpful. When you evaluate the text, you question the author’s purpose
and intentions, as well as his/her assumptions in the claims. You also check if the arguments are
supported by evidence and if the evidence are valid and are from credible sources.

THE PRE-WRITING PROCESS

Three steps in choosing the topic:
 1. Brainstorming. When you responded with ideas and concepts related to the broad
concept that your teacher gave you, you were already generating possible topics for your paper. The
activity aims to generate as many topics as you can in 10 to 15 minutes so that these random topics
can be made into a focus topic later on.
2. Freewriting. It is similar to brainstorming in that you just write any idea that comes to
your mind. The catch is to put down into writing the ideas that you think of so that later on you will
be able to generate ideas and narrow them down into a single topic for your paper.
3. Clustering. Also called ballooning or mapping. This technique provides a graphic
representation of your ideas, allowing you to visualize the connections and/or relationships of your
ideas.

Plagiarism could be any of the following:

 Deliberate copying of somebody else’s work and claiming that work to be his/her own;
 Using somebody else’s work or ideas without proper acknowledgement or citation; and
 Copying the text without paraphrasing it.

Two ways to avoid plagiarism:

 Paraphrasing. It is rendering the essential ideas in a text (sentence or paragraph) using your
own words. Paraphrased materials are usually shorter than the original text. It is more detailed
than a summary.
 Directly quote the sentence or the paragraph. Quotations must be identical to the original
text. A direct quotation is preferred to a paraphrase when the author’s ideas are so important
that paraphrasing them will change the essence of those ideas.

The Writing Process

Developing Your Thesis Statement
Thesis statement is the claim or stand that you will develop in your paper. It is the controlling idea
of your essay. It gives your readers idea of what your paper is all about. A strong thesis statement
usually contains an element of uncertainty, risk, or challenge (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 2006:34).
This means that your thesis statement should offer a dabatable claim that you can prove or disprove
in your essay. The claim should debatable enough to let your readers agree or disagree with you.

Organizing Your Paper

Organizing your ideas means finding the connections of one point to another and establishing a
link from one idea to another. The challenge for you as the writer is to be able to “ weave back and
forth between generalizations and specifics.”
Outlining is an effective way of ensuing the logical flow of your ideas. You may opt to use the
standard outline complete with roman numerals and indentions or you may use lists, diagrams or
maps.
Introduction for academic essay provides a background of your topic, poses a question regarding
the topic, explains how the question is problematic and significant, and gives the writer’s thesis
statement.

The Post-Writing Process

Two processes involved in post-writing:
1. Revising. Revising is “re-seeing the entire draft so that the writer can deal with the large
issues that must be resolved before he or she deals with the line-by-line,
word-by-word issues involved in editing.
2. Editing. Sometimes known as proofreading, is the more meticulous process of clarifying me
aning by revising each word and line of your draft.

The Art of Defining

Definition is a mode of paragraph development that answers the questions: What is it? What d
oes it mean? What are its features? The word to be define may be an object, a concept, a person, a pl
ace, or a phenomenon.
Definition is important because it clarifies the meaning of a word or concept and it also limits the
scope of that particular word or concept.

The Different Techniques of Defining:

  Formal definition the most common in which you are given a term to be defined and you defi
ne the term by giving the class where the word/term belongs (the genus) and the characteristic
s that distinguish the term from other terms, known as the differentia. For example:

Term = genus + differentia

Definition = a mode of paragraph development + that answers the questions: what is it, w
hat does it mean , or what is its special features.

 Extended Definition is needed to define abstract concepts. It allows you to broaden your def
inition by using ana logy, metaphors, comparison and contrast, descriptions, analysis, fun
ctions, etymology, and semantic origin.
 Definition by etymology ( the origin of the word was traced)
 Definition by contrast ( the word is defined by the use of opposites)
 Definition by example (using the examples to define the term)
 Definition by synonym ( using a similar word or phrase to define a word)
 Definition by function ( stating what the term is for)
 Definition by analogy (comparing the term to another object/concept/idea that shares the sa
me characteristic a s the term being defined;
 Definition by comparison and contrast ( defining the term by the use of comparing and co
ntrasting)
 Definition by negation (defining the term by stating what it is not)

CONCEPT PAPER
 Defines an idea or a concept and explains its essence in order to clarify the “whatness” of that id
ea or concept
 Starts with a definition , either formal or informal of the term or the concept and proceeds with
an expanded definition and an analytic description of the aspects of the concept
