Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Writing is an act of putting on a piece of paper or on any writing materials visual symbols or representations
of the of the writer’s language, that results from social conventions.
Cuneiform- is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000
BCE.
Hieroglyphic- Alphabet with marks representing stars, moons, animals and others.
Academic Writing- is a process that starts with posing a question, problematizing a concept, evaluating an
opinion and ends with answering the question or questions posed, clarifying the problem, evaluating an
opinion, and/ or arguing for a stand.
T- opic- What is the text about? What details am I imparting to the readers?
A-udience- Who is reading this piece? What knowledge does he need to understand in my writing?
Purpose of writing
1. To inform
2. To persuade
3. To entertain
Formality
Formality reflects your dignified stance in your writing as a member of the academic community. This
means that since your audience are fellow members of the academic community, the language you use
requires precision to make it a “legitimate” piece of academic writing.
1. Choosing expanded modal forms over contracted forms, such as using cannot instead of can’t,
do not instead of don’t.
2. Choosing one verb form over two-word verbs, such as damage instead of mess up.
Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expressions, such as kind of like, as a matter of fact, I need to go to the
John.
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Ms. Kyien V. Verastigue
Consume use repeatedly again and again
Objectivity
Academic writing requires special knowledge and use of more complex language and objectivity. This
means that the writing must be impersonal and maintain a certain level of social distance.
Avoiding rhetorical questions as it marks “closeness” with the reader, and constantly seeks his/her attention.
Poor example: The investigators were very shocked to see the outcome of the tests.
Explicitness
Academic writing demands the use of signposts that allow readers to trace the relationships in the parts of
a study.
If you intended to show a change in your line of argument, make it clear by using however:
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Example:
It is apparent that the government hopes to provide assistance to the poor. However, giving dole outs to
the “poorest of the poor” does not work in the long term.
A number of MERALCO consumers trooped to the City Hall to claim a PHP 500 cash incentive. This is due to
the Supreme Court ruling that the overcharges must be returned to the end users whose electric
consumption for the April-May period was below 100kw/hr.
With the Supreme Court consumers trooped to the City Hall to claim to the end users, government offices
have been tapped to operate as claim centers. This resulted in a number of MERALCO consumers trooping
to the City Hall to claim the PHP 500.00 cash incentive.
When two ideas seem the same, express each one clearly.
The study showed that eighty percent of the 200 participants involved in the study were dissatisfied
with the operations of MERALCO. Similarly, the data revealed that majority of the participants were not
aware of the charges imposed on them by MERALCO.
If you intend to give extra information in your sentence, make it clear by writing “In addition …”
MERALCO has been operating as business conglomerate involving foreign stakeholders and
independent power producers or IPP. In addition, MERALCO owns major IPPs operating in the region.
The MERALCO issue has led to disputes between apposition and administration senators. For
example, those who have been labeled as against the president considered the issue as administration’s
way of avoiding the NBN-ZTE scandal.
Caution
Academic writing requires care since knowledge is built from proven theories and concepts. Therefore,
caution is needed to avoid sweeping generalizations. Consider the following example:
The statement is not completely true and the rhetorical impact of the statement may be misleading. The
statement can be improved through the use of devices such as modal verbs, adverbs, or verbs.
Improved versions:
Some government officials may be corrupt. (modal verb)
Corruption is commonly linked to some key government officials. (adverb)
A number of government officials tend to be observed in the following parts of your paper. (verb)
In academic writing, caution needs to be observed in the following parts of your paper:
Below are some forms that you may use in observing caution in writing.
Verbs indicating caution: tends, suggests, appear to be, think, believe, doubt, indicate
Example:
The findings of the survey suggests that students who use the social networking in their academic
work tend to be more updated on recent developments in their respective subjects.
Example:
The observations of students’ use of social networking sites may lead to the different behaviors that
manifest in real-life communication.
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Ms. Kyien V. Verastigue
Adverbs of frequency: often, sometimes, usually
Since academic writing draws on previous writings done related to your topic (in the case of
research writing), it is important that creating knowledge is expressed through means that do not lead to
sweeping generalizations that may directly attack other writer’s point of view.
If your result show something different from another author’s ideas, there are possible ways in writing these
points:
While both sentences essentially means the same thing, sentence 1 expresses an explicit difference
between your findings and of Meyer’s. This may be interpreted by readers as an attempt to highlight your
findings as superior compared to Meyer. On the other hand, sentence 2 shows that you are distancing
yourself from your work (basing conclusions on what is observed) and comparing it to previous works done
by other researchers relating your contributions to other ideas in the discipline. Remember that in
academic writing, since you are part of a community, it is important that you can express ideas with
openness, striking a balance being concise and cautious.
1. Introductory e.g. seem, tend, look like, appear to be, think, believe,
verbs: doubt, be sure, indicate, suggest
Structure
Aside from language, sentence need to be constructed in such a way that they show a level of complexity
that reflects the sophistication of an academic writer. Combining ideas effectively, nominalization and
passivization are some ways to achieve structure fit for academic writing.
In combining ideas effectively, you will need to avoid redundancy and at the same time, make
sure that ideas are packed effectively.
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Ms. Kyien V. Verastigue
Though these sentences are grammatically correct, they do not possess the sophistication of academic
writing. They can be improved by continuing similar ideas expressing them through a complex construction.
Hence, they can be written this way:
The earthquake was a disaster that caused loss of life, property damage and permanent changes
in the landscape.
In nominalization, the verbs are made central as they denote action and not on the doer of the action.
Examples;
The company created a software to manage the transaction successfully.
Nominalization:
The creation of software to manage transactions was a success.
The mall distributed several free items to consumers in the hope to boost sales.
Nominalization:
Distribution of free items for consumers was done in the hope to boost sales.
In passive construction, the results of action are highlighted. In academic writing, since the writer of
the paper is presumed to have done the collection and analysis of data, it is understood that all results of
the action are a product of the writer’s work.
Examples:
The researcher conducted experiments to validate the hypothesis.
Passivization:
Experiments were conducted to validate the hypothesis.
References:
Valdez P. N., (2016), English for Academic and Professional Purposes
Baraceros, E.L. (2009) English 3: English for Academic Writing.
UEAP (n.d.) Features of Writing retrieved from http://www.uefap.com/writing/feature/featfram.htm
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Ms. Kyien V. Verastigue