What is Academic Writing?

Elements to consider Audience Purpose Organization Style Flow/Coherence Other?

Audience Who was the audience for the last thing you wrote? Did you write for him/her or was he she just an intermediary to your “real” audience. Ultimately who are you learning to write to? Who do you think will be your audience for what you write on this course? Assignment – based on what you are currently doing anyway so you will have a mixed audience – how will you cope? Must know audiences expectations and prior knowledge – what if you have more than one audience?

Purpose Whatever you current writing project is – what is your purpose? What will be the purpose of anything you write on this course? When you write something for your supervisor, what are you doing? When you write something for me, what are you doing? To inform? To display knowledge? To challenge? To provoke? To respond?

Organisation 1 Chronologically or Reverse-Chronologically 2 In spatial relation 3 From General to Specific (inductive) 4 From Specific to General (deductive) 5 From Least Important to Most Important   6 Through Division and Classification 7 By Cause and Effect 8 By Problem and Solution 9 Through Comparison or Analogy 10 Through Contrast 11 By Process 12 Through Definition

Style Verbs – avoid phrasal (prepositional) – use single (often Latinate) verbs Do task nine = p. 20 Avoid Contractions Use formal negative forms: The analysis didn’t yield any new results The analysis yielded no new results Avoid “run on expressions”: etc, and so forth, and so on Avoid addressing reader as “you” Generally avoid use of “I” Limit use of direct questions: “What can be done about this?” Place Adverbs within verb: “Very little is actually known…” Use words efficiently/avoid being “wordy”

Flow/Coherence Use linking words/phrases See: http://home.ku.edu.tr/~doregan/Writing/Linkers.html Use appropriate punctuation

Task 18 page 34 Use of summary words