What Is Academic Writing? | Definition and 7 Key Features Explained

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english needs so this video will answer the question what is academic writing

and there are two parts to the video first i'll give a definition of academic writing

then i'll look in more detail at the features of academic writing first then a definition

so academic writing is writing which communicates ideas information and research to the

wider academic community and it can be divided into two types student academic writing

and expert academic writing these two forms differ in terms of what they are the audience and the purpose student

academic writing is used as a form of assessment at university or it may also be used at

schools in preparation for university study the audience will be your tutors or

professors at university and the purpose is to demonstrate learning expert academic writing on the

other hand is writing for publication in academic journals or books

the audience is other experts in the same field and the purpose is the creation of new knowledge and

although these two types of academic writing are different in terms of content

audience and purpose the standards and requirements are the same for both and this makes sense for

example if you're learning to drive a car if you're a student driver you still

need to obey the speed limit stop at red lights and so on in other words you have the same standards and

requirements that expert drivers do so let's look now in detail at the features of academic

writing there are seven different features that we'll look at

academic writing should be structured evidenced critical precise balanced objective and

formal so let's begin by looking at structured academic writing should have a clear

structure in order for the reader to easily follow the main ideas or arguments

the structure often derives from the genre of writing for example reports will usually begin

with an introduction followed by a method section a results section

and a discussion section an essay on the other hand will have an introduction including a thesis and will be divided

up into body paragraphs each of which should have a topic sentence and it will finish with a

conclusion probably containing a summary these are the most common genres of academic

writing but there are also many others for example literature review dissertation research

proposal and so on each of which has a different kind of structure being well structured also means that

the writing should be coherent in other words there should be a logical progression of ideas

it should also be cohesive in other words the different parts are clearly connected

for example by using reference words and transition signals being well structured also means we need

a clear focus so for the academic writer that means you need to understand very clearly what

you're writing about and why it also needs careful planning before writing

in some ways you can think of academic writing as being like a house the door is the introduction that leads

in and then each room is like a different section or different paragraph which serves a

different purpose now if you were building a house you wouldn't just start building you would

plan it very carefully first and the same is true for academic writing without careful planning it

won't have a very clear structure and it will be very difficult for the reader to follow the ideas

so the second feature of academic writing is that it should be evidenced this means opinions and arguments should

be supported by evidence in other words facts reasons examples statistics citations

let's have a look now at an authentic academic text this is the introduction to an article

about dengue fever dengue is a major global problem in many parts of the world

causing epidemics throughout the developed and developing countries so this is a fact and the fact is

strengthened by the citation but at al 2013. in thailand specifically frequent outbreaks in all administrative

provinces of thailand due to so this is giving the reasons vector breeding conditions

and hyperendemic nature of the virus and this causes significant impact on public health resources this

is a fact again supported by a citation shu et al 2019 in bangkok alone a recent 2017 outbreak resulted in over 4

000 case counts being reported in a single month so that's a statistic again supported by

a citation ministry of public health 2020 and this is very much a quality of

academic writing the use of in-text citations so being able to cite and reference

sources appropriately is a key skill that any academic writer needs to learn

the next feature is critical so academic writing does not simply describe the information should be analyzed and

evaluated in other words the writer should make judgments about it before it's used and sometimes in making

those judgments you may decide not to use the information at all in order to be able to write critically

you really need to understand the topic in depth so a great deal of research will be

needed here again is another authentic example while the studies in table 1 have

employed both quantitative and qualitative methods all were observational an observation

study may well reveal data however an observational study is incapable of ruling out potential

non-linguistic factors for example so here this is critical evaluation by

revealing the limitations of previous research the next feature is precise academic

writing should use clear and precise language this will enable the reader to follow

the ideas more easily so this includes the use of technical in other words subject specific

vocabulary sometimes such vocabulary may need defining for example if the term is not commonly used by other experts or if

you need to demonstrate understanding to your tutor so that's for student

academic writing so if we look back at the article on dengue fever we can see some examples of technical

vocabulary so there's a phrase vector breeding conditions and

hyperendemic nature of the virus so these phrases are difficult for us the non-specialists to understand but

these terms have precise meaning for the expert audience that this article was written for

next academic writing should be balanced this means that academic writing should give consideration to

all sides of the issue and avoid being biased additionally an academic writer should

show how strong their claims are and this is often done using hedges or boosters

for example the evidence suggests that more safety controls are needed or this could be caused by lack of

education so the word suggests is a way of hedging or making this statement

less certain and so is the word could and these sentences could be written more strongly clearly there is a need

for more safety controls the research indicates that the lack of education is to blame

so these sentences use boosters the first one clearly the second one indicates

so showing how strong or certain your ideas are or how uncertain your ideas are

is a way to give balance to your writing next academic writing should be objective emphasis should be placed on

the arguments and information rather than on the writer so instead of i heated the water the water was heated

so this uses passive which is fairly common in academic writing instead of in my opinion it can be seen

that so this is an impersonal structure using it

and in personal structures with it and there are again very common in academic writing

finally academic writing should be formal when thinking about academic writing this is maybe the first feature

that comes to mind so academic writing tends to use more complex sentences

and also tends to avoid contractions and colloquial or informal words for example instead of this isn't the

case this is not the case there are many words and collocations which are used

more frequently in academic writing than in non-academic writing and researchers have made lists of these

for example the academic word list the awl and the academic collocation list

the acl for example instead of there are lots of reasons there are a significant number of

reasons instead of conditions changed a lot which is not very formal

there was considerable variation in the conditions so both of those examples use more

academic vocabulary including words from the academic word list so to sum up we've seen a definition of

academic writing and we've seen seven features of academic writing namely that it is structured

evidenced critical precise balanced objective and formal for more information on this and related topics

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