Module 1

Academic Texts and Academic Writing

This module will help students acquire the knowledge of appropriate reading strategies for a better understanding of
academic texts.

At the end of this module, you are expected to:

1. Produce a detailed abstract of information gathered from the various academic texts read.
2. Determines the structure of a specific academic text.
3. Differentiate language used in academic texts from various disciplines
4. Explain the specific ideas contained in various academic texts

An Academic Text is the process of breaking down ideas and using deductive reasoning, formal voice and third
person point-of-view. It is about what you think and what evidence has contributed to that thinking.
It must also be clearly structured, has a framework, it should be coherent, has a sense of direction and aims for
the reader’s understanding.

The variables of the academic text includes the following:

 the topic
 the audience that one is writing to
 the type of document that is being produced

Regardless of the topic area, audience, and purpose, certain general guidelines can be provided as a starting
point, use formal words and structures (do NOT use shortened verb forms or negatives such as I’m, don’t, etc.)
And do not over-emphasize your own person or that of someone else (impersonality, objectivity passive voice,
impersonal structures, etc.). You have to be cautious when dealing with issues not necessarily accepted by
everyone (modal auxiliaries such as may/might/should; adverbs and adjectives such as potential, perhaps,
possibly, likely, etc.) and use the professional terminology of your field, but avoid saying things in an overly
complicated manner. Technical terminology will help you discuss matters in more detail (e.g. ‘digit’ vs. ‘number’),
but it may also obscure the message when used in the wrong context (e.g. ‘feline olfactory organ’ vs. ‘cat’s nose’).

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Furthermore, ask yourself how does my own topic area affect language use? What kind of audience am I
writing for? What is the purpose of writing? And how do the audience, topic and purpose of writing together
affect my use of language?

Below is a spoken, informal attempt at defining what ‘marketing’ means.

Marketing? Yes, well… marketing is, I guess, about someone trying to… let me see… get people interested you
know, in things they … oh, yes, want them to buy.

While here is a formal definition of marketing,

Marketing refers to communicating about a product or service with the purpose of encouraging the recipients of
the communication to purchase or use the product or service.

Academic Writing is a process that starts with posing a question, problematizing a concept, evaluating an opinion,
and it ends in answering the questions, clarifying the problem and/or arguing for a stand. Its purpose is to inform,
to argue a specific point, and to persuade and entails thinking.

Authors observe the following when writing academic texts, they state critical questions and issues, they provide
facts and evidence from credible sources, they use precise and accurate words while avoiding jargon and colloquial
expressions, they take an objective point-of-view and avoid being personal and subjective, they list references and
they use hedging or cautious language to tone down their claims.
Example academic text:

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Name: _____________________________________________ Rating: ______________

Grade and Section: _____________ Subject Teacher: __________________________
Due of Submission: _____________________________
Module 1
Academic Texts and Academic Writing

Direction:

The texts below come from different academic disciplines. For each text: - Which discipline do you think it was
written for? - What do you think it is about? - Highlight any linguistic features (lexis or grammar) which you think are
noteworthy?

(a) Infection after consumption of fresh duck blood and undercooked poultry products has been suspected in some
cases of illness. Indeed, transmission to felids was observed after experimental feeding of infected chickens to
domestic cats, and feeding tigers raw infected chicken led to outbreaks of illness in Thai zoos, in which felid‐to‐felid
transmissions were also implicated. Infected birds shed high concentrations of virus in faeces. Direct intranasal or
conjunctival inoculation while swimming in contaminated water or, perhaps, inhalation or ingestion of water could
have been potential modes of transmission to some H5N1‐infected patients. As for human influenza, hand
contamination from fomites and self‐inoculation into the eye or upper respiratory tract remain possible modes.

(b) As a learner-centred process approach to second language (L2) writing, peer response has been widely adopted
and studied since the 1990s (Hyland & Hyland, 2006). The dialogic nature of peer response seems to foster multiple
support systems (Hyland, 2000) and communicative behaviours (Villamil & de Guerrero, 1996). L2 research has
shown that peer response can increase chances for meaning negotiation and language practice (Lockhart & Ng, 1995;
Mendonca & Johnson, 1994), encourage collaborative reading and writing (Tsui & Ng, 2000), and promote writing
revisions (Berg, 1999; Mendonca & Johnson, 1994; Min, 2006, 2008; Stanley, 1992). These interactive practices
appear to draw upon and enhance interactional and writing skills.

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(c) Germany’s centrality to all the key debates past and present which have preoccupied EU and Member State
policy-makers – not the least of which is securing the future of the single currency – is clear. It is and will remain
essential to the success of integration in all its guises. However, its evolution as an actor in foreign and security policy
represents perhaps the most interesting example of how it has changed since 1990. Having initially been anxious to
reassure its neighbours and European partners that unification would not threaten the peace and stability of Europe,
the trajectory of change within Germany has been dramatic in the post-unification period. While it has not been
alone in seeking to wrestle with the security challenges thrown up first by the collapse of Yugoslavia, then the War
on Terror, and more recently by the need for a coherent and effective crisis management mechanism to respond to
instability in the EU’s near-abroad, these have posed an additional and unique set of political and moral dilemmas.

(d) Panic attacks are a specific and severe form of anxiety disorder, typified by the sudden onset of overwhelming
anxiety that presents with a variety of physical symptoms such as palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness and
nausea, and may involve fears of ‘going crazy’ or of impending doom or death (Ohman, 2000). The prevalence of
panic attacks more than doubled in the population of the United States from 5.3%in 1980, to 12.7% in 1995
(Goodwin, 2003). Panic attacks occur in many anxiety disorders and may be associated with specific events or
situations. However, panic attacks as a central feature of panic disorder (PD) generally occur ‘out-of-the-blue’
(American Psychiatric Association, 2000). The prevalence of PD appears to be relatively consistent across cultures at
between 1% and 3% (Weissman et al., 1997).

(e) The story of the Bible in translation is, like the text itself, far from straightforward. Private spiritual reading may
well have lain at the heart of Protestant piety but, as Lori Anne Ferrell has pointed out, the Bible was desperately
difficult to understand and Protestant writers of biblical text-books knew this only too well. Their approach was to
warn readers of the ‘knotty Passages’ and ‘things hard to be understood’ whilst, at the same time, steering them to
the ‘Shallows where the Lambs may wade’ with the assurance (and encouragement) that ‘the Truths necessary to
Salvation are plain, and of easy Access to the weakest understanding’.

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Bibliography

Bernardo, Allan B.I. 2009. “English in Philippine Education: Solution or Problem?”

Murray,Donald. 2005. Write to Learn. Massachusetts: Thompson Wadsworth.