Academic writing
 A processthat 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.
 to inform, to argue, and to persuade
 Academic writing is thinking, you cannot just write
anything that comes to your mind.
 The audience are the teacher, peers, and academic
community.
The three following requirements of academic writing:
 Content - clariy 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, and sentence question
 Mechanics - grammar, punctuations, capitalizations,
formatting, documentation
Critical Reading
 scrutinizing any information that you read or hear
 not easily believing info. offered to you by a text.
 active process of discovery because when you read
critically, you’re not just recieving info. but also making
an interaction with the writer.
Research - must be done so you can find credible sources to
support your claims in your paper
Gary Goshgarian - "Critical reading is an active process of
discovery"
Francis Bacon - "Read not to contradict and confute; nor to
believe and take for granted; norto find talk anf discourse; but
to weigh and consider"
Ramage, Bean, and Johnson (2006) following requirements
in critical thinking:
 ability to pose problematic questions
 to analyze a problem in all its dimension.
 To find, gather and interpret data, facts, and other
information relevant to the problem.
 To imagine alternative solutions to the problem
 to analyze competing approaches and answers
 write an effective argument justifying your choice.
The following are some suggested ways to help you become
a critical reader:
 Annotate what you read - one ways to interact with the
writer where you underline circle or highlights words,
phrases, or sentences that contain important details.
 Outline the text - where you identify the main points of
the writer in either a bullet form or in number form.
 Summarize the text - get the main points of the text
and write its gist in your own words. it is usually a one
paragraph long.
 Evaluate the text - the most challenging part in critical
reading where you question the author's purpose,
intention, assumptions in the claim, as well as the
evidences.
Logical Fallacy
 It is the error in reasoning that renders an argument
invalid.
 Max Shulman is the author of Love is a Fallacy
Types of Logical Fallacy:
 Dicto Simpliciter - an argument based on an
unqualified generalization. (ex. Excercise is good.
Therefore everybody should excercise.)
 Hasty Generalization - reaching an inductive
generalization based on insufficient evidence. ( ex.
Four out of five dentists recommend Colgate
toothpaste brand. Therefore, it must be great.)
 Post Hoc - Since event Y followed event X, event Y
must have been caused by event X. (ex. Let's not take
Bill on our picnic. Every single time when we take him
with us, it rains.)
 Contradictory Premises - draws a conclusion from
inconsistent or incompatible premises. Therefore, there
is no argument. (ex. If God can do everything, can he
make a stone so heavy that he won't be able to lift it? )
 Ad Misericordiam - an attempt to win an argument by
appealing to pity ( ex. You should not find the
defendant guilty of murder, since it would break his
poor mother's heart to see him sent to jail. )
 False Analogy - an argument is based on misleading,
superficial, or implausible comparisons. (ex. say Jennie
and Lisa both drive pickup trucks. Since Jennie is a
teacher, Lisa must also be a teacher.)
 Hypothesis Contrary to Fact - a hypothesis that is
usually based on something in the past or future and is
not factual at all. ( ex. Kai, if you would have taken a
shower more often, you would still be dating Krystal.)
 Poisoning the Well - discrediting what a person might
later claim by presenting unfavorable information
about the person. Attacking the person. (ex. in a
political campaign, candidate 2 presents negative
 information about candidate 1 (true or false) so that
anything that candidate says will be discounted.)
Pre-writing Process
Pre-writing - The first stage in writing process, typically
followed by drafting, revision, editing, and publishing.
 The first step in pre-writing is finding the topic to write
about.
 After you've found a topic to write, the next step is to
focus on one idea.
 The last step in pre-writing is knowing your purpose and
target reader or audienc, it will help you to communicate
cleary your ideas to your readers, which is the goal of all
writing
These are the steps in choosing a topic:
 Brainstorming - This aims to generate as many topics as
you can in 10 to 15 minutes. To provide as many choices
for the topic as possible.
 Freewriting - is similar to brainstorming in that you just
write any idea that comes to your mind. You will be able
to generate ideas and narrow them down into a single
topic for your paper.
 Clustering - also called ballooning or mapping. It
provides a graphic representation which allows you to
visualize the connections of your ideas.
Report paper - you are expected to give factual account
of events, phenomena and discoveries. You are
informing your reader and you have to be as object as
possible in realating what you have read, seen, or heard.
Reaction paper - you are writing an initial or a gut
reaction to something that you have read, watched, or
heard and then you develope that into a critical
evaluation that is balanced.
Plagiarism
 the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and
passing them off as one's own.
 Using somebody else’s work or ideas without proper
acknowledgement or citation.
 Copying the text without paraphrasing it.
Paraphrasing - It is rendering the essential ideas in a text using
your own words. A way to avoid plagiarism.
- Paraphrased material are usually shorter than the original text
and it is more detailed than a summary.
Direct quotation - preferred to a paraphrase when the author’s
ideas are so important that paraphrasing them will change the
essence of those ideas.
Writing and Rewriting
Thesis Statement - It is the claim or stand; the controlling
idea of your essay.
- It should be debatable and should not merely announce
something or state a fact.
- It should offer a debetale claim that you can prove or
disapprove in your essay.
Ramage, Bean and Johnson - thesis statement contains an
element of uncertainty, risk or challenge.
Organizing your paper:
 Organizing your ideas - it means finding the
connections of one point to another and establishing a
link from one idea to another.
 Outlining - an effective way of ensuing the logical flow
of your ideas. You may use roman numerals and
indentions or use list, diagrams, or maps.
 Introduction - the start of your essay. It provides
background of your topic, poses a question regarding
the topic, explains how the question is problematic and
significant.
 Develop the body of you essay - where the bulk of the
essay is found and where you develop an answer or
propose a solution to the thesis statement.
 Conclusion - It is the last step in writing your paper.
Where it brings together the points and emphasizes
your final point. In writing this, you may leave a
thought-provoking idea. NOTE: You should not open a
new topic.
Paul Roberts - he is the author of “How to Say Nothing in
Five Houndred Words”
Tips in writing a paper:
 Avoid the obvious content
 Take the less usual side - one rather simple way of
getting into your paper is to take the side of the
argument the most citizen will want to avoid.
 Slip out of abstraction - most the soundest advice is to
be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning
general remarks into seeable examples.
 Get rid of obvious padding - try steadily to get rid of
padding, to make your sentences lean and tough.
 Call a fool a fool - decide what you want to say and say it
as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain
words.
 Beware of pat expressions
Pat expressions - are hard, often impossible to
avoid because they come too easily to be noiced and
seem necessary to be dispensed with.
 Colorful words - they are calculated to produce a picture
or induce an emotion.
 Colored words - all words except perhaps structure
words, have association of some sort.
 Colorless Words - many instances of words like this will
in this and other aspects have factors leading to
unsatisfactory relationships with the reader resulting in
unfavorable attitudes on his part and perhaps other
eventualities, like a grade of D.

The Post-writing Process

Murray (2005) - "Writing is revising"
Two process of post-writing:
 Revision - re-seeing the entire draft so that the writer can
deal with the large issue that mus be resolved before he
or she deals with the line by line, word by word issues
involved in editing.
- It is a general of going back through your whole draft. This
can include adding in, taking out, moving around. It focuses on
the bigger picture.
Editing - it is also called proofreading. It is a more meticulous
process; working on grammar principles and typographical
matters. It focuses on finer detail.
Steps in revising your draft:
1. To take a bird's eye view - reread it as a WHOLE.
2. Reviewing ypur draft portion by portion and adding in,
filtering and re-organizing content according to forms
and flow.
Step in editing your draft:
1. To check only for subject-verb agreement and correct
pronoun usage
2. To focus on sentence fragments and run-on
sentences
3. To focus on spelling
4. To focus on punctuations
Types of Essay:
Descriptive Essay - an essay that describes a person, place, or
object.
Expository Essay - an essay that explains, informs, or presents
information of a specific topic or event