Characteristics of academic writing include a formal tone, use of the third-person

rather than first- person perspective (usually),

a clear focus on the research problem under investigation, and precise word
choice.

Like specialist languages adopted in other professions, such as, law or medicine,
academic writing is designed to convey agreed meaning
about complex ideas or concepts for a group of scholarly experts

In academic writing, remember that you need to:

i. Brainstorm with yourself, or with a partner writer, to sift through your
insights.
ii. State your argument in the first part of your essay.
iii. Outline your ideas before you start writing.
iv. Research your materials for support of your stand or argument.
v. Begin with a strong statement or introduction.
vi. End with a full closure or summary of your presentationAcademic writing refers
to a particular style of expression that researchers
use to define the intellectual boundaries of their disciplines and their areas of
expertise

literary
-a style of writing that is used in creative and literary work
The other kind of writing – creative writing – is inspired, artistic and
entertains with word pictures, concepts and deep meaning.
It is enjoyable to read. It touches us while teaching us. It’s an art form. It’s
not necessary to learn, but a joy to those who do.

The term 'literary writing' calls to mind works by writers such as Shakespeare,
Milton, or Wordsworth; definitive examples of all that the
term implies. We instinctively associate the term with characteristics such as
artistic merit, creative genius, and the expression
of mankind's noblest qualities

-the style of writing that is used in fiction

-has language that uses literary figures
-usually fiction that displays a sense of reality
-tension or conflict
-artistic unity (a main idea is conveyed)
-figurative language (similes, metaphors, irony, symbolism, analogy)
-first-person or third person pronouns (usually)
-style: informal/colloquial/vulgar

what is academic writing?

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
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
-and expert academic writing
academic writing on theother hand
is writing for publication in academicjournals or books
the audience is other experts in thesame field
and the purposeis the creation of new knowledge
although these two types of academic writingare different in terms of
contentaudience and purpose the standards andrequirements are the same

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

for both and this makes sense forexample if you're learning to drive acarif you're
a student driver you stillneed to obey the speed limitstop at red lights and so on
in other
words you have the same standards andrequirementsy that expert drivers do

so let's look nowin 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 mean
syou 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 acdifferent purpose

now if you were building a house youcwouldn't just start building you wouldcplan 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
or example so here this is critical evaluation by revealing the limitations of
previous research

the next feature is preciseL:

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 ritten 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