ASPECTS OF

PROFESSIONAL AND
ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
LESSON 2
 Academic writing requires sophisticated use of
language. Since your task as students includes
writing for assignments, exams, and reports, there is
an expected quality in your use of language and
structuring of texts.
 There are four important features of
language use that you need to know
about:

FORMALITY, OBJECTIVITY,
EXPLICITNESS AND CAUTION
 Formality reflects your dignified stance in your
writing as a member of the academic community.
 This means that since your audience are fellow
members of the academic community, the
language you use requires precision to make it a
“legitimate” piece of Academic Writing.

FORMALITY
 Choosing expanded modal forms over contracted forms, such
as using cannot instead of can’t, do not instead of don’t.
 Choosing one verb form over two word verbs, such as damage
instead of mess up.
 Choosing expanded terms over their abbreviated equivalents,
such as soon as possible instead of ASAP.
 Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expressions, such as kind of
like, as a matter of fact, I need to go to John.

FORMALITY CAN BE ACHIEVED

THROUGH THE FOLLOWING WAYS:
OBJECTIVITY
 Academic writing requires special knowledge and
use of more complex language and objectivity.
 This means that the writing must be impersonal
and maintain a certain level of social distance.
 Avoiding the use of personal pronouns such
as you, I and we.
POOR EXAMPLE: You need to conduct the
experiment.
IMPROVED EXAMPLE: The researchers
need to conduct the experiment.

OBJECTIVITY CAN BE ACHIEVED BY:

 2. Avoiding rhetorical questions as it marks
“closeness” with the readers, and constantly seek his
or her attention.
POOR EXAMPLE: How can these problems be
solved?
IMPROVED EXAMPLE: Certain measures must be
discovered to solve the problem.
 Avoiding emotive language that shows
biases and lessens objectivity.
POOR EXAMPLE: The investigations were
very shocked to see the outcome of the tests.
IMPROVED EXAMPLE: The investigators
did not expect the results.
EXPLICITNESS
 Academic Writing demands the use of
signposts that allow readers to trace the
relationship in the parts of a study.
 If you intend to show a change I your line of
argument, make it clear by using however.
 Example
- It is apparent that the government hopes
to provide assistance to the poor. However,
giving doles out to the “poorest of the poor”
does not work in long term.
 This is due to the ...
- A number of MERALCO consumers trooped to the City
Hall to claim a PHP 500 cash incentive. This is due to the
Supreme Court ruling that overcharges must be returned to the
end users whose electric consumption for the April-May period
was below 100kw/hr.

THE FOLLOWING PHRASES MAY BE

USEFUL IN MAKING IDEAS EXPLICIT:
 This resulted in …
- With the Supreme Court ordering MERALCO
to return overcharges to the end users, government
offices have been tapped to operate as claim centers.
This resulted in a number of MERALCO consumers
trooping to the City Hall to claim the PHP 500.00 cash
incentive.