How is academic writing different from writing socially or in the workplace?
Posted on: June 15, 2021 In this blog Zhihui Fang, author of Demystifying Academic Writing, discusses what academic writing is, why it's important as well as essential skills for academic writing. What is academic writing? Simply put, academic
writing is the writing done for academic purposes. It is entering into a conversation with others, but the way this conversation is carried out differs from how everyday conversation unfolds. Yes, academic writing involves expressing your ideas, but those ideas need to be presented as a response to some other person or group; and they also need to be carefully elaborated, well supported, logically sequenced, rigorously reasoned, and tightly stitched together. There is more than one kind
of academic writing. In academic settings, we write for many different purposes. We write reading responses, book reviews, argumentative essays, literature reviews, empirical research articles, grant proposals, conference abstracts, commentaries, memoranda, and many other text types. Each of these types of academic writing has its own purpose, organizational structure, and linguistic features. Why is academic writing important? Academic writing is a means of producing, codifying, transmitting, evaluating, renovating, teaching, and learning knowledge and ideology in academic disciplines. Being able to write in an academic style is essential to disciplinary learning and critical for academic success. Control over academic writing gives you capital, power, and agency in knowledge building, identify formation, disciplinary practices, social positioning, and career advancement. What makes academic writing ‘academic’ and challenging? Compared to everyday writing, academic writing tends to be more formal, dense, abstract, objective, rigorous, and tightly knit.
These six features are interrelated, and together, they are what makes a piece of writing at once ‘academic’ and challenging for academic neophytes. What is the role of language in academic writing? Language is not a set of prescriptive rules or grammatical conventions. It is, instead, a creative resource for making meaning. Writers use language by choosing from the grammatical options it provides to present information, develop argument, infuse points of view, incorporate others’ ideas and voices, engage readers, sharpen focus, and organize discourse in a way that realizes their intentions and meets their audience’s needs. One major source of writing struggles for non-native and native English speakers alike is language. In other words, it is unfamiliarity with the grammatical patterns of academic writing, above and beyond a lack of deep knowledge of the topics to be written about, that contributes principally to the difficulties that many students and scholars experience in writing for academic purposes. What are the essential skills for academic writing? Academic writing communicates complex ideas in a clear, precise, logical, reasoned, and evidence-based way. It is an advanced literacy task that requires a host of demanding skills. Learning to write for academic purposes involves, for example, learning
Developing these advanced literacy skills and a repertoire of linguistic resources and strategies that instantiate them is a challenging process that takes time, experience, and support. How can I improve my academic writing? Developing expertise in academic writing is a lengthy and challenging process that can take many years and involves constant mental and emotional struggles. It is simply not realistic to expect one to become a good writer overnight, let alone a good writer for academic purposes, by just attending one workshop, taking one course, reading one book, or completing a few sets of exercises. It takes time, effort, awareness, experience, reflection, stamina, and support to become proficient in academic writing. Here are six tips for improving your academic writing:
How do I increase my chances of getting published? Writing for publication can be a mysterious process that intimidates novice writers and academic neophytes. Developing and honing academic writing skills is key to having a successful publication record. Additional knowledge, skills, and dispositions are needed to increase your chances of getting published. These include
The road toward publication may seem long and rough, but you will find that the journey becomes less bumpy the more you have traveled on it. How is academic writing different from workplace writing?Formal writing focuses on knowledge
First, the purpose of academic writing is to demonstrate specific knowledge in an organized, cohesive manner. This is different from the way we communicate in other settings where the purpose might be different. In other settings, a chatty, friendly tone will be very effective.
What is the difference of social and academic writing?Source: social is in daily conversation or personal writing; academic is in textbooks and for conferences.
What are three major differences between workplace and academic writing?Students write to learn and to demonstrate what they know. Business Writers write to make things happen. Students often write for one reader, their instructor. Business Writers often write for large and complex groups of people, various stakeholders who have different needs and interests.
What is the difference between academic and workplace research?This table outlines some of their key similarities and differences.
...
Academic vs. Workplace Research.. |