Transcript Lesson One

What is Academic Writing?
Elements to consider
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Audience
Purpose
Organization
Style
Flow/Coherence
Other?
Audience
• Who was the audience for the last thing you wrote?
• Did you write for him/her or was he she just an
intermediary to your “real” audience.
• Ultimately who are you learning to write to?
• Who do you think will be your audience for what you
write on this course?
• Assignment – based on what you are currently doing
anyway so you will have a mixed audience – how will
you cope?
• Must know audiences expectations and prior knowledge
– what if you have more than one audience?
Purpose
• Whatever you current writing project is – what is
your purpose?
• What will be the purpose of anything you write
on this course?
• When you write something for your supervisor,
what are you doing? When you write something
for me, what are you doing?
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To inform?
To display knowledge?
To challenge?
To provoke?
To respond?
Organisation
1 Chronologically or Reverse-Chronologically
2 In spatial relation
3 From General to Specific (inductive)
4 From Specific to General (deductive)
5 From Least Important to Most Important
6 Through Division and Classification
7 By Cause and Effect
8 By Problem and Solution
9 Through Comparison or Analogy
10 Through Contrast
11 By Process
12 Through Definition
Style
• Verbs – avoid phrasal (prepositional) – use single (often
Latinate) verbs
• Do task nine = p. 20
• Avoid Contractions
• Use formal negative forms:
– The analysis didn’t yield any new results
– The analysis yielded no new results
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Avoid “run on expressions”: etc, and so forth, and so on
Avoid addressing reader as “you”
Generally avoid use of “I”
Limit use of direct questions: “What can be done about
this?”
• Place Adverbs within verb: “Very little is actually known…”
• Use words efficiently/avoid being “wordy”
Flow/Coherence
• Use linking words/phrases
• See: http://home.ku.edu.tr/~doregan/Writing/Linkers.html
• Use appropriate punctuation
Task 18 page 34
• Use of summary words