some general advice about academic writing

1. Summary by Manna, Paula

2. Some General advice
Essay writing:
An essay should have an argument and try to prove something.
besides, it should present your argument clearly and persuasively.
To Understand essay topics:
Before you plunge into research or writing, think through the
specific topic you are dealing with:
•Note the key terms
•Which concepts or methods the topic asks you to use
•Ask yourself questions about the specific topic in terms of the
concepts or methods that seem applicable.
•Formulate a tentative thesis statement at a fairly early stage.

3. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Some important items to organize an essay:
•Organize your paper during the pre-writing stage, not the writing or revising
stage.
•Knowing the patterns of reasoning associated with a genre can help you to
structure your essay.
•The structure of an essay should not be determined by the structure of its
source material.
•If your essay is not well structured, then its overall weaknesses will show
through in the individual paragraphs.
•Usually, the point to use outlines is to ensure that you are on the right track.
•Remember that your plan may need to be modified as you critically evaluate
your evidence.
•When you have completed your first draft consider using a reverse
outline. Read your essay and every time you make a new point and
summarize it in the margin. Then with all these points you now must create a
new outline.

4. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
It´s important to be aware of the implications of
planning too little or too much!
•Planning:
Helps you to produce a logical and orderly argument
that your readers can follow.
Helps you to produce an economical paper by
allowing you to spot repetition.
•But Overplanning :
Doesn’t leave you enough time to write and revise.
Does not provied enough opportunity to discover
new ideas in the process of writing.

5. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Using thesis statements.
•Your reader will probably expect a clear statement of your
position. Typically, this summary statement comes in the first
paragraph of the essay, though there is no rigid rule about
position.
•Good thesis statements provides:
Theoretical basis and promise substantial support.
Some Myths about Thesis Statements
•Every paper requires one.
•A thesis statement must come at the end of the first paragraph
•A thesis statement must be one sentence in length, no matter
how many clauses it contains.
•You can’t start writing an essay until you have a perfect thesis
statement.
•A thesis statement must give three points of support

6. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Introductions and Conclusions
 Play a special role in the academic essay.
Introductions.
-Should identify your topic, provide essential context, indicate your particular
focus in the essay and it also needs to engage your readers’ interest.
Consider these strategies :
•Quote an expert .
•Use a brief narrative or anecdote that exemplifies your reason for choosing the
topic.
•Mention a common misperception that your thesis will argue against.
•Give some background information necessary for understanding the essay.
Avoid some common pitfalls:
•Don’t provide dictionary definitions, especially of words your audience already
knows.
•Don’t repeat the assignment specifications using the professor’s wording.
•Don’t give details and in-depth explanations that really belong in your body
paragraphs. You can usually postpone background material to the body of the
essay.

7. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Introductions and Conclusions.
Conclusions:
•Will provide a sense of closure to the essay while again placing your concepts in a
somewhat wider context. It will also, in some instances, add a stimulus to further
thought.
Strategies to summarize the key points of your essay:
•Recommend a specific course of action.
•Use a quotation or expert opinion to lend authority to the conclusion you have
reached
•Give a startling statistic, fact, or visual image to drive home the ultimate point of your
paper
•If your discipline encourages personal reflection, illustrate your concluding point with
a relevant narrative drawn from your own life experiences.
Some general advice about conclusions
•A conclusion is not merely a summary but You must Remind the reader of how the
evidence you’ve presented has contributed to your thesis.
•The conclusion, like much of the rest of the paper, involves critical thinking. Try to
convey some closing thoughts about the larger implications of your argument.
•A good last sentence leaves your reader with something to think about.

8. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Paragraphs.
•A paragraph is a sentence or a group of sentences that supports
one central, unified idea.
•The most effective way to achieve paragraph unity is to express
the central idea of the paragraph in a topic sentence. It is the main
point of the paragraph and it has a unifying function.
•In academic writing, the topic sentence nearly always works best
at the beginning of a paragraph so that the reader knows what to
expect
Note: Not all paragraphs need topic sentences. In particular,
opening and closing paragraphs generally don’t have topic
sentences.

9. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Paragraphs.
Techniques for expanding on topic sentences and developing your ideas in a
paragraph:
•Illustration in a paragraph supports a general statement by means of examples,
details, or relevant quotations (with your comments).
•The definition paragraph defines a term, often by drawing distinctions between the
term and other related ones. Try to avoid dictionary definitions that do not inform your
analysis in a meaningful way.
•The analysis or classification paragraph develops a topic by distinguishing its
component parts and discussing each of these parts separately.
•A qualification paragraph acknowledges that what you previously asserted is not
absolutely true or always applicable.
•A comparison or a contrast paragraph zeroes in on a key similarity or difference
between two sources, positions, or ideas. Decide whether to deal only with similarities or
only with differences, or to cover both.
•The process paragraph involves a straightforward step-by-step description. Process
description often follows a chronological sequence

10. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Paragraphs.
•Very often, a single paragraph will develop by
a combination of methods.
•The best overall strategy to enhance flow within a
paragraph is to show connections.
•A variety of simple techniques can help you to clarify
those connections and thereby communicate your
intended logic.
•Deliberate repetition of key words helps.

11. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Paragraphs.
Strategic use of pronouns such as it, they,
and this keeps the focus on the ideas announced at the
beginning of the paragraph—as long as they are clearly
linked to specific nouns.
Specialized linking words can also be powerful tools
for pulling ideas together. But don’t just sprinkle them into
your sentences—use them to support your logic.

12. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Using topic sentences.
•A topic sentence states the main point of a paragraph.
•Topic sentences usually appear at the very beginning of paragraphs.
•The topic sentence makes an abstract point, and the rest of the
paragraph elaborates on that point using concrete examples as evidence.
•It should do more than just establish a connection between your
paragraph and your thesis. Use a topic sentence to show how your
paragraph contributes to the development of your argument by moving it
that one extra step forward.
• If several of your topic sentences restate your thesis, even if they do so
in different words, then your essay is probably repetitive.

13. PLANNING AND ORGANIZING
Using topic sentences.
•Does a topic sentence have to be at the beginning of a
paragraph?
No, though this is usually the most logical place for it.
Sometimes a transitional sentence or two will come before a
topic sentence. They prepare the way for the topic sentence.
Sometimes writers save a topic sentence for the end of a
paragraph to build your argument toward an effective climax
•Does every paragraph need one?
No, but most do. Sometimes a paragraph helps to develop the
same point as in the previous paragraph, and so a new topic
sentence would be redundant.

14. REVISINGREVISING
Revising And Editing
•Revising gives you the chance to preview your work on
behalf of the eventual reader. Good revision and editing can
transform a mediocre first draft into an excellent final paper.
•Revision may mean changing the shape and reasoning in
your paper by adding or deleting sentences and paragraphs.
•Before dealing with details of style and language (editing),
be sure you have presented ideas that are clear and forceful.
•Make notes and stop after each section to make the desired
revisions.

15. REVISING
1.First check whether you have fulfilled the intention of the assignment.
2.Then look at overall organization. It’s worthwhile to print out everything so that
you can view the entire document.
3.Now polish and edit your style by moving to smaller matters such as word
choice, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You may already
have passages that you know need further work. You can:
• Read passages aloud to see if you have achieved the emphasis you want.
• Be sure to use spell check. It will help you to use a print dictionary or
writer’s handbook to look up words that you suspect are not right.
• Don’t depend on a thesaurus. Use plain clear words instead. Use a print
dictionary and look up synonyms.
• Don’t depend on a grammar checker. Be sure to make your own choice of
replacement phrases. A few of the explanations may be useful. But nothing
can substitute for your own judgement.
Revising And Editing

16. TYPES OF WRITING
 The book review or article critique An analytic or critical
review of a book or article which is not primarily a summary.
It comments on and evaluates the work in the light of specific issues
and theoretical concerns in a course.The literature review puts
together a set of such commentaries to map out the current range of
positions on a topic; then the writer can define his or her own position
in the rest of the paper.
 Writing an annotate Bibliography It gives an account of
the research that has been done on a given topic. It is an alphabetical
list of research sources. In addition to bibliographic data, an
annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source
and some assessment of its value or relevance. Depending on your
assignment, an annotated bibliography may be one stage in a larger
research project, or it may be an independent project standing on its
own.

17. TYPES OF WRITING
A literature review It is an account of what has been
published on a topic by accredited scholars and
researchers.It is not just a descriptive list of the material
available, or a set of summaries.
 The abstract. They are important because they give
a first impression of the document that follows, letting
readers decide whether to continue reading and showing
them what to look for if they do. Though some abstracts only
list the contents of the document, the most useful abstracts
tell the reader more. An abstract should represent as much as
possible of the quantitative and qualitative information in the
document, and also reflect its reasoning.

18. TYPES OF WRITING
Comparative essay A comparative essay asks that
you compare at least two (possibly more) items. These items
will differ depending on the assignment. You might be asked
to compare : Positions on an issue , theories, figures , texts
or events. Although the assignment may say “compare,” the
assumption is that you will consider both the similarities and
differences; in other words, you will compare and contrast.
 Writing about History When writing a historical
research paper, your goal is to choose a topic and write a
paper that asks a good historical question, tells how its
interpretation connects to previous work by other historians,
and offers a well-organized and persuasive thesis of its own.

19. TYPES OF WRITING
Writing about Literature The English paper
requires critical thought and strong argumentation, but its
focus on language and close textual analysis makes it
unique. Some important tips while writing about literature:
•Avoid plot summary.
•Master the art of the analytical thesis.
•Let the structure of your argument determine the
structure of your paper.
•Opt for analysis instead of evaluative judgments.
•Don’t confuse the author with the speaker.
•Integrate quotations fully into your argument.

20. TYPES OF WRITINGWriting in the Science A science paper should be written
in a clear and concise style, its paragraphs should be coherent,
and its ideas should be well organized. It focuses on those
principles and conventions that are common to most areas of
science. Understanding how the distinctive features of science
writing reflect the activities and goals of science will help you
become a more proficient writer of scientific prose.
Admission Letters When writing an admission letter
make your case as much by the way you write as by what you say.
Some of the qualities to aim for:
Be focussed.
Be coherent.
Be interpretive.
Be specific.
Be personal.

21. TYPES OF WRITING
Application letters Employers say they want to hire people
who can communicate clearly, handle personal interactions, and
analyze complex situations. Use your application package to
demonstrate these qualities. You should: keep the reader’s
interests in mind, balance facts and claims and write concisely.
 Writing a Philoshophy Essay Most philosophy
assignments will ask you to demonstrate your understanding of
the subject through exposition of arguments and theories, and
many will also test your ability to assess these arguments and
theories by writing a critical evaluation of them. Write your paper
so that the reader understands how your exposition and
evaluation answer the questions and address all parts of the
assignment.

22. Professor Anderson Silber (n.d) “Some general
advice on Academic Essay-Writing”. Toronto-
Canada: University of Toronto.
Website: www.advice.writing.utoronto.ca
Jerry Plotnick (n.d ) “Organizing an essay”. Toronto-
Canada. University of Toronto.
Website: www.advice.writing.utoronto.ca
Margaret Procter (n.d) “ Types of writing”Toronto-
Canada: University of Toronto.
Website: www.advice.writing.utoronto.ca