academic writing

1. ACADEMIC
WRITING
I S F D N ° 4 1
L A N G U A G E A N D W R I T T E N E X P R E S S I O N I V
T E A C H E R : S T E L L A M A R I S S A U B I D E T O Y H A M B U R U
S T U D E N T : M I C A E L A F E R N A N D E Z TO R R E S

2. ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING
 Should have an argument.
 Should answer your hypothesis.
 The essay’s organization is individual, as long as the presentation will be clear and
convincing.
 Some methods of composing:
- Start writing your ideas as far as possible, which does not imply to produce an
essay immediately.
- First a general essay’s revisión, then a more objective revison is needed.
• University writing is more complex than high school writing:
- Free presentation.
- Arguments should be valuable and relevant.

3. ESSAY TOPICS
• When you think of your specific topic you can go through this reasoning process:
- Analyse, compare, evaluate and argue the key terms which are part of the topic.
- Check the concepts and methods needed in your topic.
- Make some questions for yourself about the specific topic to prove your ideas.
- Form a tentative thesis statement, this will help to focus your investigation.

4. ORGANIZING AN ESSAY
• According to the genre, you can structure the essay
• The most important issue is to develop your argument.
• Set your thoughts in the form of a tentative plan.
• Then, search for evidence to support your ideas.
• Some techniques for planning:
- Index cards
- The computer
- The circle method

5. INTRODUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
• Introductions and conclusions are very important in an academic essay:
- An adequate introduction helps to identify your topic, set the context and show the
focus of your essay.
- A solid conclusion will contribute to the closure of your essay.
- Use different techniques to make both, more effective and intereresting to the reader.
• Beginnings and endings will vary according to the genre. However, some academic
essays do not neccesarily require them.

6. PARAGRAPHS
• A paragraph is described as a series of related sentences which unify a central idea, called
the topic.
• Topic sentence is similar to a mini thesis statement, which has a main point. Otherwise, not
all paragraphs need a topic sentence.
• Usually, the body paragraph develops your topic sentence.
• A paragraph will develop by a combination of methods:
- Definition: defines a term
- Analysis or classification: develops a topic by diferrentiating its component part
- Illustration: supports a general statement by examples or details.
- Specialized linking words help to connect ideas.

7. TOPIC SENTENCE
• It states the main idea of the paragraph.
• If you read the sequence of your topic sentences in the essay, they will demonstrate
the argument of your essay.
• The topic sentence usually appears at the beggining of the paragraph, it makes an
abstract point, and the rest of the paragraph develops on the basis of that point
showing examples as evidence.
• The topic sentence should be related to your thesis statement, in this way it will help to
reinforce the coherence of your essay.
• Sometimes not all the paragraphs need a topic sentence if the paragraph remains the
idea of the paragraph before.

8. CRITICAL READING
• It is related to the judgements made about how a text is argued.
• You need to search and do a careful critical reading of the sources to produce your
argument.
• Look for the central claims or purposes of the texts.
• Make some judgements about the context.
• Differentiate the kinds of reasoning the text uses.
• Chech the evidence the text shows.
• Doing some critical reading implies certain kind of evaluation, to see the weaknesses
and strenghts of the argument.

9. RESEARCHING
• Focus your attention on the topic: known facts about the topic; make a preliminary list
of subtopics; form a tentative thesis statement; and then research for facts and
theories that support your question.
• Record your ideas which are relevant to the topic.
• Remember to record the bibliographic information of the sources.
• Think critically about information derived from Internet, you ought to make sure that the
information will be accurate.

10. SKIMMING AND SCANNING
• By reading a written text you can use two effective methods:
- Skimming: - a general overview of a text.
- you can have a general idea.
- it may help you to decide where you have to focus.
- Scanning: - focus on a particular fact.
- it is essential in the writing of research papers.
- you should set specific goals in mind when you scan a text.

11. USING SOURCES
• It is forbidden to plagiarize in academic writings, you must name the sources where
you use the information.
• Different systems are used to refer to the sources:
-Traditional Endnotes or Footnotes (with superscript numbers)
-MLA System (parenthetical author-page references)
-APA System (parenthetical author-date references)
-Numbered Note Systems (citation-sequence)
-Electronic sources (films, DVDs, or Internet documents)

12. USING SOURCES
• Use quotations in your essay, provided the sources where they come from.
• You can paraphrase the ideas of the autor, at the same level of detail.
- When you paraphrase, you must name a reference.
Paraphrasing involves creating your own sentences structures written with your own words.
• You can try to summarize, reducing the ideas of someone else into a shorter form.
- To summarize, first you need to understand the meaning of the text, then you detect the main
important points and you write in your own words.
- A summary is considerably shorter tan a paraphrase.

13. REVISING
• It is a crucial part of writing an essay, you shoud revise your piece of work in order to
see a preview of your final work.
• When you edit your essay , you should check specific details to ensure the final work.
• There are certain steps to go through editing your writing:
- Be sure the intention of the assignment answer your questions.
- Check the organization of your writing (introduction, sections, conclusion).
- Edit your piece of work, paying close attention to words, sentence structures,
grammar, spelling and punctuation.

14. ERRORS IN GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION,
AND STYLE
• Some of the most common errors:
-Faulty agreement: Subjects and verbs must agree in number
Nouns and pronouns must agree in number
Pronouns must agree with each other
-Sentence fragments: a group of words that are puntuacted to look like a sentence, but could not fulfilled
the requirements of a complete sentence.
-Run-on (fused) sentences: A sentence should express only one central idea.
- Overuse of passive voice
- Faulty parallelism
- Vague pronouns
- Dangling modifiers
- Double constructions: a part of speech is unnecessarily duplicated.

15. WORDINESS
• Do not try to use unnecessary words to fill your writing, when you edit your final work ,
eliminate them.
• Some examples of wordiness:
- Doubling of words ( try to use one of them).
- Intensifiers, qualifiers (try to omit them or give specific details).
- Formulaic phrases (try to use a one-word form or omit it).
- Unnecessary “to be” and “being” (try to omit it).
- Passive verbs ( you can change to active voice).
- Overuse of relative structures, such as who, which, that (try to omit them if it is possible)

16. UNBIASED LANGUAGE
• An important characteristic to have in mind is the unbiased language. Try to use
strategies to avoid certain difficulties in naming groups.
• Some ways in language tend to demote some groups. You could try to:
- Avoid the “man” trap: some words refer only to male.
- Refer to individuals, not confusing in a collective group.
- Avoid terms that label people on the basis of their sex (negative suggestions)

17. PUNCTUATION
• Punctuation is an important tool, since it provides you the power over meaning and
tone
- Commas: most frequent used in punctuation.
- Semicolons: two main uses: to combine two closely related independent clauses into
one sentence; and to separate list elements that are long or complex.
- Colons: urge the reader forward.
- Dashes: similar to commas, dashes interrup clauses or phrases, although a pair of
them are used to call the attention. Similar to colon, a dash acting alone, let you
complete an idea.
- Parentheses: interrup material. They can enclose full sentences.

18. COMPARATIVE ESSAY
• In a comparative essay you compare at least two items, which will be diferrent according to
the assignment. Some examples are: positions on an issue. theories, figures, texts or
events.
• You have to know the basis for comparison, it could be provided by the essay question or
developed by you..
• Create a list of similarities and differences between the items you will compare.
• Formulate a thesis statement about the comparison you made about the characteristics.
• Give an structure to your essay:
- Alternating method: alternate related points in common between your subjects.
- Block method: you discuss one subject at a time.

19. ACADEMIC PROPOSAL
• It is the first step in producing a thesis. It reflects your theoretical position and your
relationship within the area.
• An academic proposal should contain:
- A rationale for the topic chosen
- A review of existing published work related to the topic.
- an outline of your intended approach or methodology
• Use supporting materials as lists, visuals to make your essay more feasible.
• Provide an accurate and clear style to demonstrate your strong ideas.

20. USING LANGUAGE
• Articles: - They are important modifiers which place before nouns or nouns phrases.
- They are useful to clarify the meaning of the nouns in the sentences.
- If you use the articles adequately, your writing will improve immensely.
- There are definite (the) and indefinite ( a/an) articles.
- If you use another modifiers called detereminers or markers, such as this,
that , those, any, etc.; do not use an article.

21. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• University of Toronto. Writing Advice. Retrieved May 29, 2018, from:
http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/