This document provides guidance on academic writing strategies and structures. It discusses writing as a social practice that accomplishes specific goals. Key sections of academic papers are outlined, including the importance of understanding audience and genre, properly situating the literature review, establishing credibility through methods, making the case for contributions in results and discussion, and concluding by emphasizing implications. Common problems to avoid, such as descriptive over analytical writing, are also addressed. The overall aim is to help readers enter academic conversations and make meaningful contributions through strong paper organization and argumentation.

1. Academic writing –
understandings and strategies
Pat Thomson
@ThomsonPat

2. Writing is a social practice. Every kind of
does specific work in the world

3. • Writing is high stakes
textwork/identitywork
• Writing for understanding, and writing to
enter the conversation and make a
contribution

4. Entering a
conversation
means
understanding
the genres and
conventions-
to then resist,
conform,
change them.

5. mediaytext
mediation
Framing discourse practices

6. Audience and genre
- Who am I writing
for?
- What do they
expect?
-What do they usually
read?
- What are the
characteristics of
these texts?
- Do I want to push
the boundaries of
their world?

7. What is the
journal – who
are the
editors?
Who is the
editorial
board?
What do they
publish?

8. The work of the introduction
• Interest and engage the reader. Give them a
taste of what is to come.
• Create the warrant for the paper – in policy,
practice, current event, disciplinary issue,
literatures.
• Introduce the writer. Establish credibility. Give
a flavour of ‘voice’.
• Map out the paper and indicate the shape of
the argument

9. The introduction moves
•Locate
•Focus
•Argue/Expand
•Outline

10. Some approaches
• Narrative
• Media headlines
• Quotations
• Lively and provocative proposition
BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS FIRST TIME
ROUND.

11. The work of The Literatures section
• Always to show what is already known about
the topic
And thus to indicate the
space/debate/gap/opportunity that you will occupy
• Generally to indicate what key ideas from the
literatures you will be using
• Possibly to define terms or key concepts
• Maybe to outline your theoretical toolkit

12. Literatures: not the same as your research
proposal
• The purpose is to position a piece of research that has
already been undertaken.
• The reader is going to get what’s-already-known, plus
the newly conducted piece of research – this research
as the contribution.
• The literature is used to locate the contribution, the
what-we-now-know-that-we-didn’t-before-and-why-
this-is-important. Some texts and themes that were in
your initial scoping review are omitted, and other
things are now emphasized in order to make clear the
connections and continuities, similarities and
differences of your research to what’s gone before.

13. Problems with The Literatures section
• A list which doesn’t indicate what are the
texts most germane to your work, why and
how they are to be used
• The section is descriptive rather than
evaluative
• The section is too long and too detailed ( it
looks like a cut and paste from a proposal or
thesis)
• Key texts in the field are left out.

14. The work of The Methods section
This section establishes a firm foundation for the
new research by
• Positioning the researcher
• Situating the research in a specific tradition
• Showing how the researcher understands and
used particular methods
• Indicating the corpus of dat used and how it was
analysed
• Providing an audit trail for the reader (who, how
many, how long, why these, when)

15. Methods Sections
• Different journals have different expectations
of how much will be written here
• Some US journals expect quite detailed
information
• Some Australian and UK journals don’t expect
a lot
CHECK THIS OUT

16. Common problems in Methods
Sections
• A trawl of the quantitative qualitative binary
• Too much general discussion and not enough
about the particular approach taken, why and
how. It reads like an assignment.
• Not enough detail. The reader doesn’t have a
clue about why they should believe a word of
what is to come.
• Not enough specificity about the tradition –
Ethnography? Yes but what version and what
does this mean for the conduct of the study?

17. The Methods section doesn’t have to be a
riveting read.
But it does have to be clearly written and
logically ordered.
The Methods section is a combination of
argument – this is how the research was
conducted and why – and a report – here is
what I actually did.

18. The work of the Results section of the
paper
• Everything that you’ve done so
far has been leading to this,
you’ve been setting this up for
the reader.
• Now they’re there, the job is to
make the case for the
contribution - and to wow them.

19. Structure
• This section can be organised as Results +
Discussion or with the Discussion integrated
into the Results.
• If a theoretical framework is used then again,
it can be integrated or a re-reading offered
after the first results and discussion.
• Whatever it is, you need to sign post this at
the start.

20. Problems with results/discussion
sections
• Too much description – where’s the analysis?
• Too abstract – where’s the evidence?
• Not enough subheadings – what’s the point, where is
this going?
• Too many headings – I cant keep track of where this is
going
• Just a report – why did this happen , why does it
matter? Where is this going?
• Too much stuff – could have used a chart or table?
• Not connected to the literatures – what’s the
contribution, what’s been used, does the researcher
think they live in a vacuum?

21. The work of the conclusion
• It returns to the
problem/question/niche/puzzle you identified
in the Introduction
• It shows how you have provided an answer –
this is your contribution to the conversation
• It then deals with the So What and Now What
– by talking about implications for practice,
policy and/or further research.

22. Problems with Conclusions
• Introduces new material
• Repeats what has already been said. Déjà
vu.
• Too short and says nothing
• Doesn’t deal with the So What, and Now
What
• Is trite/hackneyed/cliched and/or states
the obvious.

23. Moves
• Summarise. Reprise reason for paper. Provides
succinct summary of what you’ve done
• So What – why your contribution is important
to know now and…
• Now what –who needs to do what as a result
of now knowing this – practice, policy,
research? Anything that needs to happen
immediately?

24. academic
presence is
about
making your
mark

25. The work of (your name, 2025) is best known
for…