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    Features of Academic Writing

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    Sama Ahmad
    The document discusses the main features of academic writing. It states that academic writing is linear with one central point, aims to inform rather than entertain, and uses standard written language. It then describes several key features in more detail, including that academic writing uses more complex grammar structures and longer words than spoken language. It is also more formal, precise in its use of facts and language, objective rather than personal, explicit in connecting ideas, and well-organized according to genre with responsibility to justify claims and understand sources.

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    Features of Academic Writing

    Uploaded by

    Sama Ahmad
    233 views3 pages
    The document discusses the main features of academic writing. It states that academic writing is linear with one central point, aims to inform rather than entertain, and uses standard written language. It then describes several key features in more detail, including that academic writing uses more complex grammar structures and longer words than spoken language. It is also more formal, precise in its use of facts and language, objective rather than personal, explicit in connecting ideas, and well-organized according to genre with responsibility to justify claims and understand sources.

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    Academic writing

    Original Title

    Academic Writing

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    The document discusses the main features of academic writing. It states that academic writing is linear with one central point, aims to inform rather than entertain, and uses standard written language. It then describes several key features in more detail, including that academic writing uses more complex grammar structures and longer words than spoken language. It is also more formal, precise in its use of facts and language, objective rather than personal, explicit in connecting ideas, and well-organized according to genre with responsibility to justify claims and understand sources.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    233 views3 pages

    Features of Academic Writing

    Uploaded by

    Sama Ahmad
    The document discusses the main features of academic writing. It states that academic writing is linear with one central point, aims to inform rather than entertain, and uses standard written language. It then describes several key features in more detail, including that academic writing uses more complex grammar structures and longer words than spoken language. It is also more formal, precise in its use of facts and language, objective rather than personal, explicit in connecting ideas, and well-organized according to genre with responsibility to justify claims and understand sources.

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    Features Of Academic Writing

    Introduction
    Academic writing in English is linear, which means it has one central point or
    theme with every part contributing to the main line of argument, without
    digressions or repetitions. Its objective is to inform rather than entertain. It is in
    the standard written form of the language. There are ten main features of
    academic writing that are often discussed.

    Complexity
    Written language is relatively more complex than spoken language. Written
    language has longer words, it is lexically more dense and it has a more varied
    vocabulary. It uses more noun-based phrases than verb-based phrases. Written
    texts are shorter and the language has more grammatical complexity, including
    more subordinate clauses and more passives.

    In this context complexity refers to grammar structures not the difficulty of


    understanding an idea.

    A simple sentence expresses one grammatical idea

    The dog attacked the man

    A complex sentence contains more than one grammatical idea. The sentences
    below increase in grammatical complexity

     The dog attacked the man as he came into the house


     The dog attacked the man who lives opposite
     The dog attacked the man who lives opposite when he tried to give him a
    biscuit
     Even though the dog knows the man well, he attacked him as he came
    into the house yesterday

    The sentences in academic texts tend to be dense, in other words they contain
    lots of highly grammatically complex sentences. A variety of grammatical
    structures are used to create complex sentences.
    Formality
    Academic writing is relatively formal. In general this means that in an essay you
    should avoid informal words and expressions.

    Precision
    In academic writing, facts and figures are given precisely. This relates to
    formality. Words and terms have very specific meanings and it is important that
    you use them correctly. If you are not sure what a word means, do not use it
    without checking that it makes sense, both in meaning and grammatical use. It
    is usually obvious to the reader when a writer has not understood a word or an
    idea

    Objectivity
    Written language is in general objective rather than personal. It therefore has
    fewer words that refer to the writer or the reader. This means that the main
    emphasis should be on the information that you want to give and the arguments
    you want to make, rather than you. For that reason, academic writing tends to
    use nouns (and adjectives), rather than verbs (and adverbs).

    Explicitness

    Academic writing is explicit about the relationships in the text. Furthermore, it


    is the responsibility of the writer in English to make it clear to the reader how
    the various parts of the text are related. These connections can be made explicit
    by the use of different signalling words e.g.

    Moreover, finally, similarly etc. Although, despite, however, in spite of, the
    opposite, rather

    Responsibility

    In academic writing you must be responsible for, and must be able to provide
    evidence and justification for, any claims you make. You are also responsible
    for demonstrating an understanding of any source texts you use.

    Organisation

    Academic writing is well organised. It flows easily from one section to the next
    in a logical fashion. A good place to start is the genre of your text. Once you
    have decided on the genre, the structure is easily determined..
    Planning

    Academic writing is well planned. It usually takes place after research and
    evaluation, according to a specific purpose and plan.

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