Introduction

Writing essays and dissertations can be a significant challenge for many international
students studying at English-language universities. To help instructors support their
students in this demanding task, we have put together some key chapters from leading
titles in the field of Academic Writing for non-native English speakers. The first three
chapters, by Stephen Bailey, give a brief overview of the basics of Academic Writing and
explain to international students how to create well-structured paragraphs and write
effective introductions and clear conclusions. The next chapter, by Jane Bottomley,
explores the main features of academic scientific style and the notion of good academic
practice in relation to the use of sources. It also presents some strategies for paraphrasing
and summarizing which will help students to use academic sources in a positive way.

What is Academic Writing

Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly

publications. You’ll encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics, and
you’ll be expected to write your essays, research papers, and dissertation in academic
style. Academic writing follows the same writing process as other types of texts, but it
has specific conventions in terms of content, structure and style.

The purpose of academic writing

Students should be clear why they are writing. The most common reasons include: - to
report on a piece of research the writer has conducted - to answer a question the writer
has been given or chosen - to discuss a subject of common interest and give the writer? s
view - to synthesise research done by others on a topic

Features of academic writing

Although there is no fixed standard of academic writing, and style may vary from subject
to subject, academic writing is clearly different from the written style of newspapers or
novels. For example, it is generally agreed that academic writing attempts to be accurate,
so that instead of ?the metal was very hot? it is better to write ?the metal was heated to
65°C?.

The Writing Process

Writing a thesis is not a straightforward matter, but there are certain general steps you can
follow to help you in the writing process. Whether you are writing a thesis in the Natural
or Social Sciences, the Humanities or any other broad discipline, you must be able to
communicate your findings clearly and systematically.
Writing a thesis is not a straightforward matter, but there are certain general steps you can
follow to help you in the writing process. Whether you are writing a thesis in the Natural
or Social Sciences, the Humanities or any other broad discipline, you must be able to
communicate your findings clearly and systematically.
Writing a thesis is not a straightforward matter, but there are certain general steps you can
follow to help you in the writing process. Whether you are writing a thesis in the Natural
or Social Sciences, the Humanities or any other broad discipline, you must be able to
communicate your findings clearly and systematically.

The writing process is divided into three phases:

• Pre-writing phase- (planning)

• Writing phase

• Post-writing phase (editing)

A. The Pre-writing Phase – Planning your writing

The first phase involves planning your written piece, e.g. your thesis, scientific journal
article etc. But, why do you need to plan? Planning achieves the following:

• It gives your paper shape.

• You will not dry up halfway.

• You will not forget interesting ideas that sprung to mind.

• You are less likely to repeat yourself.

• Your paper will have a logical order.

B. The Writing Phase

The pre-writing or planning phase is followed by the writing phase which is also the
referred to as the 'drafting' of your paper. To start with, there are some general writing
rules in order to make your thesis more readable. The first rule is to proof read everything
before you hand it in to your supervisor. Nothing detracts more from a piece of writing
than errors! Sloppy work suggests a sloppy mind. Do your own proof reading or ask a
friend to help you. Secondly, keep it simple. In other words, focus on getting your point
across, writing clearly and to the point. Thirdly, leave yourself time between drafts so
that you can mull over what you are trying to say. Also errors will be easier to detect after
a couple of days. Remember not to procrastinate - don't put off until tomorrow what you
can do today. Lastly, present your drafts in as neat a form as possible. In today's world
you need to be computer literate, so make sure your font and spacing is consistent, use
the spell and grammar checker, etc.

The drafting phase The first attempt at drawing your thoughts together in a coherent piece
of writing is usually more content based where you focus on what you want to say before
considering the finer details of how it should be said. This is often regarded as the very
important first step of “writerly based writing” rather than “readerly based writing”. The
emphasis is on whether you understand what you are writing about. At this point you
often realize the gaps in your own understanding. When you find it extremely difficult to
express a concept in writing, it is usually a signal that you haven’t effectively understood
the particular concept or idea. On the other hand, you may understand the logical
connections implicit in the writing – it may make perfect sense to you - but remember,
your writing must make sense to the intended audience (readers) as well.

Topic Position

The topic position is usually located at the beginning of the sentence, where the reader
expects perspective and context. The reader expects a unit of discourse to be a story about
whoever shows up first; it provides them with focus. For example:

Bees disperse pollen Pollen is dispersed by bees

Paragraphs
The same rules apply to paragraphs and chapters - in fact any unit of discourse. All
paragraphs have the same building blocks, i.e. the core idea or topic of a paragraph
should be stated in one sentence, called the topic sentence, which is located in the topic
position – often first. The rest of the paragraph consists of sentences that support, develop
or explain the main topic. They should be logically linked to the preceding and following
sentences. Lastly, the concluding sentence is usually a summary of the argument of the
paragraph, and should look ahead to the next paragraph. For a paragraph to be coherent,
most of the sentence subjects should be the same, the ideas should have a clear and
logical relation to each other and information should flow from old ideas to new ideas. It
helps if every now and then you orientate your reader. You do this by means of
signposting:

Chapters

Similarly, chapters should also have structure. There should be an introductory

paragraph, which outlines the main sections of the chapter, followed by a body of
text/series of paragraphs which provide support for the argument, finishing with a
conclusion which reviews the main arguments presented in the chapter. Interspersed in
the chapter will be bridging (backward and forward-looking) paragraphs which help the
reader (and writer!) to follow the main points of the argument.

The introduction should make clear how the chapter fits into the rest of the thesis:

The introduction:

• Orientates your reader to the development of your argument

• Sets the scene of the chapter – the general area(s) that the chapter considers, the main
question it addresses

• Identifies the gap in knowledge or understanding that the chapter addresses – usually
identified as an issue in earlier chapters

• Indicates how the chapter fills the gap, or responds to the chapter’s posed main
question • Gives a brief overview of what is in the chapter

• Contains a clear thesis statement that reflects the essence (or gist) of the chapter

• Offers intellectual stimulation to your reader.

Societal Bilingualism

Societal bilingualism (or multilingualism) denotes the characteristic linguistic situation in

a particular speech community, i.e. in a particular society or nation in which more than
one language is used. In this connection we can further distinguish between official
multilingualism and de facto multilingualism. The former indicates that the use of more
than one language in a speech community is officially recognized. The respective
languages are acknowledged by the nation's constitution and therefore have the status of
an official language. The latter refers to the difference between what is officially stated
and what is the actual linguistic situation in a nation. For example, in (officially)
monolingual or bilingual speech communities other languages without official status are
also used. This makes these communities in fact multilingual in nature. Canada is
bilingual with the official languages English and French. However, there are also other
languages used in this nation which are not officially recognized (e.g. the indigenous
languages of Inuit and Indian citizens). Therefore Canada is officially a bilingual nation
while it is de facto a multilingual country. Likewise, Switzerland is officially a
multilingual nation and official documents for the entire country are written in French,
German, and Italian. Each canton, however, has its own official language and is a rather
monolingual environment to grow up in.

The terms bilingualism and multilingualism used in connection with a linguistic

characterization of a particular speech community are neutral terms in that they do not
imply a hierarchy, i.e. a difference in social status or between the languages used in this
community. This is different when diglossia is considered. In diglossic communities the
language varieties typically differ in prestige with one variety being the high variety (H-
variety) and another variety being the low variety(L-variety).

Syntactic Structures is an important work in linguistics by American linguist Noam

Chomsky, originally published in 1957. A short monograph of about a hundred pages, it
is recognized as one of the most significant and influential linguistic studies of the 20th
century.[1][2] It contains the now-famous sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously",
[3]
which Chomsky offered as an example of a grammatically correct sentence that has no
discernible meaning, thus arguing for the independence of syntax (the study of sentence
structures) from semantics (the study of meaning).[4][note 1]
Based on lecture notes he had prepared for his students at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in mid 1950s.[note 2], Syntactic Structures was Chomsky's first book on
linguistics and reflected the contemporary developments in early generative grammar. In
it, Chomsky introduced his idea of a transformational generative grammar, succinctly
synthesizing and integrating the concepts of transformation (pioneered by his
mentor Zellig Harris, but used in a precise and integrative way by Chomsky),
morphophonemic rules (introduced by Leonard Bloomfield) and an item-and-process
style of grammar description (developed by Charles Hockett).[5][6][7] Here, Chomsky's
approach to syntax is fully formal (based on symbols and rules). At its base, Chomsky
uses phrase structure rules,[note 3] which break down sentences into smaller parts. These are
combined with a new kind of rules which Chomsky called "transformations". This
procedure gives rise to different sentence structures. [8] Chomsky stated that this limited
set of rules "generates"[9][note 4] all and only the grammatical sentences of a given language,
which are infinite in number (not too dissimilar to a notion introduced earlier by Danish
linguist Louis Hjelmslev[5]).[10][11] Although not explicitly stated in the book itself, this
way of study was later interpreted to have valued language's innate place in the mind over
language as learned behavior,[note 5][12][note 6] [13]
Situatedness in linguistic theory
At the time of its publication, Syntactic Structures presented the state of the art of Zellig
Harris's formal model of language analysis which is called transformational generative
grammar.[5][need quotation to verify] It can also be said to present Chomsky's version or Chomsky's
theory because there is some original input on a more technical level. [citation needed] The
central concepts of the model, however, follow from Louis
Hjelmslev's book Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, which was published in 1943 in
Danish and followed by an English translation by Francis J. Whitfield in 1953. [5][6][7][28][need
quotation to verify]
The book sets up an algebraic tool for linguistic analysis which consists
of terminals and inventories of all different types of linguistic units, similar to terminal
and nonterminal symbols in formal grammars.[citation needed] First, it functions as a descriptive
device, or as Hjelmslev explains it[original research?]

Role of semantics in syntax

In the ninth chapter titled "Syntax and Semantics", Chomsky reminds that his analysis so
far has been "completely formal and non-semantic."[77] He then offers many
counterexamples to refute some common linguistic assertions about grammar's reliance
on meaning. He concludes that the correspondence between meaning and grammatical
form is "imperfect", "inexact" and "vague." Consequently, it is "relatively useless" to use
meaning "as a basis for grammatical description". [78] To support his point, Chomsky
considers a similar relation between semantics and phonology. He shows that in order to
build a theory of phonemic distinction based on meaning would entail "complex",
"exhaustive" and "laborious investigation" of an "immense", "vast corpus".[79] By
contrast, phonemic distinctness can be easily explained in a "straightforward" way and in
"completely non-semantic terms" with the help of "pair tests". [79] Chomsky also claims
that a strictly formal, non-semantic framework of syntactic theory might ultimately be
useful to support a parallel independent semantic theory.[n

Impact on linguistics
In an early review of the book, American structural linguist Charles F. Voegelin wrote
that Syntactic Structures posed a fundamental challenge to the established way of doing
linguistic research. He stated that it had the potential to accomplish "a Copernican
revolution" within linguistics.[86] Another American linguist Martin Joos called the
Chomskyan brand of linguistic theory a "heresy" within the Bloomfieldian tradition.
[87]
These early remarks proved to be prescient. American linguist Paul Postal commented
in 1964 that most of the "syntactic conceptions prevalent in the United States" were
"versions of the theory of phrase structure grammars in the sense of Chomsky".[88] By
1965, linguists were saying that Syntactic Structures had "mark[ed] an epoch",[89] had a
"startling impact"[90] and created a Kuhnian "revolution".[91] British linguist John
Lyons wrote in 1966 that "no work has had a greater influence upon the current linguistic
theory than Chomsky's Syntactic Structures."[92] British historian of linguistics R. H.
Robins wrote in 1967 that the publication of Chomsky's Syntactic Structures was
"probably the most radical and important change in direction in descriptive
linguistics and in linguistic theory that has taken place in recent years

Conclusions

The conclusion of the chapter should remind readers of the key conclusions drawn,
outcomes and how its theme will be dealt with or carried on elsewhere in the thesis. It
should not merely restate the introduction or list the aspects covered, but should show
growth and reflection in terms of:
• what the chapter has done – the main response to the question the chapter addresses

• what new questions the chapter has identified.

Reference

https://www.routledge.com/rsc/downloads/
A_Practical_Guide_to_Academic_Writing_for_International_Students-
A_Routledge_FreeBook-_FINAL_VERSION_.pdf

Turabian, K. 1996. A manual for writers of research papers, theses and dissertations.
6th ed. Revised by Grossman, J. & Bennet, A. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Visser, N. 1992. Handbook for writers of essays and theses. 2nd ed. Cape Town:
Maskew Miller Longman

Clyne, M. (1997). Multilingualism. In: Coulmas, F. (ed.). The Handbook

of Sociolinguistics (Oxford/UK and Malden/USA: Blackwell), 301- 314.