1. Three academic writing concepts

Three main features that distinguish academic writing from other various writing styles are formality, technicality and objectivity. Typically, academic writing avoids every-day language contractions as well as informal words. Certain technical terms are used throughout an academic paper that help the reader to turn to a specific discipline. Objective language aimed at highlighting facts, concepts and ideas instead of focusing on people and their reactions to these ideas.

Academic writing styles vary within different disciplines, specifically, humanitarian disciplines may include longer paragraphs to present arguments properly. Whereas in scientific papers the writers are expected to present facts and results of their experiements in a shorter format.

In this module  we will learn about the types of academic texts to recognize them while reading and develop critical thinking skills that will help to successfully complete the EAP5 and 6 individual writing tasks.

According to the University of Sydney, we can strengthen our writing skills by considering three main features of academic writing:


Source: Based on the information from the University of Sydney Writing Lab website, accessed on Nov 4, 2021 at https://www.sydney.edu.au/students/writing.html 

It is essential to understand what audience you are adressing your work to, who they are, what their ideas and beliefs are. It might be useful to read articles from the journal you are going to submit your paper to so that you are familiar with not only the writing style used for this discipline but also the audience, journal‘s demands, the key concepts they are working with or problems that interest this audience. Knowing these features will help you find the right structure for your paper and make your text sound objective, technical and analytical.