Academic Writing

 What is “academic” Writing?
by L. Lennie Irvin

(Summarized and paraprhased by me)

Writing tasks in college often cause unpleasant emotions and doubts on the leaner’s counterpart. Moreover, the term “academic” creates even more confusion because it encloses a set of rules and requirements to consider, which are not usually directly expressed. Considering the significance of writing as part of a communicative skill to develop, this essay will guide you through what is academic writing and how to handle these discouraging situations when dealing with written assignments. 

A proper understanding about your own writing and the way in which you in engage in the task, determine your success. Thus, as successful writing is dependent on the representation of the assignment, or rather the writer’s mental model for interpreting the task. In any case, before getting into deep analysis about the components of the academic writing and its essential qualities, it is important to light up some misinterpretations that commonly take place in college.   

Myths about writing

The following notions represent those myths or things people believe about composing a text that unfortunately are closely connected with deficient writing.

Myth #1: The “paint by Numbers” myth

Considering the fact that writing is recursive, rather than adopting a number of steps to follow in order to write “correctly”, it is more useful to repeat the different steps of the writing process as many times as you need.

Myth #2: The “everything-figured-out” writers

Since it is practically impossible to have everything in mind before writing, drawing some first drafts and taking notes are more advantageous than waiting in front of a blank paper.

Myth #3: Perfect first drafts

Because polished writing employs lots of revision you should not be nonsensical about early first drafts

Myth #4: The genius fallacy

The ability to write is not something definite or established. As a matter of fact it takes effort and time in order to improve your own writing skills.

Myth #5: Good grammar is good writing

Rather than grammatical correctness, a well written piece will account for a desired effect upon an intended audience.

Myth #6: The five paragraph essay

There is not a particular format that will always work for every assignment, so, in many cases, adapting the format according to the required task may be the best option.

Myth #7: "Avoid the usage of “I”

The usage of “I” does not precisely match the formal style. On the contrary, it sounds conceited and rather informal.

The academic writing situation

Having stated the most encountered myths at college, one difficulty that novice writers often face is a poor sense of the writing situation in general. Differently from speaking, when we write, we are disposed to picture and create a context to account for a certain audience in place and time. Moreover, considering the fact that our work will definitely have at least one reader, the correct use of punctuation and word choice are also fundamental. In other words, developing your writer’s sense is the key for a freshman writer to achieve communication in his work.

Indeed, the writing situation in college addresses a particular audience (usually the professor), a context in which you should demonstrate your learning and interpretation about the subject, a purpose related to the accomplishment of the task or rather getting a good mark, and finally a document or genre being the essay the most  frequently encountered. In addition to this, Lee Ann Carrroll, a professor at Pepperdine university affirms that writing assignments at college may more accurately be called literacy tasks and that this kind of projects often require a number of abilities and skills including the following::

Knowledge of research skills: Researching consists of a process in which you are supposed to focus and direct more in-depth information than simply going straight to Google or Wikipedia and grasp whatever you find there. Actually, researching involves looking for information in databases containing scholarly articles or other interesting texts.

Reading complex texts: Besides only close-reading, success on your writing assignment will depend on the quality of your reading, which necessarily demands thinking critically, separating facts from opinion and making inferences based upon the known factors.

Understanding key concepts: In order to demonstrate your learning in the task provided, you are supposed to look over carefully for central concepts avoiding giving your opinion based only on your experience.

Synthesizing, Analyzing and responding critically to New Information: Underlies learning ways to sort and find meaningful patterns throughout your research process. 

Decoding College Writing Assignments

After having dealt with researching and reading, the next step to carry on with a proper writing is to present an argument (thesis) to be supported with appropriate evidence. Thus, stating your opinion to earn your audience’s consideration is not enough to create a better understanding of the subject matter. On the contrary, creating academic arguments implies the stating of a carefully arranged viewpoint in order to be analyzed through the implementation of key concepts you have been studying so far, being the essay the result of your analysis. The student carrying on the investigation is therefore encouraged to seek “Why” and “How” question rather than “What” questions, identifying meaningful parts of the subject and how they relate to each other. In other words, creating and supporting arguments involves figuring out what the professor expects including explicit and implicit expectations that then may converge into some larger effect or message. 

Common Types of College Assignments

Based on the instructor’s degree of direction for the project, you are likely to encounter three different types of literacy tasks. One of these types belongs to the Closed Writing Assignment, in which you are supposed to determine between two encounter claims, the most valid one and then show your knowledge on the support for that claim. Another kind of task may correspond to the Semi-Open Writing Assignment. In this one in particular, although you are given a “closed” topic to develop, determine and stating your own claim represents a major challenge. Moreover, to achieve a successful writing of this kind is fundamental to find specific patterns and relationships about the case of study. Finally, a third possible option may be the Open Writing Assignment in which you are expected to decide on your own the Topic of your work and the appropriate thesis statement to be analyzed within a manageable size.