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What is educational writing? Educational or academic writing is a very formal, structured, and objective text. The format is used in universities and various scientific publications. It takes a lot of practice to master the academic format. Academic texts differ from personal statement essay or college admission essay. They have way more specifications and unique features. Today, however, we will break down all the important information about academic writing.
Table of Contents:
Definition of Academic Writing
When entering college or grad school, you have already met the requirement of writing, for instance, a grad school personal statement. Also, you may know how to start a college essay and how to end a college essay, and the difference between a statement of purpose vs a personal statement. The experience is undoubtedly valuable and useful when you have to write a paper for an academic purpose.
What defines academic writing? Its three main characteristics are objectivity, technicality, and formality. How to ensure the veracity of each of the aspects? We will tell you everything.
Technicality
It is important to use a dictionary that is directly related to your specialty. For example, as a doctor or biologist, you will write a lot of papers using specific medical and biological terms. You should constantly increase your vocabulary. You can also ask your curator about it.
Formality
It is not too difficult to ensure the formality of your research. The most important rule is to avoid abbreviations like “isn’t”. It is also worth using the formal meanings of words familiar to us. For example, “somewhat” instead of “a little bit”.
Objectivity
Objectivity is the most important part of academic writing. You should write with a neutral outlook without getting emotional. The unbiased style will help you evaluate all the advantages and disadvantages of your idea. Therefore, it is important to speak the language of facts, trying to isolate yourself from your emotions about that. Even though academic writing is objective, you will have to express your opinion more than once. One way or another, you will have to criticize your own and other people’s work, to speak out about certain theories.
How can you be objective in your writing?
It is worth shifting attention away from people and their feelings. Therefore, few researchers write “I found out about the results, I liked them”, but develop the idea “The results of the experiment are satisfactory, because ….”. You talk about ideas and evidence.
Try also to completely remove the emotional coloring of your own words. Avoid words like “just awful” and “wonderful.” Replace them with more formal and impartial ones.
If you want to express your opinion, back it up with facts, citing some reliable research.
It is also important to study the requirements for your academic writing. If in one case you are allowed to write directly about your opinion, then in other disciplines it may not be allowed at all.
Why is academic writing important?
Academic writing is a necessary component of academic study in any institution of higher learning. In general, it is challenging to evaluate a student’s actual knowledge. An answer to a simple question can be memorized to cheat on the test. As a result, the faculty must use a different method to assess students’ knowledge.
The best option is academic assignments. The student will not be able to write a worthwhile academic paper without a complete understanding of the material covered. Another purpose of academic writing is to master the key information, and correctly manipulate facts and arguments.
A well-written academic essay is a good way to stand out from your peers. The professor will clearly remember the interesting part of your academic writing.
Types of Academic Writing
Descriptive, analytical, persuasive, and critical writing are the four primary categories of academic writing. Each of these academic writing concepts has unique linguistic characteristics and objectives. You will need to employ more than one kind in many academic texts.
- Descriptive
Descriptive writing is the most basic form of academic writing. Its goal is to present information or facts. A report of the findings from an experiment or a summary of an article is two examples.
How to recognize that you need this type? In the task description, you may find words like: “identify,” “report,” “record,” “summarize,” or “define.”
- Analytical
A university-level text that is only descriptive is uncommon. The majority of academic writing is analytical. Descriptive writing is an element of analytical writing, but it also calls for rearranging the facts and information you describe into groups, categories, pieces, or links.
How to recognize that you need this type? In the task description, you can find words like: “analyze,” “compare,” or “examine”.
- Persuasive
Most academic writing assignments need you to advance from analytical writing to persuasive writing. Including expressing your point of view, persuasive writing combines all the characteristics of analytical writing (information + reorganization of the material). The majority of essays are argumentative, and research articles typically have a persuasive aspect in at least the discussion and conclusion.
This type of academic writing asks you to collect as much authentic evidence as possible for an idea. You are asked to take a side, or not to take it at all, only your answer must be sufficiently reasoned.
You must present your thesis and your point of view. And then your whole job is to convince the reader that your idea is the right solution.
How to recognize that you need this type? In the task description, you can find words like: “argue”, “evaluate”, “discuss”, or “take a position”.
- Critical
Research, graduate, and advanced undergraduate writing frequently include critical writing. It has all the characteristics of persuasive writing plus at least one more point of view. In contrast to critical writing, which calls for considering at least two points of view, including your own, persuasive writing requires you to have your point of view on a subject or issue.
A critique of a journal article or a literature review that points out the advantages and disadvantages of the available research are examples of critical writing assignments.
How to recognize that you need this type? In the task description, you can find words like “critique”, “debate”, “dispute”, and “evaluate”.
How to Plan My Writing?
Most often people use two tactics for writing academic writing and gathering information:
- Drafting approach
You should start as early as possible to make as many sketches as possible. This approach allows you to do brainstorming from time to time, it will help you choose the best idea and work on it further. - Planning Approach
You should plan your time so that you have time for research, search for evidence, and quality structure of the text. Gather as much information as you can and break your academic writing into paragraphs. Start writing as soon as you form clear and precise wording for each paragraph.
Academic writing is not something that can be written overnight. A well-executed task will require a lot of time from you. Therefore, write and rewrite your essay, and correct, and change phrases in places. Do that until you get a coherent document with a consistent and clear idea. Also, it’s worth looking at some samples.
What should you pay attention to when planning your academic writing?
Before you start planning, it is important to understand the first key phrases that you must know. For example:
- Be sure to read the requirements for the document and write down the key points.
- Find out the maximum and the minimum number of words.
- Ask your lecturer or tutor for an example of the finished work. Professors should have approximate assignments that the student can take note of.
- Also, you probably went through a topic that is related to your task. Therefore, it is important to review your materials and look for more with the help of classmates and the library. It might help too.
- When planning your writing, it’s worth taking ample time to make sure you meet deadlines.
Editing and proofreading tips
It is very important after writing the text to re-read it more than once or to give it to others for evaluation. The fact is that your text is still raw, and it needs to be perfected by yourself. Therefore, we have prepared some tips for editing your academic writing. You may always ask a personal statement editor for help and they will professionally edit your document.
Examples and proofs
In your academic writing, you will more than once have to mention this or that study, which in one way or another confirms the correctness of your theory. However, it is important to take a reliable source. It should be a scientific platform indicating the authors of the research, its full content, and logical conclusion. The sources must be valid for your university, you can talk to your curator about that.
Plagiarism
Checking an essay for plagiarism is a very important part of all writing. You may be forced to rewrite your work more than once due to problems with originality. Therefore, it is important to be able to paraphrase words. In addition, it is better to use references and quotes, indicating the authors.
Vocabulary and grammar
Also important is the grammar of your entire writing. It means that all words must be spelled correctly, and you use different constructions to create complex sentences. In addition, it is still worth re-reading your academic writing and replacing a few words with a term suitable for your specialization.
Conclusion
Sometimes it seems that the process of academic writing is too difficult, and in some cases even impossible, especially if your work requires a lot of time. However, it is worth treating the whole work as a lot of small steps that will sooner or later lead you to the goal. It pays to be motivated to do your best academic work.
