ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC AND •Academic Writing is a process that starts with posing a

question, problematizing a concept, evaluating an opinion, and

PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES ends in answering the questions posed, clarifying a problem,
and/or arguing for a stand.
Academic Writing
•Academic writing is a scholarly act of presenting ideas or What are its features?
concepts about a specific topic. 1. Academic writing has a specific purpose.

•It is scholarly because it involves a thorough,careful, 2. It also addresses specific audience. The assumption is your
investigative and scientific study of a specific topic. audience is composed of people who are knowledgeable on
the subject you are writing about.

3. Academic Writing is thinking. It requires DELIBERATE,

THOROUGH, AND CAREFUL THOUGHT and that is why it
involves RESEARCH.

•It results from one’s struggle to increase his knowledge about Again, remember!
his carefully chosen subject matter and to present his findings • You have to abide by the set of rules and practices in writing.
skillfully through different rhetorical or discourse patterns. • You have to write in a language that is appropriate and
formal but not too pretentious.
Some general patterns of development are: • You also have to consider your audience.
• Cause and Effect details why something happens, what • You have to make sure that you can back up your statement
causes it, what are the effects and how it is related to with a strong and valid evidence.
something else.
The two modes of discourse that academic writing dominantly
uses are:
• Classification and Division groups items into their parts or • Exposition
types. • Argumentation

• Compare and Contrast tells how something is like other  Academic writing requires sophisticated use of language.
things or how something is different from other things.  There is an expected quality of the use of language
among students.
• Definition explains what something is in comparison to
other members of its class, along with any limitations. There are four important features of language use:
 FORMALITY
• Description details what something looks like and its  OBJECTIVITY
characteristics.  EXPLICITNESS
 CAUTION
• Exemplification provides typical cases or examples of
something. FORMALITY
 It reflects your dignified stance in your writing as a
• Narration describes what, when, and where something member of the academic community.
happened.  The language you use requires precision to make it a
“legitimate” piece of academic writing.
• Persuasion describes an issue and your position or opinion
on the subject. Formality can be achieved through the following ways:
 Choosing expanded modal forms over contracted forms,
• Process explains how something happened, how it works or such as using cannot instead of can’t, do not instead of
how it is made. don’t.
 Choosing one verb form over two-word verbs, such as
One’s abstractions and in-depth studies mostly take place in damage instead of mess up.
HIGHER INSTITUTIONS LIKE UNIVERSITIES OR COLLEGES.  Choosing expanded terms over their abbreviated
equivalents, such as as soon as possible instead of ASAP.
 Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expressions, such as
PROVING one’s sagacity or thirst of knowledge, plus his kind of like, as a matter of fact, I need to go to the John.
learning of appropriate methods or techniques to unearth and
present this knowledge from various sources.
OBJECTIVITY The following phrases may be useful in making ideas
 Academic writing requires special knowledge and use of explicit:
more complex language and objectivity.
 This means that the writing must be impersonal and This is due to the. . .
maintains a certain level of social distance. A number of MERALCO consumers trooped to the City Hall to
claim a PHP 500 cash incentive. This is due to the Supreme
Objectivity can be achieved by: Court ruling that overcharges must be returned to the end
 Avoiding the use of personal pronouns such as you, I and users whose electric consumption for the April-May period
we. was below 100kw/hr.
Poor example:
You need to conduct the experiment. This resulted in. . .
Improved version: With the Supreme Court ordering MERALCO to return
The researchers need to conduct the experiment. overcharges to the end users, government offices have been
tapped to operate as claimed centers. This resulted in a
 Avoiding rhetorical questions as it marks “closeness” with number of MERALCO consumers trooping to the City Hall to
the reader, and constantly seeks his/her attention. claim the PHP 500.00 cash incentive.
Poor example:
How can these problems be solved? When two ideas seem the same, express
Improved version: each one clearly.
Certain measures must be discovered to solve the problems. The study showed that eighty percent of the 200 participants
involved in the study were dissatisfied with the operations of
 Avoiding emotive language that shows biases and lessens MERALCO. Similarly, the data revealed that majority of the
objectivity. participants were not aware of the changes imposed on them
Poor example: by MERALCO.
The investigators were very shocked to see the
outcome of the tests. If you intend to give extra information in your sentence,
Improved version: make it clear by writing “In addition...”
The investigators did not expect the result. MERALCO has been operating as a business
conglomerate involving foreign stakeholders and
independent power producers or IPP. In addition,
EXPLICITNESS MERALCO owns major IPPs operating in the region.
 Academic writing demands the use of signposts that
If you are giving examples, do so explicitly by writing “For
allow readers to trace the relationships in the parts of a
example...”
study.
The MERALCO issue has led to disputes between
opposition and administration senators. For
TRANSITIONAL DEVICES example, those who have been labeled as against
the president considered the issue as the
administration’s way of available the NBN-ZTE
scandal.

CAUTION

 Academic writing requires care since knowledge is built

from proven theories and concepts. Therefore, caution is
needed to avoid sweeping generalizations.

Government officials are corrupt.

The statement is not completely true and the rhetorical
impact of the statement may be misleading. The statement
can be improved through the use of devices such as modal
verbs, adverbs, or verbs.

Government officials are corrupt.

IMPROVED VERSIONS:
 Some government officials may be corrupt.
 Corruption is commonly linked to some key government
officials.
 A number of government officials tend to be linked with
cases of corruption.
In academic writing, caution needs to be observed in the
following parts of your paper:

 When a hypothesis needs to be tested

 Drawing conclusions or predictions from your findings

that may generalize certain matters or may not be
conclusive

 Referencing others’ work to build on your own paper

Below are some forms that you may use in observing

caution in writing.

 Verbs indicating caution: tends, suggests, appear to be,

think, believe, doubt, indicate

 The findings of the survey suggest that students’ use of

social networking sites in their academic work tend to be
more updated on recent developments in their
respective subjects.

 Modal verbs: will, must, would, may, can, might, could

 The observations of students’ use of social networking

sites may lead to the different behaviors that manifest in
real-life communication.

 Adverbs of frequency: often, usually, sometimes,rarely,

never.

 The essays that were given marks were usually high.\

If your results show something different from another

author’s ideas, there are possible ways in writing these
points:

The results contradict Meyer’s findings

The results appear to be different from Meyer’s findings.

What’s the difference?

 The results contradict Meyer’s findings.

Sentence 1 may be interpreted by readers as an

attempt to highlight your findings as superior
compared to Meyer.

 The results appear to be different from Meyer’s findings.

On the other hand, sentence 2 shows that you are

distancing yourself from your work and
comparing it to previous works done by other
researchers relating your contributions to other
ideas in the discipline.

Remember that in academic writing, since you are

part of a community, it is important that you express
ideas with openness, striking a balance between
being concise and cautious.