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Handout1 Cultural - Differences

This document discusses cultural differences in academic writing styles between English and other languages. It lists 10 items and asks the reader to check which are typical of academic writing in English and whether they are also consistent in another familiar academic language. The document suggests that U.S. academic English may be more explicit about structure and purpose, less tolerant of digressions, and use shorter sentences than some other academic languages. It also proposes that English academic writing has stricter conventions for subsections, relies more on recent citations, and places more responsibility for clarity on the writer.

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goldstone
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74 views1 page

Handout1 Cultural - Differences

This document discusses cultural differences in academic writing styles between English and other languages. It lists 10 items and asks the reader to check which are typical of academic writing in English and whether they are also consistent in another familiar academic language. The document suggests that U.S. academic English may be more explicit about structure and purpose, less tolerant of digressions, and use shorter sentences than some other academic languages. It also proposes that English academic writing has stricter conventions for subsections, relies more on recent citations, and places more responsibility for clarity on the writer.

Uploaded by

goldstone
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN ACADEMIC LANGUAGE

Put a check mark (✓) next to the items that you think a.re typical of
academic writing in English. If you a.re familiar with another aca-
demic language, also mark those points that you th.ink a.re consistent
and inconsistent in academic writing in that other language. Are the
differences, if any, strong, or does it seem to you that the academic
languages a.re more similar than different? To what extent should you
incorporate the features in the list into your own writing?
U.S. academic English, in comparison to other academic lan-
guages, can be considered to
1. be more explicit about its structure and purposes
(i.e., contains a noticeable amount of metadiscourse)
2. be less tolerant of asides or digressions
3. use fairly short sentences with less complicated grammar
4. have stricter conventions for subsections and their titles
S. contain more citations
6. rely more on recent citations
7 . have longer paragraphs (in terms of number of words)
8. point more explicitly to "gaps" or "weaknesses" in the
previous research
_ _ 9. use more sentence connectors (words like however)
10. place the responsibility for clarity and understanding on
the writer rather than the reader

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