From Reading to Writing

When I ask my students to write about a text they have read (summarizing, paraphrasing, critiquing, etc.), many are often dumbfounded and end up copying parts of the text instead of talking about them.  In the figure below, you will see the necessary steps you have to take when working with a text. What to [...]

Organizing and Synthesizing

Exercise 1 Reorganize the information about three popular tourist destinations in the U.S.A. in the table answer the questions that follow. Las Vegas New York City Orlando – Bellagio Hotel – Casinos – Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition – Cirque du Soleil shows – Nevada – Hot and dry – New York – High living expenses [...]

Vocabulary in Academic Writing

For Sentences 1 to 10, choose the words in the right column that reduce the informality of the sentences in the left column.  The words chosen should appropriately replace the italicized words.  You may need to change the form of the verbs to make the new sentences grammatical.  For Sentences 11 to 15, improve the [...]

Grammar in Academic Writing

Exercise 1 The following passage is about giant pandas.  Read each paragraph and determine what is grammatically incorrect.  Discuss whether the errors are vital for the reader’s understanding of the text. Text adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Panda Paragraph A The Giant Panda is bear native in central-western and southwestern Chaina. The Giant Panda was previously thought to [...]

Academic Writing

Academic writing is a type of writing with its own conventions (language and style).  It is the genre that is commonly used in academia (the academic community: colleges, universities, research institutes, etc.).  It is used for class reports, journal articles, conference articles (proceedings), theses and dissertations, and books.  Here is a good definition of academic [...]

Language and Style in Academic Writing: Exercise

Read the sentences in each pair and try to guess why all the b‘s (and the c in No. 15) are more appropriate in academic writing. Source: Resources. (n.d.). 1. a. Her paper made a tremendous contribution to the field. b. Her paper made a major contribution to the field. 2. a. The community managed [...]

Citation Examples

Here are some examples of summarizing and paraphrasing—some are good and some are bad examples.  Read the original work and then the paraphrased versions and ask yourself these questions: Which one is a good paraphrase?  Why?  Which ones are not good and why?  The answers are provided at the end of this post.  Note that [...]

In-text Citations and References: Examples

In-text/parenthetical citations: 1. Smith (2006) states that a state of meditation can be achieved in our daily life (p. 21). 2. Smith’s (2006) research shows that a state of meditation can be achieved in our daily life. 3. In his book, Meditation in Everyday Life (2006), Smith states that a state of meditation can be [...]

Exercise: Parts of an Academic Paper

Can you distinguish parts of an academic paper?  Read the sentences and place them in the right order.  The answers are at the bottom of this post. a. Introduction b. Literature review c. Methodology d. Results e. Discussion f. Conclusion _______ 1. From the results of the study, it can be concluded that employees should [...]

Metalanguage: Talking to the Reader

I have been told by many of my students over the years that they have problems making their writing flow.  This means that they want the ideas that they put in the text run together smoothly–having a sense of cohesion and coherence (see the link at the end of this post for more explanation of [...]