Conjunctive Adverbs

Comprehensive and very useful pages from Leeds, B. (2001). TWE and application essays. Korea: Academic Press.  Click on each image to enlarge. For a discussion on metalanguage (talking to the reader in your writing), go to http://eflwriting4life.wordpress.com/2010/05/14/metalanguage/ For cohesion and coherence, go to http://eflwriting4life.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/cohesion-and-coherence/

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 [...]

Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion and coherence, or connecting ideas between sentences and paragraphs, are the most important elements of any piece of writing, be it personal, business, or academic. Read the two versions of a report a student hands in to her professor about a conference she went to.  Which one do you think is better and why?  [...]

The Writer’s Two Selves

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if you were given complete freedom?  I do–very often, too.  As an adult, there are many things that keep me from being free: I am a teacher so I can’t misbehave, I have a family to feed so I can’t buy many of the things I [...]

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 [...]

What Not to Do in Academic Writing

1. Make your sentences grammatically complete.  No fragments (stand-alone dependent clauses) allowed (for example, “Because he stayed up too late last night.” or “If you are certain.”). 2. Don’t use contractions (e.g. don’t, can’t, haven’t, etc.).  They are too informal and are usually reserved for speaking. — by AM (U.S.A./Germany) 3. It is very bad [...]

Tip of the Iceberg–Sample Essay

This is an example of how an “iceberg” essay can be turned into an elaborate one.  (For an explanation of what a “tip of the iceberg” is, please go to the post entitled “The Tip-of-the-Iceberg Phenomenon.”) Read the prompt and the iceberg version first. The numbers correspond between the two versions, and the italicized parts [...]

The Tip-of-the-Iceberg Phenomenon

This is a common term that you might hear your writing teachers use. The tip of the iceberg is that part that sticks up above the water and that is visible, for example, to Jack and Rose on the Titanic. But there’s much more to an iceberg, as you can see from the picture. The [...]

Organization: Separating Ideas into Paragraphs

A good writer divides his/her text into chunks of different ideas.  The more connected ideas stay in one or adjacent paragraphs (but the length of the paragraph is also an important issue–readers can’t tolerate super long paragraphs even if the author is talking about the same idea). Have you ever listened to someone talk without [...]