Chapter 1 What is academic writing

CoheHale Waihona Puke ence:CREATING FOCUS
it is also important to give your writing a "focus" (coherence). You can do this by carefully choosing your topic at the beginning of each sentence. To understand why, look at the example paragraph below. Good cohesion, but no coherence: 1Romance languages descend from a Latin parent, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. 2English has become the lingua franca, the learned language of science and trade. 3Science is based on experimentation, description, and categorisation. 4Descriptions of the ‘northern lights’, or Aurora Borealis, often incude the words ‘twinkle’ or ‘flicker’ to explain the movement created when solar ions collide with the Earth’s atmosphere.
Cohesion
Make your sentences "stick" together better? Write texts with logical links between the parts? Create reader-friendly texts that are easy to read? Get your points clearly across to the readers? Emphasise what needs emphasising?
1.Guiding Readers
Metatext not only helps the writer to draw the reader’s attention to the structure of the text but also makes the information in the text more accessible to the reader. Metatext can also clarify links between different ideas. Thus, one main purpose of metatext is to explain to the reader how the text should be read. The more difficult or complex the text, the more important it is that writers provide readers with this “assistance.”
referring to figures, summarizing
Describing aims:
Aim (subject) : The *aim of this thesis is to develop to a system-level simulation concept in order to facilitate analysis of key guidance system design issues and evaluation of integrated system requirements. *goal, objective, purpose
What is academic writing?
The term 'academic writing' comprises many different types of text, ranging from a research article written for publication in an academic journal to a MSc dissertation to an essay written for a university course. However, there are certain features which appear to be typical of academic writing. For example, academic texts answer a specific question, or questions, using a set of well-structured, logical arguments. The arguments are often based on research carried out by the writer or other researchers. Academic texts contain references to previous research, which are documented at the end of the text. Academic texts are written in an impersonal, objective style, and are characterized by certain language features such as the avoidance of personal and contracted forms, a high lexical density, frequent nominalisations and the use of the passive.
WHAT IS STYLE?
Most educated members of the group can take a look at a text, and readily identify the “text type” by the style in which it is written. Style is based on a wide range of language features, including the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the degree of author objectivity. When writers select an appropriate style for a text they are about to produce, they must be aware of their purpose in writing, the intended audience, and the subject matter.
( it is repoted…, naturally,claim, point out) to consist of sentences which are longer and more complex than in everyday texts to require more formal vocabulary and grammatical structures
Features:
Cohesion, the term commonly used to describe the mechanisms which help to make a text clear, logical, unified and readerfriendly. Certain aspects of grammar which can cause difficulties to even highly-proficient writers. Punctuation, the symbols which help to organise and clarify texts. Considerations of style which affect the word choice and structure of academic text
ACADEMIC STYLE The style of academic English differs from that of the everyday spoken form in some fundamental ways. It tends to use strategies for signalling the writer’s distance and attitude to claims and arguments 。
1romancelanguagesdescendfromlatinparentmanywordsbasedothermodernlanguagesenglish2englishhasbecomelinguafrancalearnedlanguagetrade3scienceexperimentationdescriptioncategorisation4descriptions?northernlights?auroraborealisoftenincudewords?twinkle?movementcreatedwhensolarionscollideearth?satmosphere
RESEARCH FUNCTIONS
The use of language to realise a specific purpose is known as a language function. Writers of academic texts need to communicate a wide range of purposes linked to research activities. These “research functions” typically include tasks such as describing aims,
2.Building Credibility
try to win readers’ understanding in order to anticipate and protect yourself from potential criticism commitment to a particular view (It is clear that…), distancing themselves from another author’s claim (SD-type algorithms tend to perform well, but...), and stressing solidarity with the readers (However, as we shall see, the problem lies in...).
summarizing
In this paper, we have discussed the problems of designing interfaces between parallel programming languages
Metatext
English texts “talk more about themselves” (Mauranen, 1993a, 1993b). This phenomenon is sometimes called metatext. Why does a writer do this?
Chapter 1What is academic writing?
Definition Features: Cohesion and coherence; grammar, STYLE Metatext
RESEARCH FUNCTIONS
Citing other researchers' work VOCABULARY CHOICE
Examples:1. scope
This paper presents a new method to improve the reliability of roll bearings in paper machines. This thesis aims to produce a complete design specification for a remotely operated