Importance Of Academic Writing
Writing is a skill and that, like any skill, it can be improved through guidance practice. Writing enables us to learn a set of concepts and a vocabulary of language analysis and rhetorical strategy. Here is an important article about the topic Importance Of Academic Writing.
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Writing is a skill and that, like any skill, it can be improved through guidance practice. Writing enables us to learn a set of concepts and a vocabulary of language analysis and rhetorical strategy. The more we know about how language and persuasion work, the more features of style and argument we can recognize and use.
Academic Writing:
Why Writing?
Promotes language development.
Shapes and creates our knowledge.
Visualization of Thinking.
Reflection on and revision of your thinking.
Popular Writing Trends
Writer – Oriented Writing--->
Audience: Self
Purpose : Personal exploration of ideas.
Language: Informal
Forms: Journals, notes & rough drafts etc.
Reader – Oriented Writing
Audience: Others
Purpose: communication between Individuals
Language: Primarily formal
Forms: essays, paper & Letters etc.
Text Types
Casual Analysis – The purpose of a casual – analysis is to explain the causes of something.
Problem solving – The purpose of a problem – solving text is to propose a solution to a problem.
Argumentation – The purpose of an argumentative text is to make a claim about something, or to state a position on a issue.
Summarizing – The purpose of a summary is to give an abbreviated version.
Steps in Writing Process
Pre – Writing Activities
Reading, note taking, brainstorming, mind mapping and reader analysis.
Drafting
Feedback & Revision
Peer response
Teacher response
Revision
Evaluation & Grading
Why Scientific Writing ?
State your facts as simply as possibly, even boldly. No one wants flowers of eloquence or literary ornaments in a research article.
- R.B McKerrow
Characteristics of Scientific Writing
The need for clarity
Receiving the signals
Understanding the signals
Appropriate use of language
Origins of Scientific Writing
Early History
Cave paintings & inscriptions carved onto rocks
Chaldean account of the flood inscribed on a clay tablet in about 4000 B.C. is the earliest book we know.
Papyrus came into use in 190 B.C.
Chinese invented paper in 105 A.D.
First scientific journal appeared in 1665.
Academic Writing : Three Approaches
The Product Approach
The Process Approach
The integrated Approach
The Product Approach
Pre-occupied with the finished product in directing its learners towards pre-specified objectives.
In product approach a students attention focuses on adhering to and duplicating models and in particular on correct language.
The product approach encourages students to use the same plan in a multitude of settings, applying the same form regardless of content.
The Process Approach
The process approach developed by way of a reaction to the confines presented by the product approach.
The process approach empowered students to make clearer decisions about the direction of their writing ‘by means of discussion, tasks, drafting, feedback and informed choices' .
Encouraging students to assume greater responsibility for making their own improvements.
The Integrated Approach
Integrated approach emphasizes :
Recreating the conditions under which actual academic writing is performed, including: real academic time constraints
Students working on their own specialized subjects
Students focused on the needs of respective readership
Presentation of text in an acceptable, discipline – specific form.
The article does not do any justification for the title. Though the phrase 'Academic Writing' is seen repeated at a few places, it is not explained anywhere in the article what is academic writing.
A first timer to read the title phrase is totally at a loss to understand what is all this about.
Hence for such first timers this article does not evoke interest and is a disappointment.
It will be an escapism if by questioning the same I also simply pass on. Hence I try to put here what I knew from 'academic writing' after quenching my thirst for an answer elsewhere. Academic writing is the writings produced by students in school and colleges on matters connected with their learning. They write about the contents and substances of what they learned. Thus it may be a narrative writing in academies, or institutions for learning, by way of notes, essays and simple reports or project reports.
It comes from the understanding and thinking of what is learned by them. Academic writings may be the condensed form of all answers for questions asked or can be asked to the students about what they learn,or self made narrations as to what they think, why they think so etc in relation to their learning. They are the writing assignments of students.