In our post: Why Develop Good Academic Writing Skills? we discussed how academic writing can help you not just with ‘getting A’s in your academics’, but also, how to become a better employee in the future.
In this post, we’ll list some tips for you to improve your academic writing skills, but first, you get to know the host of demanding skills that writing for academics requires you to either have had or learn firsthand.
Learning to write for academics includes having a knowledge and understanding of some advanced literacy skills which include:
- Connecting sentences, linking paras, and structuring discourse
- Contextualizing your ideas and arguments
- Synthesizing, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, sourcing, and evaluating the work of others
- Defining and explaining concepts
- Ability to describe things and processes
- Expressing surprises and counter-expectations
- Engaging with opposing views
- Acknowledging limitations and making recommendations
- Classifying, categorizing, and comparing/contrasting things
- Ability to agree or disagree with others’ points of view
- Providing examples and offering explanations where necessary
- Integrating visual images with linguistic prose
- Making disclaimers or expressing appreciation
These advanced literacy skills along with linguistic resources are what you need to be able to learn to write for academic purposes.
Learning these skills is a complex and lengthy process and takes time, patience, experience, and practice. Bear in mind that the process also involves constant mental and emotional struggles.
Tips for Improving your Academic Writing skills
Cultivate productive writing habits
Instill in yourself a productive writing habit and write consistently. Any form of writing requires practice and a whole lot of it for you to become an expert at it.
Develop a habit of reading
Reading and writing go side by side. If you are not good at reading stuff, don’t expect yourself to become a good writer either. To be good at academic writing, you’ll need to read deeply within your field and extensively in related fields.
Learn Grammar and its usage
As discussed earlier, academic writing has some serious grammar sensitivity and to be good at academic writing, you’ll need to develop linguistic awareness(like British or American English accent variations, etc.) and learn grammatical sensitivity rules.
Learn the writing process
The writing process involves planning, outlining, drafting, revising, polishing, and presenting or publishing. It is usually a tough process for novice writers however showing perseverance and rehearsing through the process time and time again can help improve your academic writing skills.
Focus and understand the key elements of academic writing
key elements include an audience, tone of writing, purpose, style, clarity, flow, and appearance. All these need to be attended concurrently by the writer to polish academic writing skills.
Overcome cultural barriers
Culture-specific thought patterns and ways of communicating are a challenge for non-native English-speaking writers or ESL(English as a Second Language) writers. Attaining proficiency in English as a second language can help overcome this barrier and make students better at academic writing.
Plan ahead of time
Academic work is not something that can easily be submitted in the last hour. And if you do not plan your assessments, chances are it that you’ll miss the deadlines or maybe become too strained in the final hour to submit incomplete assessments. Planning your assignments ahead of time is, therefore, crucial to completing your academic work in a proper orientation and in good health. You might break your assessment tasks into subtasks and self-define a deadline for them
Learn to Prioritize
When considering your assessment tasks, it is natural to think and work on tasks that are most crucial to assignment completion. For example, if you think some tasks might take up more of your work than others, you might consider either completing it firsthand or leaving it for the end.
Avoiding the use of idiomatic phrases
Phrases like on the other hand, few, or far between make your writing look less concise and unclear. Readers might find it to digest the idioms and the meanings of which they are unfamiliar. Consider the readability score of your document and keep your wording simple, and free from idiomatic phrases.
Be careful with your intros and outro paras
Both intro and outro(conclusion para) help readers understand the context of your writing. Intros set your readers’ expectations of what they are about to read. Outros make a final attempt to convince your readers about the point/argument you made in your document. Good academic writing requires individuals to be skilled at writing impactful introductions and conclusions. This skill can also come in handy in forging presentations and report writing in your workplace.
Conclusion
These quick tips won’t only be enough for you to master the art of academic writing especially, if you’re willing to attain an unrealistic goal of becoming an expert at it overnight. You’ll need to practice several times to master the art of it. You can use these tips as a guide along your process practicing journey.
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