Features and Importance of Academic Writing - Individual Essay

This essay explains the features and importance of academic writing. It discusses the characteristics of academic writing, such as being structured, evidenced, critical, balanced, precise, objective, and formal. It also highlights the importance of academic writing in building knowledge, understanding current issues, and understanding people.

Assessment 1
Individual Essay
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Table of content
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
Explain features of academic writing along with its importance................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
Academic writing is basically referred as a formal style of writing. Formal writing is
quite important in terms of universities and scholarly publications. Academic writing revolves in
accordance with journal articles as well as various books on academic topics. The academic
writing is quite helpful in writing the essays, dissertations, research papers in a formal and
appropriate style. Academic writing basically has a similar writing process like other text
formats but it has various specifications in context of content, structure and style as well. An
ideal academic writing is formal as well as unbiased rather than a personal writing. The academic
writing needs to clear and precise and must not be long winded. The ideal academic writing is
the one which is focussed, well structures, well sources and has correct and comprise information
(Altınmakas and Bayyurt, 2019).
Main Body
Explain features of academic writing along with its importance
The way in which a person writes is basically influenced by the motive or purpose of the person.
It is considered that the way of writing differs in accordance with the communication and its
purpose along with the person to whom the message is being communicated. Academic writing
has its characteristics as well as significance. The various significance and features have been
discussed below (Huisman and et.al., 2018).
Characteristics of academic Writing
The features of academic writing have been discussed below.
 Structured- The concept of academic states that academic writing must have a clear and
definite structure. The structure basically helps in deriving genre of writing to the
individual. For an instance, a report is required to have a proper sequence of the
introduction, main body or the method section, discussion section and various others
including a conclusion as well. In context of essay, it will have an introduction that
includes the statement of thesis , the clear body paragraphs along with topic sentences as
well as a conclusion. The writing must be in a coherent manner which has a logical
progression along with being cohesive. It must make sure that different parts of writing
must have a clear format and they must be clearly connected. It is ascertained that there
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must be a careful planning before structuring the final product and also a clear focus and
logical progression of ideas must be done (Kiriakos and Tienari, 2018).
 Evidenced- It is very important that the opinions as well as arguments in the academic
writing must be supported by proper evidence. The academic writing is mostly based
upon the information from various experts in the respective fields. Hence it is very
important to have a proper reference of the information properly. Various in text citations
can be used along with a reference section.
 Critical- Academic writing might seem as a simple phenomena or concept but in reality
it does a lot more. As an academic writer, it is very important for an individual to analyse
all the information and evaluate the information further rather than trusting the
information from any source. The academic writing basically comprises of proper
integration which is also known as critical writing. Critical writing is basically a great
deal of research in order to write and develop a deep understanding of a topic specifically
(Patriotta, 2017).
 Balanced- Academic writing is required to be kept balanced. This basically means that it
is important for an individual to give proper consideration to all the sides of the issue
while avoiding bias. It is quite understood that research, evidence and arguments are in a
situation where they can be challenged. It is very important for an academic writer to
show their in depth knowledge upon a particular topic. The balanced academic writing is
done with the help of hedges. Hedges are basically phrases such as As the evidence
suggest, this could be caused by, etc.
 Precise- It is very important that academic writing must focus upon the creation of the
clear and precise form of language in order to ensure that the reader understands the
meaning of the concepts covered in the academic writing properly. Precise academic
writing includes using technical vocabulary that are basically subject specified. These are
used in order to convey the meaning of the concept in a precise manner with a non-
technical term. There can be instances when the technical vocabulary requires defining a
specific jargon or specially the terms that are not used on a regular basis by the people
belonging to the same discipline. These are important so that the concept is easily
understood by the reader (Penris and Verspoor, 2017) .
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 Objective- Academic writing is a concept that is required to be objective. The emphasis
of academic writing is placed upon the arguments as well as the information and not upon
the writer. Hence it is very specific that academic writing is required to use various nouns
and noun phrases more than the verbs and adverbs. The academic writing focuses upon
using various passive structures in comparison to the active voice or it can be said that
third form writing is practised (Vo, 2019). Formal- Academic writing is considered as a very formal concept in comparison to the
everyday writing. The focus of academic writing is upon the use and formation of long as
well as complex sentences. Also it is made sure that the contractions along with the
informal words that are used frequently in the common spoken English. There are various
words and collocations that are used more frequently in the academic writing concept
rather than the non academic writing. Also, there is a list that have been developed by the
various researchers in order to help the students regarding the concept of academic
writing. The various lists includes, academic word list, academic vocabulary list along
with the academic collocation list (Wu, Mauranen and Lei, 2020).
Importance of academic Writing
The importance of academic writing have been discussed below.
 It is a tool kit for building knowledge and facilitates learning- Academic writing requires
researching upon a topic which is not just in terms of students or academic but also for all
the professional as well as non professionals. Academic writing is a very useful concept
that helps in building knowledge for all the budding writers as well as veteran writer who
are involved in the process through online as well as offline mode. These also help in
enhancing the knowledge and skills that further help in surviving as well as improving
the lives of the individuals. Knowledge is mainly considered as the factual proposition in
the minds of the individual and is referred to the facts that are based upon objective
insights as well as findings of the study that are processed through human brains (Chen,
Flowerdew and Anthony, 2019).
 helps in understanding current issues- There are various sources that help in generation of
research such as television shows along with moves that include fictional as well as non
fictional concept. Academic researches have played a huge and significant role in helping
others in order to raise social consciousness. Also, the various issues are identified in the
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society that are gathered from various communities of people belonging to various age
groups class, educational backgrounds, etc. Further these informations are shared among
the community as well. An thus, it can be analysed that academic writing has a huge
contribution towards highlighting and generating information about current issues
through the researches (Su and Zhang, 2020).
 helps in understanding the people- The concept of academic writing is mainly focussed
upon formulation of the research. It has been observed that in order to gain understanding
about a person or an individual, interviews are conducted. Even they are a form of
research. There have been number of films that have been made on realistic fiction and
realistic stories. In order to complete these movies and their scripts, it is very important
that the person involved have the appropriate information that is available through the
researches or academic literature that is available. Hence, academic writing has huge
importance in building understanding of the people (Strobl and et.al, 2019).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the study that academic style is a crucial part of the individual's
life. These are very important in order to have a successful academic background. Academic
writing is basically referred as a formal style of writing and it is quite important in terms of
universities and scholarly publications. The report has highlighted features as well as importance
of academic writing. The various features that have been discussed in the report are Structure,
Evidence, Critical, Balance, Precise, Objective and Formal.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Altınmakas, D. and Bayyurt, Y., 2019. An exploratory study on factors influencing
undergraduate students’ academic writing practices in Turkey. Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 37, pp.88-103.
Chen, M., Flowerdew, J. and Anthony, L., 2019. Introducing in-service English language
teachers to data-driven learning for academic writing. System, 87, p.102148.
Huisman, B. and et.al., 2018. Peer feedback on academic writing: undergraduate students’ peer
feedback role, peer feedback perceptions and essay performance. Assessment &
Evaluation in Higher Education, 43(6), pp.955-968.
Kiriakos, C.M. and Tienari, J., 2018. Academic writing as love. Management Learning, 49(3),
pp.263-277.
Patriotta, G., 2017. Crafting papers for publication: Novelty and convention in academic writing.
Penris, W. and Verspoor, M., 2017. 11 Academic Writing Development: A Complex, Dynamic
Process. In Future research directions for applied linguistics (pp. 215-242). Multilingual
Matters.
Strobl, C. and et.al, 2019. Digital support for academic writing: A review of technologies and
pedagogies. Computers & Education, 131, pp.33-48.
Su, H. and Zhang, L., 2020. Local grammars and discourse acts in academic writing: A case
study of exemplification in Linguistics research articles. Journal of English for
Academic Purposes, 43, p.100805.
Vo, S., 2019. Use of lexical features in non-native academic writing. Journal of Second
Language Writing, 44, pp.1-12.
Wu, X., Mauranen, A. and Lei, L., 2020. Syntactic complexity in English as a lingua franca
academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 43, p.100798.
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