Skills for Higher Education: Academic Writing Features & Reflection

This essay explores the features of academic writing, a formal style used in universities and scholarly publications. It highlights key aspects such as structure, critical thinking, balance, and formality. The essay discusses the differences between reports and essays in terms of structure, emphasizing the importance of logical progression and clear connections. It also reflects on the author's personal journey in improving their academic writing skills, focusing on incorporating formal vocabulary, structuring content professionally, and using evidence to enhance authenticity. The essay concludes by reiterating the significance of these features in transforming regular writing into professional academic work, with the university playing a crucial role in shaping these skills. Desklib provides access to more resources for students.

Skills for Higher
Education

Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION...........................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The concept of academic writing can be referred to as the formal style of the writing
which is used generally in the Universities as well as scholarly publications. They are aimed to
provide the explanation of some of the ideas or the finding of the research and it also persuades
the readers that the theory or the explanation is also correct. It is the clear, focused, concise as
well as structured form of writing which is backed up by the evidence. It refers to the style of the
expression which the researcher uses in order to define the intellectual boundaries of disciplines
and the specific areas of the expertise (Altınmakas and Bayyurt, 2019). This essay shall cover the
features of the academic writing and the persona reflection.
MAIN BODY
The academic writing can be defined as the expression which is used by the researcher in
order to define intellectual boundaries of the specific areas of the expertise and disciples (Vo,
2019). There are different features of the academic writing which includes firstly that it isstructured. This means that the academic structure must have the clear structure and it is often
taken from genre of the writing. For instance, the report must begin with the introduction which
includes the aim of making the writing. Then the method section, the discussion method, analysis
and followed by the conclusion. The report and essay are two forms of academic writing and the
main point of difference between the two in terms of structure is that that an essay includes the
introduction, clear paragraph of body with the topic sentence and lastly the conclusion. The
writing must be coherent together with the logical progression with varied parts of writing which
is clearly connected. It is essential that there is careful planning before the writing as it is
essential that there is a final product which is brought in a well-structured form which includes
logical progression and focus on the ideas (Fernando, 2020).
Second feature is that academic writing must be
critical which involves that it must be
more than just describe. As the academic writer, the individual must not make acceptance to
everything which it reads as the fact. It is essential that there is evaluation and analysis being
made of the information of what is being included in academic writing. In simple words, there
must be judgment being made about what is being included and decision must be taken whether

to integrate it in the writing or not (Taylor and Goodall, 2019). This is called as the critical
writing as it required high research so that writer can develop deep understanding of it.
Third feature is that academic writing must be
balanced. It is meant as giving the
consideration to each of the side of issues and preventing any kind of biasness. As every research
argument as well as evidence can be challenged so it is essential that the writer must show its
instance on the specific topic so that the claim can be made strongly (Chen and Flowerdew,
2018). This is mainly done by making use of the hedges for instance, the phases like evidence to
this suggest that or
it can caused by the, and many others.
Fourth feature to the academic writing is that it must be
formal. These writing must be
different an formal as compared to the everyday writing. It involves making use of the longer
words and more of the complex sentences and on other side preventing any kind of
contradictions, informal words and the colloquial which may common in the spoken English.
There are different collocations as well as words which are frequently used in the academic
writing than in the non-academic writing and the researchers are required to make the list of
these words so that the students are being helped with the formal academic English like
academic vocabulary, academic word list and academic collocation list (Erjavec, Fišer and
Ljubešić, 2021).
Since, I have begun with my course; there are different aspects which I have learnt that
has brought improvement in my own writing. At my initial days, I have the issue in beginning
with the academic writing as I lack the formal words which are coherent in the academic writing
but with daily practice and support of my teachers, I began to make use of the formal words so
that improvement can be brought. Initially, my writing was nt formal rather it was the childish
one but by referring to the academic vocabulary, I improved my content. I avoided repetition of
the words and began to include different synonyms of the same so that it can be shown as more
professional. Then I also began to structure my writing in the professional manner which
including a proper introduction, discussion and analysis paragraphs, conclusion so that the aim of
the writing can be conveyed to the reader effectively. Last but not the least, my teachers in my
University helped me in evidencing my writing so that my content can be shown as authentic and
relevant. Hence, I can say that my university played an important role in improving my writing

as it taught me to structure the writing, include formal words as well as make its presentable and
authentic by including proper evidence to what I have written.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from this essay that the academic writing includes various features which
makes the normal writing as professional. These features include that an academic writing must
have a proper structure, evidence, critical thinking, formal usage of words and many others. The
report and essay both are the part of academic writing and has distinct structure which includes
that a report involves introduction, discussion, analysis and conclusion while an essay includes
only introduction, paragraph of body and a conclusion.
REFERENCES
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. and Flowerdew, J., 2018. A critical review of research and practice in data-driven
learning (DDL) in the academic writing classroom.
International Journal of Corpus
Linguistics. 23(3). pp.335-369.
Erjavec, T., Fišer, D. and Ljubešić, N., 2021. The KAS corpus of Slovenian academic
writing.
Language Resources and Evaluation. 55(2). pp.551-583.
Fernando, W., 2020. Moodle quizzes and their usability for formative assessment of academic
writing.
Assessing Writing. 46. p.100485.
Taylor, H. and Goodall, J., 2019. A preliminary investigation into the rhetorical function of ‘I’in
different genres of successful business student academic writing.
Journal of English for
Academic Purposes. 38. pp.135-145.
Vo, S., 2019. Use of lexical features in non-native academic writing.
Journal of Second
Language Writing. 44. pp.1-12.