UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC WRITING

1.1 Introduction
Like any form of communication, writing is context-specific. In this unit, you will
learn about writing in academic settings. Writing for academic purposes differs from
other forms of writing. Writing at the university level differs significantly from the writing you
did at school. Let us first define academic writing.

1.2 Unit objectives

 To explain pre-writing considerations.
 Summarize, analyse, and synthesise a text.
 Demonstrate a rhetorical stance in their writing

1.3 What is academic writing?

Academic writing is writing done by scholars for other scholars—and that includes you. As a
university student, you are engaged in activities that scholars have been engaged in for centuries:
you will read about, think about, argue about, and write about great ideas. Of course, being a
scholar requires that you read, think, argue, and write in certain ways. Writing for academic
purposes aims at presenting a well-informed argument. This implies that you should read widely
and probe issues to be able to get the information you can write about and which you can
confidently present a point of view.

Before you can make your own contributions and assertions, you need to know what the current
conversation and developments in the field are. This you can do through the use of resources.
Your lecturer, for instance, is a living, breathing expert on what scholars in your field care about.
Books, journals, and even credible internet sites also offer an opportunity to eavesdrop on the
ongoing scholarly conversation about the topic. Once you understand the conversation, you can
then begin to construct an informed argument of your own, conforming to appropriate standards
and conventions of the academic community.

Academic writing responds to topics of interest to the academic community. So before you start
writing an academic paper you must have something to write about. This is expressed in the
topic. You must have an interest in that topic and it must be on something other people might
want to read.

1.4 The importance of writing

Academic writing is important because it is an effective tool for finding out information in your
relevant field of study. That is why you need to acquire the necessary skills that will enable you
to show your lecturers what you know and how you have interpreted and organized the
information you have acquired from your lectures and reading materials.

In the writing process, you are expected to demonstrate familiarity with the subject matter on
which the essay has been set, by being able to identify relevant sources of information and
relevant information on the subject. Secondly, you must demonstrate a clear understanding of the
material at hand by evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing it. This will be explained later in the
unit. Finally, you are expected to make your point of view clear, from the beginning to the end of
the essay.

Before you start writing you need to put some things into perspective; we shall call these, pre-
writing considerations.
1.5 Pre-writing considerations
At the pre-writing stage, you should consider the following.
 Audience
 Purpose
 Content
 Organization
 Style and tone
 Presentation

In this unit, we will discuss, audience, purpose, presentation, style and tone. The rest will be
discussed in Unit 2.

Audience
We said earlier, when you write in an academic setting you must think about the issues of
interest to a particular population, in this case the academic community. You must always
consider your readers. In the university classroom, the audience is usually the lecturer or your
classmates— although occasionally your lecturer will instruct you to write for a more particular
or more general audience. No matter who your readers are, you will want to consider them
carefully before you start to write. What do you know about your readers and their stance toward
your topic? What are they likely to know about the topic? What biases are they likely to have?
Moreover, what effect do you hope to have on the readers? Is your aim to be controversial?
Informative? Entertaining? Will the readers appreciate or resent your intention?

Once you have determined who your readers are, you will want to consider how you might best
reach them. If, for example, you are an authority on a subject and you are writing to readers who
know little or nothing about the subject, you will want to take an informative stance. If you are
not yet confident about a topic and you have more questions than answers, you
might want to take an inquisitive stance.
Rhetorical
stance: the In any case, when you are deciding on a rhetorical stance, choose one that
position you take allows you to be sincere. You don’t want to take an authoritative stance
as writer on a subject if you are not confident about what you are saying. On the
other hand, you do not want to avoid taking a position on a subject; nothing
is worse than reading a paper in which the writer has refused to take a stance.
What if you are of two minds on a subject? Declare that to the reader. Make ambivalence
your clear rhetorical stance.

Finally, do not write simply to please your lecturer. Though some lecturers find it flattering to
discover that all of their students share their positions on a subject, most of us are hoping that
your argument will engage us by telling us something new about your topic—even if that
“something new” is simply a fresh emphasis on a minor detail. Moreover, you cannot replicate
the “ideal paper” that exists in your lecturer’s head. When you try, you risk having your analysis
compared to your lecturer’s. Is that really what you want?

Purpose
Considering the purpose of writing simply tries to answer the question why you are writing the
essay. As a university student you are required to write for several purposes. You may be
required to explain a process, to narrate an event, to analyse and evaluate something. While you
do all this bear in mind that the expectation of your audience (lecturers) is to see you
demonstrate your familiarity, expertise and intelligence as a student.

Activity 1.1 The purpose of writing

For each of the following subjects write a sentence that shows;

 An expressive purpose
 An exploratory purpose
 A persuasive purpose

Bodybuilding assertiveness national debt

campus safety self- identity loneliness

NB: This is a practice exercise.

You can read some more on the above on the following link
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-academic-writing-and-non-
academic-writing/

Tone and Style

You understand what’s required of you in an academic paper. You need to be analytical. You
need to create an informed argument. You need to consider your relationship with the topic and
the reader. But what about finding an appropriate academic tone and style?

The tone and style of academic writing might at first seem intimidating. But that needn’t be the
case. Lecturers want students to write clearly and intelligently on matters that they, the students,
care about. What lecturers do not want is imitation scholarship—that is, exalted gibberish that no
one cares to read. If the student didn’t care to write the paper, the professor probably won’t care
to read it. The tone of an academic paper, then, must be inviting to the reader, even while it
maintains an appropriate academic style.
Remember that lecturers are human beings, capable of boredom, laughter, irritation, and awe.
Understand that you are writing to a person who will be delighted when you make your point
clearly, concisely, and persuasively. Understand, too, that she will be less delighted if you have
inflated your prose, pumped up your page count, or tried to impress her by using terms that you
did not take the time to understand.

In general, in choosing the appropriate level of formality, you need to consider the following:
 What is your relationship with the reader? Are you relatives, friends, acquaintances, or
strangers?
 What is the reader’s professional role? Is he or she a co-worker, your boss, or a high-
level official?
 What is the purpose and audience? Is it a term paper, a letter to a friend, or a lecture?
 What subject are you discussing? Are you dealing with typical work-related matters,
asking for a favour or making a serious complaint?

Of course, most situations involve some or all of these factors, not just one. Your choice of
language style, then, will depend on a combination of these factors.
1.6 Stages of writing
There are seven common stages of writing, which are as follows:
(i) Analyze the topic/ assignment
(ii) Use prior knowledge
(iii) Search for information
(iv) Plan an outline
(v) Complete a draft
(vi) Revise your draft
(vii) Edit
(Jacobs p110, communication for health sciences)

1.6.1 Analyzing the instructions

The first crucial step in writing is to read the instructions/guidelines of your assignment.
Understand what the due date is and what percentage the assignment contributes towards
your total year mark. Also understand when the assignment is about and what the
instructions are, regarding the presentation of the assignment. This concerns the overall
 format of your work. Ask yourself the following: Does the paper have a clear title,
paragraphs, appropriate line spacing? Does it have a standard font? You should proofread
the paper for grammatical mistakes and miss-spelt words. It is also very important to
understand the elements of the task – what you have been asked to do in this assignment.

1.6.2 Analyzing the topic

In analyzing the topic, there three things you need to do:

o Read the essay title or question a few times.
o identify the directional words
o Identify and underline topic words.
In unit 3 of this module, we will explain these concepts in detail.

Before you start looking for information, you need to think about what you know about the topic.
Write down your initial thoughts and perhaps a few starting points. Your prior knowledge is
going to help you research the topic and organize the information effectively.

Draw an outline or plan, such as a mind map of what you know about the question and where
you will start. As you gather more information during the course of your research, you will add
to the outline. Use your prior knowledge as a foundation to work from. The more you read, the
more you will build upon this foundation and so build your assignment.

The aim of thinking about your topic is to come up with a fresh observation. After all, it’s not
enough to summarize in a paper what’s already known and discussed. You must also add
something of your own to the conversation. Understand, however, that “adding something of
your own” is not an invitation to bring your associations, reactions, or experiences to the text but
it is to enhance the conversation in the discipline. To create an informed argument, you must first
recognize that your writing should be analytical rather than personal. In other words, your
writing must show that your associations, reactions, and experiences have been framed in a
critical, rather than a personal way.

This is not to say that your responses to the text are irrelevant. Indeed, your responses are a good
starting point for academic work to come. For instance, being angry when you read the text can
be the first step on the way to a strong analysis. Interrogate your anger. Why are you angry?
What elements of the text contribute to your anger?

Interrogating your responses is the first step in making sure that your argument will be
appropriately academic. To help ensure that your responses are critical rather than personal,
subject them to the following critical thinking processes: summary, evaluation, analysis, and
synthesis.

Activity 1.2
Planning the outline of an essay

The fourth step of the writing stages is to plan the outline of your assignment or essay. You need to
 plan how to use the information, and where it should be placed. For your practice, choose one
topic and follow the instructions given.

1. “With the development of globalization and free trade, borders between countries are
melting.” Discuss.
2. Identify and discuss two scientific / technological innovations that have had a great impact
on human society. Your discussion should make clear the benefits, limitations and risks that
come with these developments.
3. Evaluate the effects of the “Soka uncobe” campaign by the Ministry of Health in Swaziland.
4. Do you agree that learning is best carried out in an environment of order, strict discipline,
and comparative silence? Discuss.
5. State your views on the following statement: “Television, newspapers, magazines and other
media pay too much attention to the lives of famous people such as public figures and
celebrities.” Use specific examples to support your stand.
6. Tuberculosis (TB) is a common communicable disease. Discuss some of the challenges in
the prevention and treatment of TB in Swaziland.

In your plan;
 Choose which information is to be placed in the introduction, body and conclusion.
 Logically organize the points to be developed.
 Identify and establish the main focus of the essay

1.6.3 Considering the information

Let us now look at each of the critical thinking processes in detail. We shall start with
summarizing.

a) Summarizing
The first step in thinking critically about a text is to summarize what the text is saying. You can
construct several different summaries, depending on your purpose. But beware: even the most
basic of summaries—the plot summary—is not as simple as it seems. It is difficult to write both
economically and descriptively, to discern what’s essential to your discussion and what’s not.
Summarizing is useful in helping you clarify what you know about a text, laying the foundation
for the more complex processes to come. The second process of critical thinking is evaluating.

b) Evaluating
Evaluation is an ongoing process. You evaluate a text the moment you encounter it, and—if you
are not lazy—you continue to evaluate and to re-evaluate as you go along. As we have been
saying, evaluating a text is different from reacting to a text. When you evaluate for an academic
purpose, you need to clearly articulate and support your response. What in the text is leading you
to respond a certain way? What is not in the text that might be contributing to your response?

In asking these questions, you are straddling two intellectual processes: experiencing your
response and analyzing the text. The evaluation also encourages you to compare a text with other
texts that you have read. Evaluating what is special about the text allows you to isolate those
aspects that are most interesting and most fruitful to investigate further. Further investigating the
text will allow you to analyse the text.

c) Analysing
In the analysis stage of constructing an informed argument, your first task is to consider the parts
of your topic that most interest you, then examine how these parts relate to each other or to the
whole. To analyze the text, you will want to break it down by examining particular sections,
subsections, paragraphs, and so on. In short, you’ll want to ask, what are the components of the
text, and how do these components contribute to the theme of the text? How do they contribute
to the author's work as a whole? When you analyze, you break the whole into parts so that you
might see the whole differently. When you analyze, you find things to say about the components.

d) Synthesising
When you analyze, you break down a text into its parts. When you synthesize, you look for
connections between ideas. In analyzing a text, you might come up with elements that seem
initially disparate. You might have some observations that at first do not seem to gel. Or you
might have read various critical perspectives on the text, all of them in disagreement with one
another. Now would be the time to consider whether these disparate elements or observations
might be reconciled, or synthesized. This intellectual exercise requires that you create an
umbrella argument—a larger argument under which several observations and perspectives might
stand. This is sometimes called a premise or a rhetorical stance.

e) Writing an outline
The fourth step of the writing stages is to plan the outline of your assignment or essay. You need
to plan how to use the information you gather from different sources, and where it should be
placed in your essay. The following activity will help you with this step.

Draw an outline or plan, such as a mind map of what you know about the question and where
you will start. This helps you to select and organise information that will go into your essay. As
you gather more information during your research, you will add to the outline. Use your prior
knowledge as a foundation to work from. The more you read, the more you will build upon this
foundation and so build your assignment.

Here is an example of an outline:

I. Introduction
II. Problem of Domestic Violence[problem] [causes]
III. A. Description of the problem
B. Psychology of the Battered Family
1. Victims
2. Abusers
3. Children
III. Child Custody Decision making [Background]
IV. State Response [Effect]
A. Modification to the Statutory Joint Custody Standard
B. Modification to Best interest of the Child Statutes
 C. Court Decisions
a. Sole custody
b. Joint Custody Decisions
V. Overcoming Myths About Domestic Violence [Explanation of how Causes lead to
effects
VI. Integrating Domestic Violence into Child Custody Decisions [Solution]
VII. Conclusion

Adapted from: Fajans, E. & Falk, M.R. (2005). Scholarly Writing for Law Students. West.

Finding a Rhetorical Stance

When writing an academic paper, you must consider not only what you want to say, but also the
audience to whom you’re saying it. In other words, it’s important to determine not only what you
think about a topic, but also what your audience is likely to think. What biases does your
audience have? Values? Expectations? Knowledge? To whom are you writing, and for what
purpose? When you begin to answer all of these questions, you have started to reckon with what
has been called the rhetorical stance. Rhetorical stance refers to the position you take as a writer
in terms of the subject and the reader of your paper.

Let us first consider your relationship to the topic you are writing about. When you write a paper,
you take a stand on a topic. You determine whether you are for or against it, passionate or cool-
headed. You determine whether you’ll view this topic through a particular perspective (e.g.,
feminist), or whether you’ll make a more general response.

To ensure that your stance on a topic is appropriately analytical, you might want to ask yourself
some questions. Begin by asking why you’ve taken this particular stance. For instance, why did
you find some elements of the text more important than others? Does this prioritizing reflect a
bias or preconception on your part? If you dismissed part of the text as boring or unimportant,
why? Do you have personal issues or experiences that lead you to be impatient with certain
elements? Might any part of your response to the text cause readers to discount your paper as
biased or uncritical? If so, you might want to reconsider your position.

1.7 SUMMARY
In this unit, you have learnt about writing for academic purposes. You have learnt the definition
and features of an academic text, pre-writing considerations, the writing stages, and finally how
to put the information together before you start writing.

1.8 REFERENCES

Matthews, C. (1994). Speaking Solutions: Interaction, Presentation, Listening, and

Pronunciation Skills. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.
Wyrley-Birch, B., & Wright, J. (2003). Communication for Health Sciences. Cape Town:
Oxford University Press.
Institute for Writing & Rhetoric. (Anon).(2005). Dartmouth Writing Program. Retrieved from
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/index.html