Academic Writing Skills and Text Patterns

Academic Writing

• Academic writing is a skill used in academic contexts to communicate ideas, information, and research to the academic community.
• It aims to inform, argue, and address the needs of the audience.
• It is characterized by being planned and focused, structured, evidence-based, and formal.
• It is used to train individuals to write academically, convey knowledge, analyze and understand information, and learn in higher studies.
• Types of academic writing: descriptive, narrative, argumentative/persuasive.
• Key characteristics of academic writing: clear, precise language; third-person point of view; deductive approach leading to a conclusion; and use of deductive and analytical reasoning.

Different Text Patterns

• Cause and effect: emphasizes the relationship between events.
• Chronological: focuses on the order of events.
• Narrative: narrates events and stories.
• Problem and solution: identifies and explains a problem, exploring reasons and solutions.
• Compare and contrast: highlights similarities and differences between topics.
• Definition or description: provides information about a concept by defining it or giving examples.

Academic vs Creative Writing

• Creative Writing: aims to evoke emotions, is artistic and entertaining, uses literary techniques like figurative language.

• Academic Writing: is factual, informative, clear, precise, straightforward, objective, and uses specialized language.

• Technical Writing: focuses on providing information, meaning should be easily grasped, prioritizes clearness, and straightforward information.

Thesis Statement and Outlining

• A thesis statement is the controlling idea of a paper, the central argument or point the writer wants to argue.
• It should be one sentence, placed at the beginning of a paragraph, written in third person, clear and concise, and not overly broad or general.
• Outlining provides a summary of a text, highlighting essential features and relationships between parts.
• Reading outlining outlines main ideas of existing text.
• Writing outlining provides an overview of a draft, including essential points and supporting ideas.

Literary Criticism

• Literary criticism is a form of writing that argues a point of view on a work of literature.
• It supports literary assertions with evidence.
• It recognizes author, structure, and context.
• It uses literary theory as a framework to study the nature of literary works.
• Formalism: considers the work in isolation, ignoring author's intent, background, context and other external factors.
• Marxist Criticism: focuses on power struggles between oppressed and oppressing groups, examining exploitation by dominant groups over subordinate groups.
• Feminist Criticism: examines the role, position, and influence of women in literary texts. It argues that literature has often been written by men, neglecting women in a society heavily influenced by men.
• Reader Response Criticism: focuses on the reader's interpretation and how their perception changes over time, depending on their generation and background. The reader shapes the meaning of the text.
• Moralistic/Philosophical Criticism: views literature with the purpose of teaching morality and addressing philosophical issues.
• Psychoanalytical Criticism: analyzes literary works through the lens of psychology and psychological motivations of characters and authors.