Academic Writing Online Module - Features of Academic writing

This video will show you the main features of academic writing.

Transcript:

Academic writing has a formal written tone and uses good grammar and spelling.

For example, you may text your friend: [Wanna go 2 the flicks 2nite?]
or even just [Movie?].
Written in a formal tone, this would be [Would you like to go to a movie this evening?].
While the ideas in academic writing should be straight forward, their expression is often presented in an indirect way. This is referred to as hedging. For example, instead of writing “This proves that climate change is a hoax” in academic writing you might write “This supports the idea that climate change may not be a threat” The words highlighted are hedging expressions [highlight on may not be] to show that you realise climate change is a complex topic with no single right answer .
Further, ideas that you write in an academic essay are supported by research. So in the example earlier, you potentially would write: “Daca (2020) found that in the past temperature changes have regularly occurred in 300 year cycles. It may appear that This supports the idea that climate change may not be a threat.”
Finally, academic writing has a formal structure. It should start with an introduction where you formulate your main ideas, which are then elaborated in the body paragraphs and then ends in a conclusion paragraph.

writing