Language tips to improve academic writing




Hello. My name is John McDonald. I am the editor and trainer for Cactus Communications. Today I’d like to go through a few language tips to improve your academic writing. When writing a sentence, it’s important to recognize that position has meaning. When writing sentences, when writing paragraphs in English, the front of the sentence has the most important information. The lower part of a paragraph or the second part of a sentence provides explanation. So the subject in a sentence is very important. This means, that at the front of the sentence you need to put the focus, the key thoughts, or whatever you as a writer consider the most important information up at the beginning. Let’s take a look at these two sentences.

1. In the fight for the realization of economic and social sustainable development, the relationship between economic and environmental issues is clearly on the table.

2. The relationship between economic and environmental issues is clearly on the table in the fight for the realization of economic and social sustainable development.

Both of these are grammatically correct, but the focus changes. In the first example, it’s the «fight» that’s the focus, and in the second sentence the «relationship» is the focus. So, as a writer, you need to recognize that what you put at the front of the sentence, the reader perceives as being the most important information in that sentence. There is a lot of confusion about using the passive voice. The use of the passive voice is to take the human out of the sentence. When you have a sentence like «Data were collected from 5000 patients by the physician», that «by the physician» isn’t really important in the sentence and can be cut, and so instead of saying «by the physician» you can just say: «Data were collected». If it’s important that the physician did it, not the nurse, not the researcher, but the physician, then, using the active voice, this becomes «The physician collected data from 5000 patients». In academic language, in academic writing there’s already a large number of very complicated terms. So if you don’t need to use a complicated term, use something simple. Your reader will appreciate it. What does this mean? Let’s take a look at two more examples.

Initial categories were then subsumed into more encompassing categories. That’s a rather difficult sentence to understand. Why not take this simpler. Initial categories were then expanded to include a greater number of factors. Both of these have the same meaning, but in the first sentence we have a higher level of vocabulary, which makes it more difficult for the majority of your readers to process.

To write more clearly, it’s not just enough to use a little bit simpler language when possible. It’s also necessary to cut unnecessary words. Let’s take a look at another example. Brain injury incidence shows two peaks: the rates are the highest in the very young and the elderly. Why not get rid of unnecessary words and write this simply as: Brain injury incidence peaks in the very young and the elderly.

Nice, simple, same meaning, but only about half the words. If you are trying to reduce your word count in a paper, this becomes very important. Just say things simply, clearly and make it easier to process. Thank you for listening to the session.

How to write a summary

We summarize all the time in our daily lives. You may summarize something interesting that you read in the news or you may summarize a movie plot line for a friend or a lesson for a classmate, who has been sick and missed the class. And at some point in you academic career you will have to write a summary which is something that a lot of students find difficult. So I thought I would give you some tips on how to write an effective successful summary. All right now.

It’s important to remember that a summary needs to be clear to someone who has not read, seen or heard the original material. Now you have to include all of the essential information that a person would need to understand without reading the original source. So you have to include all of the main points. That’s pretty much what a summary is. It’s important also to remember that you shouldn’t go beyond the main points. It’s important that a summary be as brief as possible. So you don’t want to get too specific with details like numbers, statistics, dates, figures, back anything unless it’s absolutely necessary for the reader to understand them. Remember that a summary needs to be concise, brief. You don’t want to be too descriptive. All right.

So a good summary should follow and maintain good paragraph structure. So you want a topic sentence and supporting sentences and a concluding sentence. It’s important for the topic sentence of a summary to identify itself as a summary. So you should include the title or the author or the speaker of the original material in your topic sentence. And then the supporting sentences are the main points. And it’s important to try to follow the same order that the information is presented in the original material. Again if possible there are times perhaps if you’re summarizing a story where the original story is not in chronological order. And it may make it easier for the reader to understand it if you change the order. But in general you want to keep the same order.

Also in a summary you should be paraphrasing. You should not be using direct quotes from the original material and you should not be coping and pasting sentences right from the original. You should be using your own words. At last it’s important for a good summary to be objective meaning you should not include your opinion in a summary. Remember that you are just reporting information from someone else’s piece of writing or a lecture. So if you follow these tips you’ll be that much more likely to write a successful summary. So if you want practice with summaries follow the link at the end of this video.



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