In academic writing I am able to avoid ugly English words and complex phrases, demonstrated by my proper use of vocabulary words and simple phrases feedback from writing websites. “The language both confuses the reader, and lacks power and energy” (Grellier & Goerke, 2014, p.169).
Despite having satisfactory oral and written language skills, I am keeping my language too simple and not directed at the subject topic. I add unnecessary redundant words and phrases to my writing that add nothing to the overall meaning (Dictionary, 2015). Finally, both the KISS principle and After the Deadline website identified undetermined differences between active and passive voices in complex sentences. This may branch from a poor technical understanding
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I tend to use informal language within my writing, not at a formal level. I use colloquial vocabulary words and phrases such as ‘dodgy’ or ‘go hand in hand’. Lastly, I need to improve my use of informative adjectives. Words like bad, difficult, and physically are common in my writing.
An element that I do well is write simple sentences. I write simple sentences containing a single subject and verb. The subject can be a noun - person or place, the verb is an action or doing word. Grammar is a weakness for me when writing academically. This is evident as my assessment academic writing marks are never perfect. Grammar improvement is needed to aid the communication of my ideas and understandings of topics.
I am familiar with and can use the majority of the punctuation principles: apostrophes, colons, exclamation marks, questions marks, full-stops, and commas.
My punctuation is sound, however using semicolons (;) and dashes (-) are complicated for me. It is complicated for me to determine when to correctly use them within sentence structure. I am unfamiliar with what dashes do in academic writing, so I will research websites and read page.195 of the ‘Communications Toolkit’
In this article written by David Bartholomae, the author discusses problems basic writers make and about how they must use the discourse (communication style) of the academic community they are writing to, to be an effective writer. Bartholomae believes that “Inventing the University," is being able to assemble and mimic the universities language(5). Which means, if a student wants to be an efficient writer, he or she must be able to speak the language of his or her audience. Bartholomae writes that a common mistake of basic writers is that they don’t use an authoritative voice, and tend to switch into a more passive voice. This could be due to the fact that students have difficulty establishing their mindset or attitude for an audience
Frahm holds a similar point of view encouraging clear, straightforward writing not one with a “Confusing introduction. Lack of content. Bad transitions. (and) Excessive grammatical errors.” (Frahm 271).
Thomas, C. (2011). Is the American Dream Over? They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (2nd ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.
I realize that I have a weakness on written skill, which is accuracy. The errors on grammar or punctuation happen in my writing occasionally, which is not acceptable in business communication. So, I will pay more attention on the improvement of my written
It would be foolish to claim that I have never overanalysed and disregarded conveying ideas and theories properly, in the interest of impressing my reader. Nevertheless, this aspiration indicates there is more to academic writing than simply passing information.
When constructing a piece of writing, a student may sometimes find herself struggling to remember grammar rules or style principles. A handy reference guide would help her out immensely. William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s book, The Elements of Style, and Joseph Williams’ book, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, assist writers improve their work in various ways. Strunk and Whites’ book took a simple approach, while Williams went more in-depth, with elaborate explanations and varying choices for each writing style.
Grabe, W. & Kaplan, R.B. (1996) Theory and practice of writing Addison Wesley Longman Limited, Harlow, Essex, England. Martlew, M. (1983) The Psychology of Written Language, Developmental and Educational Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, U.K. Protherough, R. (1983)
What is writing style? I started out thinking that writing style is a personal thing and that all writers have their own style. But, this way of thinking is really just a simple way to answer the question. After more careful thought, I realized that style is actually quite the opposite of personal and original. Style is a form of standardization. As writers, we all follow certain rules and guidelines to make our point. Style is these rules and guidelines.
Complex sentences are more likely to be prevalent in formal writing. They provide a lot of detail. However, too many long sentences would easily lose the reader’s interest and would not engage them whereas short sentences are more punchy and quick, however they are not very detailed. T...
During my high school and part of my college experience, I feel as though I have received a modest amount of writing instruction. Particularly during high school, my writing instruction felt more class and goal oriented rather than personal and direct. Because of this, I uniformly feel that my grammar and understanding of writing as a subject lacks the basic fundamentals. Since my writing journey in college as began, I have learned more about sentence structure and clarity through reading more academic articles and, also, through reading edited work. What has assisted my transition from high school to college writing has been reading over and revising my own writings after it has been peer edited.
When I was I was growing up, I think the first words that I read were “I”, “we”, “the”, “and”, “but” and also started writing these words, too. However, when I improved in my reading and writing, I started to learn more words such as “when”, “where”, “who”, “what”, “when”, and “how”. Over the period of times, I progress in my reading and writing skills not enough that it was proficiency but enough that I was able to understand that I was able to read and write. I was above other students when it came to reading but when it came to my writing skills; I was a little below than an average student. I needed more help than other students; I took EIP from elementary school all the way up until the end of high school.
It is not easy to decide whether academic writers have to learn the English writing style or it might be better to choose another writing style. If academic writers could find a global structure for the whole world, so academic writers will learn it and use it for writing an essay or a scientific paper. According to Linn(2009), non-native speakers how grown in a different language and culture have a different writing standards which leads to a certain way of thinking, understanding and writing as a result of that. Linn(2009) claimed that teachers have show non-native speakers that the way of a successful academic writing is not only by learning grammar and vocabulary, but also by learning a new writing methods and a new way of thinking. At the end Linn is suggesting to have a suitable group of subjects because Sondek’s study(2008) is small.
A mentally disabled but diligent female high school student attends a tutoring session at the learning center to work on a classroom writing assignment. Despite encouragement and prompts from the tutor, the student is unable to write. She states that she hates writing and declares that she will take a zero for the grade rather than complete the assignment.
However, their purposes for writing are sometimes not the kind valued by Western academic communities. The nature of academic literacy often confuses and disorients students, “particularly those who bring with them a set of conventions that are at odds with those of the academic world they are entering” (Kutz, Groden & Zamel, 1993, p. 30). In addition, the culture-specific nature of schemata–abstract mental structures representing our knowledge of things, events, and situations–can lead to difficulties when students write texts in L2. Knowing how to write a “summary” or “analysis” in Mandarin or Spanish does not necessarily mean that students will be able to do these things in English (Kern, 2000). As a result, any appropriate instruction must take into consideration the influence from various educational, social, and cultural experiences that students have in their native language. These include textual issues, such as rhetorical and cultural preferences for organizing information and structuring arguments, commonly referred to as contrastive rhetoric (Cai, 1999; Connor, 1997; Kaplan, 1987; Kobayashi & Rinnert, 1996; Leki, 1993; 1997; Matalene, 1985), knowledge of appropriate genres (Johns, 1995; Swales, 1990), familiarity with writing topics (Shen, 1989), and distinct cultural and instructional socialization (Coleman, 1996; Holliday, 1997; Valdes, 1995). In addition to instructional and cultural
During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really understood the significance of MAP. For this reason, my writing lacked clarity, organization, and my writings appeared less focused on the topics. As a result my research papers and essays did not flow as smoothly from one passage to the next. Furthermore, I was unaccustomed with the precise procedures used when writing an essay. For instance, my previous classes before college, although requiring a reference page, did not require me to include proper citations in my writings. After evaluating the quality of my writing toward the end of the semester, I recognized vast improvements in several areas of my writing. By concentrating on the beginning stages of my writings, I could distinguish ahead of time my audience and my message. As a result, my essays are clear, and I remain on topic. In addition to that using transition phrases efficiently also helps my writing to flow smoothly. The proper use of transitions makes my writings easy to follow from one topic to the next. I also learned that pre-writing...