Essential Features of Effective Academic Writing

Understanding the Core Characteristics of Academic Writing

Academic writing in English is linear, clear, simple, and direct. It has a clear audience and a clear purpose, and it is also clearly structured. Academic English must be learned through observation, study, and experiment, because no one speaks or writes it as a first language.

There are five main features of academic writing:

1. Complexity

Written language is generally more complex than spoken language. It uses more subordinate clauses, more "that/to" complements, longer sequences of prepositional phrases, more attributive adjectives, and more passive voice constructions than spoken language.

While written texts can be more concise, they often employ longer words or phrases.

Examples of complexity include:

• "That clauses": It follows that the labor government…
• "Of + -ing clauses": The possibility of increasing…
• Passive verbs: The new computer system is being installed next month.

Another example is nominalization, where formal written English uses nouns more than verbs (i.e., judgment instead of judge, development rather than develop, admiration rather than admire). In nominalization, we also use noun-based phrases, such as: "Like all other forms of life, we human beings are the product of evolution." It is also common to use attributive adjectives, for instance: "The use of this method of control unquestionably leads to safer and faster running."

2. Formality

Academic writing is formal, so you should avoid:

1. Colloquial words and expressions (e.g., stuff, a lot of, thing).
2. Abbreviated forms (e.g., can't, shouldn't).
3. Two-word verbs (e.g., put off, bring up).
4. Subheadings, numbers, and bullet points in formal essays.
5. Asking questions.

3. Objectivity

Avoid expressions that show personal involvement. There is a tendency to use impersonal constructions. Written language is objective rather than personal. For example, avoid words like "I" or "me"; instead of "In my opinion, this is so interesting," use "This is so interesting."

4. Explicitness

Academic writing is explicit about the relationships within the text. It is the responsibility of the author to make clear to the reader how the different parts of the text are related, using signaling words. These include:

• Time: at first, eventually
• Comparison: in the same way
• Contrast: but, despite, whereas
• Cause/Effect: in consequence
• Examples: for example/instance
• Generalization: as a rule, in general
• Stating the obvious: after all, clearly

5. Hedging

An important feature of academic writing is the concept of cautious language, usually called hedging. Language used in hedging includes:

1. Introductory verbs: seem, tend, look like
2. Certain lexical verbs: believe, suggest
3. Modal verbs: will, must, would
4. Adverbs of frequency: often, usually
5. Modal adjectives: certain, probable, possible
6. Modal nouns: possibility, probability
7. "That" clauses: it could be, it might be
8. "To"-clause + adjective: it might be possible to obtain