Successful Academic Writing guides students through the whole process of academic writing, developing their ability to communicate ideas and research fluently and successfully.
From understanding the task and planning essays or assignments, right through to utilising feedback, it will ensure students are able to get much more out of the writing process.
You can also read: English Verbs
How this book is organized
In this book, we are addressing various aspects of writing in higher education and trying to answer two main questions:
- What kinds of texts are expected of students in higher education and what sort of language is used in them?
- How should students go about preparing for, researching and writing these texts?
We know the process of academic writing is complicated and not necessarily straightforward. You may be very good at planning but you may have trouble writing in the correct style, for example. For this reason, we do not necessarily expect you to work through the book chapter by chapter.
To help you decide on which aspects you need, we have included both a section with questions that you may like answered, and a flow chart (see p. xxiv) to guide you through the various chapters of the book. This approach will allow you to dip in and out of the book as and when you need help.
Our approach in this book is to show you examples of the kind of writing we want you to do and help you to notice the relevant features of it. We then give you activities to try and offer you some feedback. Some activities will help you to notice the kind of language or skill we hope you will develop.
Other activities will ask you to write something. It is very difficult for us to give you useful feedback in these freer writing situations. We hope, though, that by giving a suggested solution to the activity, you will:
- look at what we have offered
- compare it to what you have written
- notice something that we have done but you have not done yourself, and
- possibly use it next time you write.
