When you are a student, you will find that your tutors use your writing to gauge how much you have learned and understood about a particular subject and to judge the quality of your thinking. But you should not only see academic writing as an assessment tool. Writing is also indirectly encouraging you to read widely, think critically, improve your communication skills and develop a certain level of competence and professionalism needed for your future career.
In academic writing, it is often assumed that by the time students have finished secondary school education, they already possess the skills to write at a level appropriate to higher education, but this is not always the case. As a result, when students are faced with written assignments of anything upward of 1500 words they may find the whole process daunting.
Academic writing is a social practice. This means that you always write with a readership in mind and you always write with a purpose, for example, to explain or to persuade. It also means that what is right and wrong, appropriate or inappropriate is defined by the users in the social community. In your case, these are other students, lecturers or examiners.
There is nothing natural about the organisation and the way language is used in a scientific report, for example. It is as it is because that is the way it has developed through centuries of use by practitioners. For that reason, it has to be learned. No-one speaks (or writes) academic English as a first language (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1994: 8). It must be learned by observation, study and experiment.
In higher education, you will be required to complete a wide range of writing tasks, some which will be familiar to you, but some which will not. You may, for example, have written essays before, but never completed a reflective log. Whatever the task, remember that writing is a process which leads to a final product. It starts from understanding what you have to do and planning your work. It then goes on to doing the reading and any necessary research. The next stage is writing various drafts. This is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this, taking into account the feedback you may receive, should lead to the final text.
Taken from Successful Academic Writing by Andy Gillett, Angela Hammond & Mary Martala
The entire book can be viewed HERE.
I immensely agree with the arguments stated in the article about the importance of academic writing. From what I experienced in junior and senior high school, I understand that as students, we have to be able to write academically. Students should be able to express their arguments well through their writing as it is one of the ways for teacher to judge us. To me, writing is somehow more comforting compared to speaking. I have always liked writing essays or just my opinion towards an issue. The feeling that comes after I finish my writing is just so relieving. But, it does not necessarily mean that I have good writing skills. Thankfully, I joined a course that taught me how to write academically better than my teacher in my previous school did. Although I already know the basic of academic writing, I still think that I have to learn more about it especially because now I am in higher education.
ReplyDeleteMila wrote: "The feeling that comes after I finish my writing is just so relieving."
Delete"Relieving"? This would suggest that you find writing stressful or unpleasant and finishing a piece gives you a feeling of relief. However, earlier you said "I have always liked writing essays ...". Perhaps "relieving" is not the word you're looking for? What about "satisfying"?
Mila wrote: "Thankfully, I joined a course that taught me how to write academically better than my teacher in my previous school did."
DeleteDo you mean, as a result of attending a course, you were able to write better than your school teacher? Or do you mean that the teacher at the course was better at teaching writing than your school teacher? It's not clear which you mean.
I am sorry if I was being unclear, what I meant was my course teacher was better in teaching writing than my school teacher, Sir.
DeleteWriting is a way to express our perspective towards an idea. It can be descriptive, persuasive or argumentative. As I enter a higher level of education, there are new skills that needed on writing an essay. One of the examples is that we need to read more in order to expand our vocabulary. As it stated in the article, writing also allow us to think critically. In advance level of education, we need to consider the quality of contents that we include in our writing. We may include such data or facts in order to create more precise and accurate writing. Personally, I believe that we can write an excellent essay by continuously practicing, as people would say that “Practice makes perfect”. However, it can be boring and stressful because sometimes we may experience writer’s block but as we keep practicing, we learn to write in structure and it also train our way of thinking.
ReplyDeleteDita wrote: "One of the examples is that we need to read more in order to expand our vocabulary."
DeleteThis is true but remember that, just as important, reading exposes you to how English is used - not just the vocabulary but also how tenses are used, what prepositions are used, how ideas are clearlt expressed, how sentences flow from one to another, and so on.
Writing could be seen as one of the skills that you will definitely need when you are still in your academic education, either in schools or in college. But the way I see it, writing is just one of the skills you need to express your emotions, your feelings, or what you are thinking right now. As to why do I say this statement? Well it’s because the things that, I think, made my writing better than when I first started writing an essay, is because of reading. Although we do have an appropriate lesson about writing an essay in high school, my own teacher said this himself that if you want your writing to be better and to be more interesting than before, you should start reading some books. Let’s say when we read a novel, we have to analyze the story first and then we could enjoy the content of the story. And it’s the same as when we are writing an essay or a paperwork, we have to understand and analyze the main problem that was given to us and then we could start working on it. Even though those activities may be seen as a boring thing to do, we have no choice but to do it if we want to have good grades. But as time passes, you’ll get used to it.
ReplyDeleteI strongly believe that learning academic writing to prepare for higher education is a very important thing. This problem of being not prepared in writing essays in higher education happened from own experience. I went to semi military boarding school where we are not asses to write essays in English. We tend to make presentations in front of classes but we rarely make 500-1000 words essays. This problem causes me to adapt more when writing essays in university level. It was hard at the first times but as time goes by, academic writing is actually not something to learn but something that you need to practice. Eventhough, by maybe joining a course where you will learn more about academic writing will certainly help you more when it comes to writing essays. Not only i believe that by joining a course will help you in academic writing , the one way i strongly agree is that by writing a certain amount of essays, it will help you by seeing your mistakes in grammar and also expanding your vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteIn my very limited experience, I feel like the main point of academic writing is not about writing eloquently with fancy words and adjectives but about expressing your arguments as clearly and concisely as possible. A friend of mine in high school had the idea that being a good academic writer is all about inserting fancy adjectives like "vitriolic" or "pusillanimous" in every sentence, whilst a good essay does not need fancy words to express the writer's ideas as clearly as possible. Instead of using fancy adjectives, a good piece of academic writing utilizes words or phrases that help in contextualizing or illustrating the writer's arguments, such as words that show causation or demonstrate contrast. For example, phrases like “despite this” or “however” highlight reservations and demonstrate contrast, and can help writers in dissecting and criticizing arguments. Meanwhile, fancy adjectives like “vitriolic” or “pervicacious” only serve to emphasize an essay’s ideas but do not help in making them any more clearer than before.
ReplyDeleteWriting is an essential aspect of communication. There is art in arranging different words into sentence that embody a meaning. Academic writing however, is a special case in writing. What differentiates academic writing and other types of writing is that academic writing produces knowledge and targets larger scope of audience. Knowledge derived from academic writing are those found in school textbooks, journals and reports used for students in different parts of the globa to study. Unfortunately, not everyone is privileged enough to pursue higher education where academic writing becomes an obligation. With this being said, Academic Writing becomes a responsibility for academician. Academicians are responsible in producing a relevant knowledge that can benefit the society.
ReplyDeleteBecause it is a responsibility of academicians, then it is important for academic writing to be valid. The notion of validity in academic writing is the reason why academic writing needs to be learned. Learning to produce a good and valid academic writing requires not only practice but also reading, brainstorming, and thinking critically. As a scholar myself, I believe that we hold an important role in the society to produce and share knowledge for the benefit of the society.
Writing skills have always been an importance skills in man kind history, learning to write in an academic way is important and a good training for life in general even outside of the academic and scholar world, as it help to express our idea in a logical and more organize way, to make the reader understand clearly our point of view and the idea we are trying to express, if we cannot express our ideas clearly and in comprehensive way, the reader or listener may not understand or misunderstand it could be the most brilliant idea, if it’s not understood by other, that idea become less relevant in a way. Academic writing skills is essential as human relation are based on communication, and nowadays most our communications are made by written text especially with the new technologies, and smartphones we use more and more e-mail or WhatsApp to communicate our ideas, and it’s important to know how to express them clearly.
ReplyDeleteWriting is one of the most important sector of our education. As a student, we need to be able to write or speak to deliver our thoughts and what we have learned during our education. But sometimes, we can not always just say in expressing our thoughts and lesson, sometimes we have to write it. We have to write, because writing is making records, and making records is needed for us to get our score. So, in conclusion, writing is very important. Then, as a university student, we have to adjust our writing skill to be the same as the level of university students writing skill should be. University student has to be able to identify their writing, give reason and sources for what they write, and be responsible for what they write. Simply, our writing skill has to be upgraded from our previous education and be a better writer. Since writer is something to be shared with others and that our education purpose is to share our education with others, we have to be able to have a proper writing skill.
ReplyDeleteWriting. I think writing is one of the most important, essential thing in the history of human life. Imagine what we would’ve become without any writing, we would become savages. Anyway, I would like to say that writing is really important is our life not only it can give you better writing skills but also it can give you more knowledge just by writing. Now about academic writing or writing in a higher education. Academic writing is quite different with normal writing, in academic writing you have to consider many things before you write. For example, citation, language, spelling, etc. One of the most important thing watch out in academic writing is plagiarism. This is a thing that is really emphasized especially in UGM. Plagiarism is a really bad thing, for me it is the same as stealing because you took someone else’s work or word or maybe other things that isn’t yours. So I suggest to all of you who read my comments to start writing so we can improve our knowledge. - Dimas Aditya Permana
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ReplyDeleteFrom my own personal views, I see academic writing is not just a way teacher or lecturers assess our comprehension about a certain topic. To me, writing tells so many things about the person. Academically, as we all know, writing is used to assess people's understanding about something that is being learned. In Psychology, writing assesses people's feelings moreover, it provides certain psychological parameter. The list goes so on and so forth, but one thing that not many people notice is that writing tells so much about people's background. I strongly noticed this at some point during the EWS class where Mr. Adrian was showing us other students passages, I forgot what the exact passage was, but what I remembered for sure was that the author wrote a sentence that was distinctively influenced by Bahasa Indonesia. It was something about the structure of the sentence and their choice of words. Another example would be the way people write: their choice of words, word structure, format, etc. Those indicators show professionalism that I concluded also as a form of assessment to tell if a person is educated or not. From there on, I realized that writing isn't just a media to assess people's knowledge or feelings, it could also tell more about the author.
Academic writing is different from regular writing. To make an Academic Writing, we need to have a certain level of experience in writing. As a college student especially IUP students, we are required to reach that certain level or at least get to that level. We should be able to write in an organized way, and should be responsible to what we write. We are going to compete with international students worldwide, thus we should improve our academic writing skills. There is no theory to study writing. But writing needs practice. You could improve your writing skills with adding experience in regular writing. Therefore, you are used to write in an organize way. Reading is also a method to improve your writing skills. Besides giving more knowledge, reading adds more vocabulary, and you can see how academic writing looks like. I agree that every student should improve their skills in academic writing. Because there are also things that should be written, not just spoken.
ReplyDeleteWriting in general is a big part in our life as a human. It can be used for many things: recording information, sharing our opinion, sharing news, etc. as a student, writing become a big part in our academic life, with writing we taking notes of important information from our lecturer. But we as college students should have a certain skill in academic writing since we will have to write many things for our studies and works. Writing also being use as a measurement how much a student understands about a lecture. But not all students have the same writing skills since not all of us have the same amount of experience in writing. This situation making many students have to learn how to write an academic writing. There is a method that we can do to improve our writing skill: reading. Just like the article said we can learn by observing academic writing available, whether it’s a journal or just a text book.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, academic writing is really crucial when it comes to pushing our capabilities in expressing ideas some inexperienced writers might find it hard to do, may those ideas be something that you agree with or not. Academic writing, if practiced diligently, could make us become keener in picking up relevant points to include in our writings and excluding those that were irrelevant. Therefore, academic writing makes us articulate, as it hones our skills in being fluent and staying relevant in explaining things, not branching out to unrelated points that no one asks of you. Also, just like what the other users above me have mentioned, reading also plays a contributing role in our writing skills’ development, be it academic or other types of writings that we feel most comfortable making. Reading is the activity where we can gather materials which will enrich the contents to whatever writings that we want to create. Not only that books could be suitable hunting grounds for ideas and useful knowledge, reading also improves our academic writings by making us more accustomed to how authors apply different tenses in their writings, which vocabularies they use to have the utmost impact on their readers, which prepositions they feel are best suited to be placed in between phrases, and etc. To finish it up, academic writing, despite its high standards, is really important in shaping us how to be more effective in transferring ideas to other people as well as making us more efficient in a sense that we are forced to be selective in the points that we want to express as to not waste the time of our readers. Also, reading helps you improve the quality of your academic writing.
ReplyDeleteIn actuality, I really like academic writing because it makes me feel like I am deducing or analyzing some passages or cases that are quite unfamiliar for other people to do because I’ve been proper academic writing in English since I was in grade 9. I have written various essays such as sociological essays, business case analysis and formal letters. These essays actually trained my brain to think and analyze so that it doesn’t become rusty from spending a lot of ‘me’ time or playing with my friends at other times. I feel like what got me through UGM’s MUN community and UGM IUP itself is that I was trained very well in academic writing by my previous school. I am very well aware that I still have a lot to learn for other types of academic writing so with the opportunity of having been accepted to the best university in Indonesia, I will train more to be better at academic writing.
ReplyDeleteSince I was in high school, I joined a club called creative writing. In this club we practice to write a fiction story that we want. In addition the purpose of establishing this club is to improve students' writing skills. During this club, my perspective on writing changes 180 degrees. I assume that writing is very important, because by writing we can express the ideas that we have or what we want to convey into writing so that it is easier to express. In addition, by writing we can show that we have something that can only be expressed in a written work. In addition, writing skills must also be equivalent to the ability to speak in public, because these two things are related to soft skills. Softskills are very important because they are useful to help develop our Hardskills. Hardskills and soft skills must be owned by a student to help individual development and improve the quality of human resources in this country.
ReplyDeleteAcademic writing is actually one of the most important aspect that you will be assessed in most of the activity you do at college. These skills are as or even more crucial after you graduates : whether you are applying for volunteering program, scholarship to higher education, applying for a job, and so on. It is said that you should already learned academic writing post graduating from highschool. But, I agree with the article above which stated that this is not always the case. Highschool in Indonesia really varies in the quality of learning they give to their students. So, often times students from some highschool are not able to understand subjects as well as others from a different schools. Thus, I see college as an opportunity for use to further enhance our academic writing skills. Not only that the essay you do at college requires you to have a higher skills in writing, you can also learn a lot from either your college professor or your friends which comes from different background.
ReplyDeleteWriting is a mandatory skill for a student. Every student that studies in elementary, high school, university, or even the master’s student, should have the ability to write in a good way. The way students write also should be upgraded since we enter a higher stage of education. The way we upgraded our way of writing, show ourselves and others that we are capable to enter the higher stage of education. Upgrade our way of writing means that, for example, in the university time, we should be able to write with enough sources and evidence, and that all of our writing should be accounted for. Writing is very important because we can test and deliver our knowledge through something we write. If we can think well, but not be able to write, it will not be a good combination and will not bring any good score. Therefore, as a student training our writing skill over and over is a very important thing.
ReplyDeleteAs a college student, i agree that it is very important for us to know how to write especially how to write academically. Having a good academic writing skills is needed for our life. We have to be a able to express everything clearly by writing. There are a lot of things that we could express by writing such as our emotions, opinions, feelings, and ideas. It is important for a college student to write things clearly because if we can't write things clearly then it would be hard for us to express our feelings and it would hard for the reader to understand our ideas. Academic writing is different from regular writing, that's why we need to improve our academic writing. We could improve our academic writing by writing an essay. I believe that it is pretty hard to write a good essay, but if we practice a lot it could help us to improve our academic writing. In the end, academic writing skills is an important aspect for our life in the future.
ReplyDeleteAs a student, it is mandatory for us to be able to write. As we grow our stage further for our education, it is also a mandatory for us to grow and upgrade our skill to write better. Perhaps when we are still in elementary school or even pre school, we were teached to write our name, our hobbies, our family, and everything basics. In junior high and Senior high, we were probably teached about how to write a summary of a book, write a review, and even begin to make some scientific work. Basically, it is always an upgrade of everything we do and everything we write. Now, as a university student, it is a mandatory for us to be able to write in a scientific and mature way, so that, we can reflect ourself as a university student, not a high school student or even elementary student. Scientific and mature way means, we can write everything with evidence and a good structure so that people can gain something from our writing.
ReplyDeleteAcademic writing is very crucial that it become one of the requirements needed in an academic matter. As time goes by, our skills in academic writing must be improved or developed, because of our routine of writing in academic language for our assignments given by our teachers. In my experience, when in elementary, I find it challenging to write a paragraph or short essay. Now, It is a regular thing to write full page essays. This means that practices ease us to write more challenging essays, and therefore I believe that to have progressions, we have to practice on our writing. It is true that writing forces us to read more and think critically. To write a long essay, we should know what to write on the paper. Therefore, we should find ideas from sources which required us to read more. Aside from the ideas, we could find new vocabularies from reading, which is useful in advance for our academic writing skills. Furthermore, we have to think critically to have higher quality for our essays, to develop more ideas for essays.
ReplyDeleteI believe that academic writing is a skill we must have given our current education level. Because, the ability itself serves as a prove that we can convey our thoughts and ideas to other people. People think that academic writing must involve the usage of extravagant, unusual terms. this discourages a lot of people thinking that they don’t really have many terms at their disposal, thus feeling that their skill is minimal at best. From my experience, although only a few, academic writing don’t really need extravagant words and clauses. Sure sometimes adding those makes your writing seems professional, but by no means it is a necessity. Academic writing is all about presenting and protecting your argument in a formal way that makes sense. So, don’t be intimidated. As long as your writing presents a sound argument, what you want to convey will surely reach the other party.
ReplyDeleteThis article made me realize that I still have to improve my writing skill to be able to succeed in college. I personally find that writing is quite a difficult task. In high school, we were taught about how to answer question and most of them were multiple option question which is the standard of national exam. In multiple option question we only need to pick one of the options available. Because of that, we didn’t learn how to write that much before. Although, some school started to try to teach the student how to write more rather than just picking answers. In academic writing we are not just writing to answer but we write with purpose, that’s why to be able to do it we have to read a lot, and capable of thinking critically. Writing is one way to communicate so we have to learn how to communicate properly. All of these need a lot of practices. Without a lot of practices, we couldn’t improve our writing skill.
ReplyDeleteWriting is a substantial aspect in higher education. Writing in higher education is a way to communicate knowledge and understanding across the layers of society. Since not all of us are privileged enough to study in higher education, those who are studying in higher education is responsible in sharing and educating the others. Writing in higher education however can be very tricky. There are a lot of aspects that needs to be taken into account when writing. Ethical aspect for instance, in the scope of academics, the notion of validity is very strong. If we were to share our knowledge to the society, we need to make sure that the knowledge is beneficial and valid. With this being said, writing should really be learned and practiced. Some of the ways to learn academic writing include learning language, read a lot of books, have discussion with people, reading the news and many more.
ReplyDeleteThis is my first time i visit here and I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially it's discussion, thank you. https://thetimespost.com/
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