How To Improve Academic Writing Skills?

Writing is an important task for the academic community. From schools to colleges to doctoral programmes, there are many chances for us to explore the art of writing our thoughts into a page. In schools, we are trained to sharpen our vocabulary and to understand which word must be used in what context.

Writing becomes much more important when it comes to appearing for entrance examinations, undergraduate degree exams and post-doctoral thesis. At these stages, a person is expected to know how to form complex sentences, and at the same time convey their thoughts clearly to the readers. This way of writing is called Academic Writing.

It is very different from a personal or informal way of writing. You may be really good at writing stories, but to impress academicians, one has to follow certain rules. The formal way of writing an academic piece, which can be an essay, a thesis, a paper presentation requires the writer to look into various aspects.

Why is Academic Writing Important?

Academic Writing is largely used to communicate your thoughts. For the reader, in an academic environment that is one way to understand what you have in your head. That is one of the very important reasons on why one needs to learn and improve their academic writing skills.

A good piece of academic writing clears the path for the reader. A not so good one makes it very difficult for them to even start comprehending the ideas and thoughts. It also helps in developing a good intellectual physique.

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Academic writing involves a lot of research, thus it helps you in attaining a lot of knowledge. It helps you to branch out your existing wisdom and explore. This sort of a setting develops a certain skill to experiment and find new things, while informing the people around you, of a specific academic community about it.

You might have already started thinking about how tough it all sounds. Well, it is not. You as a writer just need to keep some points in your head while you are writing for academic purposes.

Understand Your Topic and Audience

The first thing you need to do break your topic down to a very understandable collection of words. This title must be easily grasped. You will have to understand what the topic will be. There will be many ways how you can frame the title for the topic.

The audience who will be receiving your writing must also be kept in mind. If you are writing an academic writing it will be for a purpose. Research requires consensus. If you are trying to publish a paper, the people who read the paper must all understand and agree with your views. Thus what and who the audience are, plays a very important role.

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Be to the Point

You need to remember that you aren't speaking. You are writing an argument. Thus, you must make sure clarity is very much part of your writing. It will be difficult to write for you but must be easy for the reader to read.

• Rewrite your piece.
• Avoid sentences that are open-ended.
• Construct meaningful sentences and paragraphs.
• Don't write how you would speak.
• Use precise words in the right context.

Keep Your Topic Relevant

While writing an academic piece do not move away from your main topic. It should be present from the very start of the piece, which is the introduction to conclusion. The reader must never get confused to what your piece actually is about.

Keep the main topic in the center and weave around the topic. Even if you move a bit away, come back to as in what you wrote about connects with the topic.

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Follow A Proper Structure

An academic piece of writing requires you follow a specific structure. This makes the reading process much easier for the reader and simplifies what you want to convey. The structure that is usually used is the beginning, middle and the end.

This format is the most used, but the writer can use any another format. Any piece will require an introduction, content, and conclusion.

Mind Your Tone

• The tone that you use for an academic writing will be very different from that of informal writing. You have to take care of the words and the phrases that you use in the pieces.
• Keep the sentences objective
• Make sure you keep the piece concise and precise.
• Make sure you avoid the use of contractions, slangs and exclamation marks.

Use References

One important aspect of academic writing, which is very different from usual, informal writing is the uses of references. References help in supporting the opinions and claims that writer puts forward. By referencing back to other documents and academic pieces that have been accepted by the community, the writer can establish his or her paper as legitimate.

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