The document provides advice on academic writing. It discusses the key characteristics of academic writing, including being formal, unbiased, clear, precise, well-structured, and well-sourced. It contrasts academic writing styles with high school writing. The document also outlines the steps for effective reading, research, planning, organizing, using sources, and creating bibliographies for academic writing. This includes techniques like previewing, skimming, scanning, summarizing, using topic sentences and outlines to structure paragraphs and essays, properly citing sources to avoid plagiarism, and formatting bibliographies.

1. Advice on academic writing
Lengua y expresión escrita
ISFD n°41
24/5/2020
Teacher:
Stella Maris Saubidet
Student:
Marina Ines Carretero

2. I
n
d
e
x
1- General
2- Reading and researching
3- Planning and organizing
4- Using sources
5- Bibliography

3. General
Information

4. What is academic writing?
Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. You’ll
encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics, and you’ll be expected to write your essays,
research papers, and dissertation in academic style. It follows the same writing process as other types of
texts, but it has specific conventions in terms of content, structure and style.
Academic writing is: Academic writing is not:
● Formal and unbiased
● Clear and precise
● Focused and well-structured
● Well-sourced
● Correct and consistent
● Personal
● Long-winded
● Emotive and grandiose

5. The Transition from High School to University Writing
High school University
Essays have a five-paragraph structure: an introduction,
your three main points, and a conclusion.
Essays have as many paragraphs as needed.
Essays must include a thesis statement. Not every essay needs a thesis statement.
The introduction should begin with a broad and general
statement and eventually be narrowed down.
The conclusion should provide a summary of the main
points of the paper.
The introduction should raise the essay topic or question as
soon as possible in specific and concrete terms.
The conclusion should do more than merely summarize
what you have already done in the paper.
Your essay should not acknowledge opposing viewpoints
because they will weaken your argument.
An essay that addresses counter-arguments becomes
stronger and more persuasive by acknowledging the
complexity of the material.
Students may receive credit for visual effects. Professors are concerned with your ideas and your writing
and expect you to submit your essays in a plain format with
no fancy fonts, colours, title pages, and binders.

6. Reading and
researching

7. Preliminary steps
for writing an
academic piece of
writing
1- Previewing
2- Skimming and scanning
3- Summarizing

8. Previewing
When reading for academic purposes, it is preferable to read with certain goals in mind. This will enable you to place
your focus on the proper elements of the reading and to avoid wasting time on elements which aren’t important for
your purposes.
1- Read the title. Titles are chosen to orient the reader and should give a sense of the central concepts in the text.
2- Titles are chosen to orient the reader and should give a sense of the central concepts in the text.
3- Who wrote this text?
4- Where was this text originally published? What type of publication is this, and where does it fit into this field of
study?
5- When was this text originally published? What is the significance of this time period in this field of study?
6- Read the chapter titles or the headings that break up the chapter or article. What seems to be the general
progression of ideas here?
7- Why has your professor assigned this text? Where does it fit into the course as a whole? What kinds of facts and
ideas are you expected to retain from this reading?

9. Skimming Scanning
By first skimming a text, you can get a sense of its overall logical
progression. Skimming can also help you make decisions about where
to place your greatest focus when you have limited time for your
reading.
1- Prior to skimming, use some of the previewing techniques.
2- read carefully the introductory paragraph, or perhaps the first two
paragraphs and try to predict the direction of the coming explanations
or arguments.
3- Read carefully the first one or two sentences of each paragraph, as
well as the concluding sentence or sentences.
4- In between these opening and closing sentences, keep your eyes
moving and try to avoid looking up unfamiliar words or terminology.
5- Read carefully the concluding paragraph or paragraphs.
6- Finally, return to the beginning and read through the text carefull and
adjust yor focus.
Scanning is essential in the writing of research papers, when you
may need to look through many articles and books in order to find
the material you need. Keep a specific set of goals in mind as you
scan the text, and avoid becoming distracted by other material. You
can note what you’d like to return to later when you do have time to
read further, and use scanning to move ahead in your research
project.

10. Summarizing
Summarizing a text, or distilling its essential concepts into a paragraph or two, is a useful study tool as well as good writing practice. A
summary has two aims:
1- To reproduce the overarching ideas in a text, identifying the general concepts that run through the entire piece.
2- To express these overarching ideas using precise, specific language.
Here are some methods for summarizing:
1- Include the title and identify the author in your first sentence.
2- The first sentence or two of your summary should contain the author’s thesis, or central concept, stated in your own words.
3- When summarizing a longer article, try to see how the various stages in the explanation or argument are built up in groups of related
paragraphs.
4- Omit ideas that are not really central to the text. Don’t feel that you must reproduce the author’s exact progression of thought.
5- In general, omit minor details and specific examples.
6- Avoid writing opinions or personal responses in your summaries
7- If you do use even a few of the author’s words, they must appear in quotation marks

11. Planning and
organizing

12. Steps for planning
and organizing a
piece of academic
writing
1- Paragraphs
2- Organizing an essay
3- Revising and editing

13. Paragraphs
A paragraph is a series of related sentences developing a central idea, called the topic. Try to think about
paragraphs in terms of thematic unity: a paragraph is a sentence or a group of sentences that supports one
central, unified idea. Paragraphs add one idea at a time to your broader argument.
Probably the most effective way to achieve paragraph unity is to express the central idea of the paragraph
in a topic sentence:
Topic sentences are similar to mini thesis statements. Like a thesis statement, a topic sentence has a
specific main point. Whereas the thesis is the main point of the essay, the topic sentence is the main point
of the paragraph.

14. Organizing an Essay
The best time to think about how to organize your paper is during the pre-writing stage, not the writing or revising stage.
A well-thought-out plan can save you from having to do a lot of reorganizing when the first draft is completed. Moreover,
it allows you to pay more attention to sentence-level issues when you sit down to write your paper.
The earlier you begin planning, the better. It is usually a mistake to do all of your research and note-taking before
beginning to draw up an outline. Of course, you will have to do some reading and weighing of evidence before you start to
plan. But as a potential argument begins to take shape in your mind, you may start to formalize your thoughts in the form
of a tentative plan.
You should take into consideration the two main parts of your essay:
- Introduction
- Conclusion
Introductions and conclusions play a special role in the academic essay, and they frequently demand much of your
attention as a writer.

15. Introduction
A good introduction should identify your topic, provide
essential context, and indicate your particular focus in
the essay. It also needs to engage your
readers’ interest.
Conclusion
A strong conclusion will provide
a a sense of closure to the essay while again
placing your concepts in a somewhat wider context. It will also, in
some instances, add a stimulus to further thought.

16. Revising and editing
Revising gives you the chance to preview your work on behalf of the eventual reader. Revision is much more than proofreading,
though in the final editing stage it involves some checking of details.
Here are some steps to follow in order to revise your texts:
1- First check whether you have fulfilled the intention of the assignment. Look again at the instruction sheet, and revise your work to
be sure you can say yes to these questions:
Have you performed the kind of thinking the assignment sheet asked for?
Have you used concepts and methods of reasoning discussed in the course?
Have you given adequate evidence for your argument or interpretation?
2- Then look at overall organization. Then consider these questions, and revise to get the answers you want:
Does your introduction make clear where the rest of the paper is headed?
Is each section in the right place to fulfil your purpose?
Have you drawn connections between the sections?
Would a person reading your conclusion know what question you had asked and how you had arrived at your answer?
3- Now polish and edit your style by moving to smaller matters such as word choice, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and
spelling.
Read passages aloud to see if you have achieved the emphasis you want.
Be sure to use spell check.
Don’t depend on a thesaurus. Use a print dictionary and look up synonyms given as part of definitions. Always look at the samples of
usage too.
Don’t depend on a grammar checker.

17. Using
sources

18. Index 1- How not to plagiarize
2- Using quotations

19. How not to plagiarize
The point of documenting sources in academic papers is to demonstrate that you know what is
going on in your field of study. It’s also a courtesy to your readers because it helps them consult
the material you’ve found. That’s especially important for Internet sources. So mentioning what
others have said doesn’t lessen the credit you get for your own thinking.

20. Quotations
When you introduce a quotation with a full sentence, you should always place a colon at the end of the introductory
sentence. When you introduce a quotation with an incomplete sentence, you usually place a comma after the introductory
phrase. However, it has become grammatically acceptable to use a colon rather than a comma:
Arendt writes: “we must turn to Roman antiquity to find the first justification of war . . .”
If you are blending the quotation into your own sentence using the conjuction that, do not use any punctuation at all:
Arendt writes that “we must turn to Roman antiquity to find the first justification of war . . .”
If you are not sure whether to punctuate your introduction to a quotation, mentally remove the quotation marks, and ask
yourself whether any punctuation is still required.

21. Bibliography
The information to
create this slide show
was extracted from
Toronto University’s
webpage.
To get further
information go to:
http://www.writing.utoron
to.ca/