academic writing help

academic writing help

Academic Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction

The aim of conducting a background study is to give the reader an understanding of how this research is important to the current issue being investigated and provides evidence that the issue is worthy of addressing. A good background study is crucial in that it is the foundation on which the complete thesis will be built; if the foundation is constructed poorly, then the thesis can crumble.

One of the preliminary steps to completing a thesis is the background study for it. The background study for a thesis includes a review of the area being researched, current information surrounding the issue, previous studies on the issue, and relevant history on the issue. This paper will focus on the preparation and evaluation of the background study for a thesis and will provide some guidelines to follow when conducting the background study.

The intent of this essay is to give you some of the tools which can help you to write a good research paper. I will try to give an overview of what should go into a good paper, but the best way to learn these things is by reading papers in your area. This is an excellent time to start increasing your collection of relevant papers because browsing a good paper can be very instructive. As you read each paper, you should summarize it to yourself; this can be an invaluable timesaver when you are trying to remember and understand the key points in a paper. Note that every paper you read should be reading for understanding; if you find yourself skimming a paper or reading only the abstract, there’s something important that you’re not getting.

The academic environment can place a great deal of stress on students. When trying to balance work, play, and family obligations, it is easy for one to become too pressed for time to properly research a given topic. There are a number of reasons one might choose to write a paper or essay on any given topic in the academic environment, but a paper that is written with the intention of being published in an academic journal shares many of the same characteristics as an essay.

2. Understanding the Basics of Academic Writing

Many beginning writers tend to confuse talking about their data and the process of interpretation. The latter is often the most interesting and influential part of a statistical analysis, but it usually requires a lot of background explanation and handholding for your readers to understand it. As a result, you often digress into what you were thinking about when you started to write the results, or you thump the table for large sections of text and say in various ways, “The process of interpretation is very important.” It generally is easier to convince people of an importance that you ascribe to something by simply showing them that thing and why you think it is important. And speaking about the data itself, which includes stating and testing your hypotheses, you often assume that people have understood you better than they have. Get a mental image of the data or the result you are speaking about and take care to reconstruct it in the mind of the reader with specific direction. People will rate your work as easy to understand if you can get them to understand it.

Academic writing is no more complicated than a conversation between friends, whether you are speaking to friends in person or on a blog. It just needs to be more formal. It involves your communicating in a way that effectively gets your point across to your readers. At its core, you are trying to communicate what you think and feel and how or why you think and feel the way you do. To do that, though, you must also convey the information or data that underpins what you are trying to say. Such communication often is unpleasant and tedious, but it is an important skill, now more than ever. With the current emphasis on the value of communication in the workplace, many of your future employers are likely to ask you to write reports, memos, or press releases that allow you no opportunity to show your skills. Further, many of your peers are unlikely to improve their writing skills in college, so the ability to write well can be a competitive advantage.

3. Mastering the Art of Research

It is not so much that research “is” or “is not” scientific. The question has no definite answer. There are many different kinds of research, and these differences are reflected in the various ways research is described and justified. The authors of the present volume describe their qualitative research with the term qualitative research covers a wide range of research. An adjective, inductive, naturalistic view of the way people interpret experiences and make underpinning which offers an interesting contrast. All research (and writing) will be guided by some theoretical view which a body of knowledge (in our case it is what we are calling “academic knowledge”) is organized and used to explain in the way we have tried to describe or prescribe some action. The difference between qualitative and so-called positivist (deductive, hypothesis testing, seeking universal laws) research lies not in a simplistic contrast between holistic parts, nor in terms of subject matters (e.g. social v natural, ill v healthy people). Rather it reflects fundamental assumptions about the nature of the reality about which research is conducted, and what constitutes legitimate evidence to support claims that such reality has been understood or changed. Although these matters are dealt with more completely elsewhere, they need to be introduced here because the different research paradigms have important implications for how research questions are formulated and what determines or limits the suitability of particular methods of inquiry. All of which has important implications for the logic of what you do when planning a particular piece of research. For these reasons, a research proposal is a mandatory starting point for research which is guided by our kind of inductive theory building.

4. Crafting a Strong Academic Paper

To those who are not familiar with the strange methods of academia, the fact that the essay is so highly regarded may seem a bit absurd. It is helpful to think of the essay as an onion. Just as the unassuming bulb grows its many layered and bewitching future, the essay begins with a foundation of objectives to transform into a complex array of ideas, observations, and conclusions which add more depth to the original objectives. At the heart of an essay assignment lies a desire for the student to apply concepts and ideas which have been learned in class to a topic or offering of his choice. In this setting an essay can compare and contrast, provide a Why? analysis, or simply expound upon an element of the curriculum. A research paper is similar, only more complex, and the requirements for such a paper reach a different level of intensity. Given the importance of the research assignment, it is very useful for a student to have a definitive idea of how to proceed with this kind of project so that he may fulfill his objectives with grace and style.

It is safe to say that everyone who has ever had to produce an essay for a college level course has at one time or another felt overwhelmed by the task. Writing an essay well and writing an essay for which the expectations are very high are two very different goals, and an individual needs to have the latter in mind as he sets about his work. At some point in the endless sequence of English courses and the mindless procession of essay after essay, there is a general consensus that there is no other task quite like the essay. The essay has become the sine qua non of words; it is absolutely essential.

5. Enhancing Your Academic Writing Skills

One useful technique is to begin each writing session by summarizing in point form what you intend to say and how you will say it. If the summary is a series of unconnected points, this may be a sign of a disorganized paper. Another useful tactic is the habit of reading one’s writing aloud. Often, papers that seem confusing when heard can be easily repaired during revision.

To ensure that your paper is guided by your thesis, just as a paper written in Japanese can be derailed by lack of coherence between ideas, it’s often a good idea to write in the language in which you are most fluent. While the level of English language proficiency poses an arguable problem for some multilingual students, this is not the problem I am referring to. What is meant here is that it is often all too easy to let grammar and sentence structure dictate the flow and content of a paper. This directionless writing can come from fear of producing a bad first draft. But it can be combated with a few techniques.

As you write, keep in mind the larger sections of your paper and where each fits into your overarching attempt to prove something. This will help forestall the occurrence of another common student mistake, which is equating a thesis with a topic. There are many writing situations in which no more than a topic is called for. But for academic writing, a topic utterance is not enough. A thesis is a single, conclusively stated position for which it is feasible to form a logical argument. Subjects or topics do not have a direct position.

Next, we need a method of constant reminder to make sure that your reader understands what position you’re taking on the topic. A common complaint among lecturers of students’ papers is that the reader can never be sure what the writer is trying to argue. It might be helpful for you to try to provide your reader with a simple outline of the paper you are trying to write. This doesn’t have to be an outline in the comprehensive sense, and you never have to show it to anyone else. But if you don’t have a clear idea of what you’re intending to say in your paper, it is very unlikely that you will succeed in saying it.

Here’s a strategy to prevent this sort of thing from happening to you. Anytime you write down anything on an assigned topic, ask yourself, “Is this a focused and unambiguous statement of what I believe on this matter and what I intend to prove through my research and analysis?” This is an important thing to do before you begin your writing and also a useful check to test the logic of what you’ve written after a first draft is completed.

The key to all academic writing tasks is the clear statement of an arguable position in a written thesis. Too often, students assume that this is no more than the stating of a general topic. Then, you have a chance to wander around the topic for a few pages with mostly descriptive content, trying to develop an argument but gradually descending into a repetition of what you learned in lecture.

Developing the ability to carry through the necessary steps of academic argumentation will be worth your while, not simply under the intricate requirements of the TWE, but in terms of more complex writing tasks as well. Let’s now turn our attention to the exploration of strategies for enhancing your academic writing skills.