Entry 7: Writing & Academic Writing

 WRITING

     Writing is not an ability that people acquire easily and naturally, it is a task that must be taught. Thence, learning or teaching how to write correctly is not just a thing of grammar or vocabulary but also a process that implies three stages. In addition to that, it is important to ask ourself what we want to convey to our audience or what could be interesting. So, the answer to these questions is to find a topic. Once we find a topic, we can assume all sub-skills to create, support, teach or learn a good piece of writing to have success in our productions.  

Academic Writing

  What is academic writing?

  Academic writing is clear, concise, focussed, structured and backed on by evidence. Its purpose is to aid the reader's understanding. It has a formal tone and style, but it is not complex and does not require the use of long sentences and complicated vocabulary. However, there are some general characteristics of academic writing that are relevant across all disciplines.

  Now I will share a brief summary related to both writing and Academic Writing key concepts.

Metacognitive analysis:

 Carrying out an effective academic writing means implementing writing strategies and providing support that argues or evidences what you want to communicate. So before I start writing about a specific topic, I must ask to myself what does an academic writing imply?

  To beging with, it is important to have knowledge about the writing processes. First, I must find a topic to develop and based on that, I must think about the background knowledge and what resources will support it. Second, I must think about the audience and the communicative purpose. And third, once I have finished writing, it is advisable to review and reread the work during and after to verify if what I wrote has coherence, cohesion, good grammatical use, order and unity.

    In addition to what is properly said, it is important to mention that during the writing process, evidence plays a very predominat role as it supports, reinforces, argues and enriches my writing. This documentation can be ideas collected from other authors or interviews. For this reason, it is essential to use hedging or boosting.

     Finally, the general structure of an acdemic writing implies an introduction - where I present the general and main idea along with the thesis statement; a body -where each paragraph has a specific topic along with its argument giving details and explaining the general and main topic; and finally, a coclusion - where in addition to giving a critical opinion with a clear posiion,I msut provide a summary of the thesis.

      To conclude, writing academically implies an introduction, body and conclusion on a main topic which is given different arguments that demonstrate what you want to communicate using strategies such as hedging, boosting, background knowledge and correct grammatical use. In my personal experience, I must confess that putting all this knowledge into practice is very overwhelming and difficult  to implement.