Academic Writing
lecture 1
Nahid Shahmehri **
Department of Computer and Information Science
Linköping University
** Slides borrowed from Magnus Merkel
Outline
 The writing process in general
 The features of academic writing
 The process
 The objective
 The structure
 Genres
 “General-to-specific”
 Summaries
 Critiques
 Research paper
 The assignments for the seminars
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Literature
 Swales, John M. & Feak, Christine B. Academic Writing for
Graduate Students - Essential Tasks and Skills, University of
Michigan Press, 2004, ISBN:9780472088560
 Or a litterature of your choice, as long as it does not contradict
the principles brought up by the course
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The writing process
Analysis
Collection of
material
Sorting
Selection
Revise
Transfer
thoughts
to text
Getting started
Structuring
Finished text
4
Magnus Merkel
Analysis
Problem
l
What do I want to state/describe/reflect
on/ argue for?
l
For whom?
l
In what setting? Academic? Locally?
Internationally?
l
How go about to solve it? Methods?
Magnus Merkel
5
Collection of data
l
Library & Internet: journals, books,
conference proceedings,
databases…
l
People: interviews, questionnaires
l
Why?

Acquire knowledge (missing)

Check what you think you already know

Get an overview

Compare different views and facts

…
Magnus Merkel
6
Sorting
l
Dependent on reader and
objective

For whom am I writing

And why?
l
Right level of detail
l
Restrictions? Number of
pages? Costs? Time
available?
l
One or several versions? For
different readers?
Preliminary plan
Magnus Merkel
7
Structuring
l
Order the stuff in a
particular order
l
Divide into sections and
chapters
l
Determine proportions
l
Decide preliminary
headings
Magnus Merkel
8
Structure
Ways of structuring texts
9
l
Chronologically
l
Spatial
l
Problem-solving (logical)
l
Thematic
l
Contrastive
l
Associative
l
Journalistic
Magnus Merkel
Features of scientific writing
 Academic writing has to consider:
 Audience
 Purpose/Objective
 Structure
 Style
 Flow
 Presentation/Layout
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Considering the audience – what kind of audience are
these texts intended for? (Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 8-9)
Text 1
Text 2
People have been pulling freshwater out of the oceans
for centuries using technologies that involve
evaporation, which leaves the salts and other unwanted
constituents behind. Salty source water is heated to
sped evaporation, and the evaporated water is then
trapped and distilled. This process works well but
requires large quantities of heat energy, and costs have
been far too high for nearly all but the wealthiest
nations, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (One
exception is the island of Curacao in the Netherlands
Antilles, which has provided continuous municipal
supplies using desalination since 1928.) To make the
process more affordable, modern distillation plans
recycle heat from the evaporation step.
Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane systems are often
used for seawater and brackish water desalination. The
systems are typically installed as a network of modules
that must be designed to meet the technical,
environmental, and economic requirements of the
separation process. The complete optimization of an RO
network includes the optimal design of both the
individual module structure, and the network
configuration. For a given application, the choice and
design of a particular module geometry depends on a
number of factors including ease and cost of module
manufacture, energy efficiency, fouling tendency,
required recovery, and capital cost of auxiliary
equipment. With suitable transport equations to predict
the physical performance of the membrane module, it
should be possible to obtain an optimal module
structure for any given application. (Maskan et al. 2000)
A potentially cheaper technology called membrane
desalination may expand the role of desalination
worldwide, which today accounts for less than 0.2
percent of the water withdrawn from natural sources.
Membrane desalination relies on reverse osmosis –
process in which a thin, semipermeable membrane is
placed between a volume of saltwater and a volume of
freshwater. The water on the salty side is highly
pressurized to drive water molecules, but not salt and
other impurities, to the pure side. In essence, this
process pushes freshwater out of saltwater. (Martindale
2001)
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Purpose/Objective
 What is the objective of the text?
 Instruct?
 Convince?
 Present new findings?
 Challenge old results?
 Fulfill course requirements?
 ….
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Structure/Organization
(Swales and Feak, 2004, p. 12)
 All good texts have structure:
Dear Ms. Wong:
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Thank you or your interest in our
university.
Acknowledgment
On behalf of the Dean of the Graduate
School, I congratulate you on bein
accepted to the program in Aerospace
Engineering to begin study at the master
level. /…/
Good News
As a reflection of the importance the
Graduate School places on the ability of
its students to communicate effectively,
the Graduate School requires all new
students whose native language is not
English to have their English evaluated.
Specific details for this procedure are
given in the enclosed information packet.
Administrative details
We look forward to welcoming you to
Midwestern University and wish you
success in your academic career.
Welcoming close
Linköpings universitet
Standard strategy in academic writing:
The problem-solution approach
1. Description of a situation
2. Identification of a problem
3. Description of a solution
4. Evaluation of a solution
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Example of problem-solving approach
(Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 14-15)
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For over 20 years now biologists have been alarmed that
certain populations of amphibians have been declining.
These declines have occurred both in areas populated by
humans as well as areas seemingly undisturbed by people
Description of situation
However, offering clear proof of the declining numbers of
amphibians has been difficult because in most cases there
is no reliable data on past population sizes with which to
compare recent numbers. Moreover, it is not entirely clear
whether the declines are actually part of a natural
fluctuation in populations arising from droughts or a
scarcity of food.
Identification of a problem
To address this problem biologists are changing the way
they observe amphibian populations. One good
documentation method involves counting species over the
course of several years and under a variety of climatic
conditions.
Description of a solution
This method should yield reliable data that will help
researchers understand the extent to which amphibian
populations are in danger and begin to determine what can
be done to stem the decline in populations.
Evaluation of a solution
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The general-specific (GS) approach
(journalistic method)
 The GS approach involves moving from the general to the more
specific.
 Reasons:
 Common approach in graduate writing
 Often used in introductions of research papers/assignments
 Often used as background in an analysis section or discussion
 GS texts starts with either
 A short or extended definition
 A contrastive or comparative definition
 A generalization or purpose statement, or
 A factual statement.
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The shape of general-to-specific texts
General statement
Details in support of
the general statement
More detailed
Broader statement
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Example of GS text (Swales & Feak, p. 45-46)
Selling cities: promoting new images for
meeting tourism
Meetings tourism, which we define as travel associated with
attendance at corporate o association meetings, conferences,
conventions or congresses or public or trade exhibitions, has
emerged as a significant subsection of the tourist industry both in
terms of volume of travel and expenditure generated.
“Meetings” demonstrate enormous variety, ranging from small
business meetings of a few participants to large conventions of,
for example, professional associations which might attract in
excess of 20,000 delegates.
General statement
The range of locations within which these meetings take place is
also broad, including such sites as hotels, universities, sports
venues, and specially built convention centers.
Details
The meeting tourism market has been vigorously pursued by
many former industrial cities in Europe and the U.S. as part of
their strategies of post-industrial urban regeneration (Law, 1987,
p. 85).
Details
This market offers a number of obvious attractions to such cities,
not least the rapidity of its growth…
More detailed
Figures for the U.S.A. suggest the business conference industry
almost doubled during the…
More detailed
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Details in support
GS writing vs. topic sentences
Topic sentences
 Each paragraph should contain one topic sentence around
which the rest of the paragraph is built.
 The topic sentence is usually the first sentence of the
paragraph.
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Specifying paragraph
This leads to a two level hierarchy of the
descriptions. On the activity level we have
the actual manipulation of the task, while –
at the procedure level – we only have
information about the ordering of the activities.
20
Exemplifying paragraph
In all interesting cases the Gauss-Seidel
iteration converges at least as fast as
the naive Jacobi iteration. For instance,
the latter needs five iterations to converge
for the rev/2-example whereas the former
method converges after only two iterations.
21
Substantiating paragraph
The division of unification precedures into
being either complete or incomplete
sometimes seems too coarse. In particular this
is the case when the underlying theory is
underspecified, so that no sound and complete
unification procedure can exist.
22
Modifying paragraph
The implementation of DCGs is correct with
respect to the declarative semantics outlined
above. However, because Prolog is used for
solving literals in rules, it is not complete.
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Writing summaries
 When used for preparation (exam, discussion, research paper,
thesis), and often not for publication.
 informal requirements
 When used as part of a more public communication or as part
of other academic work (scientific summaries for your
colleagues, background material used in a course you will be
teaching
 formal requirements
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Summaries
 Should focus on the most important and relevant aspects of the
original text.
 Should present the original article accurately.
 Should concentrate the original material and be presented in
the writer’s own words.
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Steps to write a summary
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1.
Skim the text and divide the text into sections (possibly by the
use of subheadings)
2.
What is the purpose of the summary? Inclusion in a research
paper? Show your teacher that you have understood a particular
area? The answers to such questions may help you to select the
relevant sections to focus on.
3.
Read the text thoroughly, and take notes of the most relevant
and important information.
4.
Write in your own words the main message of each section.
Try to write a one-sentence summary (topic sentence) for each
section.
5.
Write down the main supporting points for the major topic
(no details)
6.
Go through the process again, and revise.
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Your assignments
(Detailed instructions next week)
 Main idea:
 Writing a summary:
 Two research papers to read.
 Write a short summary based on these research papers
 Writing a critical review of four articles:
 Read an additional two papers
 Write a critical review on the four papers
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Next lecture
 More details on research writing critiques
 Language issues
 Proofing and revision
 Citations and references
 Plagiarism and how to avoid it
 Links to the seminar assignments are revealed.
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