Academic Writing
At university, you will be expected to do a number of things involving writing. You will have to:
- Gather information from a range of sources: lectures, books, articles, the internet
- Process this information so that your understanding of the topics can be assessed. Most of your assessment requirements (e.g. exams and assignments such as essays, reports and tutorial papers) will involve writing
- Present the appropriate information to someone else who will read it, and reward it on the basis of what you have written.
At university you write to communicate what you know about a subject. Your success at university will depend upon how well you communicate this knowledge.
However, the fact that you have used writing to express your ideas is no guarantee that you will have communicated your meaning successfully to whoever reads your words. Writers and readers might see the same words on the page, but they might not draw the same meanings from them. In part, this is because words can have more than one meaning. As important, however, is the fact that your readers will interpret your words through their own frames of reference. Your readers will bring their own ideas and understandings to your words. It is thus up to you to ensure that you have organised the words on the page in such a way as to guide the readers' interpretations of them.
To guide your readers effectively you will need a good understanding of the mechanics of writing so that you can organise your words systematically and coherently. This will involve several core skills relating to:
Activity
You can check your understanding of each of these areas by doing the appropriate review exercise.
In addition, you will need to have an appreciation of the sort of writing style that will be suitable for an academic audience.