Chapter 3 Introduction to Academic Writing

Writing in University

Most writing assignments at the post-secondary level serve a different purpose than the typical writing assignments you completed in high school.

In high school, teachers generally focus on teaching students to write in a variety of modes and formats, which may include personal writing, expository writing, research papers, creative writing, and short answers and essays for exams. In your first-year academic writing course, that list may grow to include writing assignments covering analysis (rhetorical, critical, or conceptual) and in-depth academic research. You will also reinforce and broaden your expository writing skills. Over time, these assignments help you build a foundation of writing skills.

Your first-year academic writing course will focus mainly on developing writing skills rather than building knowledge or insights in a particular academic field. While your composition courses will focus on writing for its own sake—helping you make the transition to higher-level writing assignments—in most of your other courses, writing assignments serve a different purpose. In those courses, you may use writing as one tool among many for learning how to think about a particular academic discipline and how to convey those thoughts. In those courses, your instructors will not explicitly teach essay-writing skills because they will expect you to already have a foundation in essay writing.

Additionally, certain assignments teach you how to meet the expectations for professional writing in a given field. Depending on the class, you might be asked to write a lab report, a case study, a literary analysis, a business plan, or a transcript. You will need to learn and follow the standard conventions for those types of written products.

Finally, personal and creative writing assignments are less common at the post-secondary level than in high school. College and university courses emphasize expository writing—writing that explains or informs. Often, expository writing assignments will require research beyond the course materials. Some classes will require persuasive writing assignments in which you state and support a position on an issue. Your instructors will hold you to a higher standard when it comes to supporting your ideas with reasons and evidence.

Remember that when you interact with other students and teachers online, you need to project a mature, professional image. You may be able to use an informal, conversational tone, but complaining about the workload, using off-colour language, or criticizing other participants is inappropriate. Table 3.1 lists some of the most common assignments you will encounter at the post-secondary level. It includes minor, less formal assignments as well as major ones. Which specific assignments you will be given will depend on the courses you take and the learning objectives developed by your instructors. For detailed instructions for the most common types of writing assignments, turn to Part 4.

Treat these documents as professional communications. Address the recipient politely; state your question, problem, or request clearly; and use a formal, respectful tone. Doing so helps you make a positive impression and get a quicker response.

What Is Academic Writing?

There are many genres of writing, such as personal writing, creative writing, journalistic writing, scientific writing, business writing, academic writing, and so on.

You might already be a proficient writer of memos, reports, poems, stories, or letters. However, in your post-secondary studies, you will primarily be asked to undertake academic writing. Therefore, it is important to know that academic writing is a distinct genre that requires specific skills and conventions.

Generally speaking, academic writing is a means to communicate with members of a scholarly community—including researchers who conduct research studies, professors who teach students, and students learning about a topic and developing their critical thinking skills. Thus, academic writing is not the same as other forms of writing, such as writing tailored for the general public. It is unique.

Within the broad genre of academic writing, there are many sub-genres, including textbooks, trade books, lab reports, journal articles, research proposals, dissertations, and undergraduate student essays. Figure 3.1: Genres and Sub-genres of Writing illustrates some of the many genres of writing and some of their many sub-genres.

In your studies, you may be required to write in a variety of sub-genres of academic writing. While you may be required to write some lab reports, reflective journals, and other kinds of texts, in most of your courses, you will primarily write undergraduate student essays.

The undergraduate student essay is a genre of its own with a distinct purpose, form, and conventions unlike any other rhetorical mode. There are two overarching purposes for student essays:

1. 1. They offer students a means to demonstrate their understanding of and engagement with course materials.
2. 2. They offer instructors a means to assess students’ understanding of and engagement with course materials.

Thus, the writing you’ll do in your essays will be very different from what you’ll read in other genres, such as non-academic magazines or newspaper articles. The writing you’ll do in your essays might seem similar to the writing you’ll find in a textbook or a scholarly article, which are other sub-genres of academic writing. However, it’s not exactly the same because the overarching purposes of the undergraduate student essay are not the same as the purposes of textbooks or scholarly articles.

What is it that distinguishes academic writing generally, or the undergraduate student essay specifically, from other types of writing that you might already do? The distinctions can be found primarily in the reason you write (purpose), the people you address (audience), the way you address them (tone), and what you write about (content), which you’ll learn more about in Chapter 5.

Later, we will get into more detail about specific purposes for particular writing assignments, but for now, the first step to writing successful essays is simply to understand that the undergraduate student essay is a distinct sub-genre unlike any other because of its explicit overarching goals.

The Writing Process in Brief

To complete a writing task successfully, good writers use some variation of the writing process. Below is a brief introduction to the steps in the writing process. This process is examined in much more detail in Part 2: The Writing Process.

• Prewriting. The writer generates ideas to write about and then begins developing these ideas.
• Planning/Outlining. The writer chooses an organizational structure for the writing based on the requirements of the writing task. The writer creates a plan (such as an outline) to arrange and organize the ideas that were generated in the first step.
• Drafting. The writer uses the work completed in the first two steps to write a first draft. The first draft includes the ideas the writer brainstormed in the first step, organized into a structure that was chosen in the second step.
• Revising. The writer reads the first draft several times to review and reshape its content, perhaps adding, deleting, or moving sentences or paragraphs. At this stage, the writer may go through several drafts before settling on a final draft in which the key points are logically and articulately presented.
• Editing. The editing process requires slow and careful rereading of the final draft to ensure that the words on the page convey the writer’s ideas as clearly and as effectively as possible.
• Proofreading. Proofreading involves identifying and correcting errors in format, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and documentation.
• Publishing. Once the text has been edited and proofread, it is ready to publish! In a university course, publishing may mean posting a paragraph to an online student forum or submitting an essay to an instructor.

You may have used this process in the past for writing assignments or for other types of creative or work-related projects, such as developing a sketch into a finished painting, composing a song, or completing a report. The steps apply broadly to any project that involves original thinking. You come up with ideas (often vague at first), you work to give them some structure, you make a first attempt, you figure out what needs improving, and then you refine it until you are satisfied.

Most people have used this process in one way or another, but many people have misconceptions about how to use it to write. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions students have about the writing process:

• If I understand the assignment, I do not have to waste time on prewriting.

  Even if the task is straightforward and you feel ready to start writing, take some time to develop ideas before you plunge into your draft. Freewriting—writing about the topic without stopping for a set period of time—is one prewriting technique you might try in that situation. Brainstorming and mapping are other useful techniques. You’ll learn more about prewriting in Chapter 4: Prewrite.

• I should complete a formal, numbered outline for every writing assignment.

  For some assignments, such as lengthy research papers, proceeding without a formal outline can be very difficult. However, for other assignments, a structured set of notes or a detailed graphic organizer may suffice. The important thing is to have a solid plan for organizing ideas and details. You’ll learn more about outlining in Chapter 5: Plan and Outline.

• My draft will be better if I write it when I’m feeling inspired.

  By all means, take advantage of those moments of inspiration. However, understand that sometimes you will have to write when you are not in the mood. Sit down and start your draft even if you do not feel like it. If necessary, force yourself to write for just one hour. By the end of the hour, you may be far more engaged and motivated to continue. If not, at least you will have accomplished part of the task. You’ll learn about drafting in Chapter 6: Draft.

• My instructor will tell me everything I need to revise.

  If your instructor chooses to review drafts, the feedback can help you improve. However, it is still your job, not your instructor’s, to transform the draft into a final, polished piece. That task will be much easier if you give your best effort to the draft before submitting it. During revision, do not just go through and implement your instructor’s corrections. Take time to determine what you can change to make the work the best it can be. You’ll learn more about revision in Chapter 7: Revise.

• I’m a good writer, so I don’t need to edit or proofread.

  Even talented writers need to edit and proofread their work. At the very least, doing so will help you catch an embarrassing typo or two. Editing and proofreading are the steps that make a good piece of writing into an excellent piece of writing. You’ll learn more about editing and proofreading in Chapter 8: Edit.

Managing Writing Assignments

There is no magic formula that will make the writing process quick and easy. However, you can learn strategies and use resources to tackle writing assignments with more confidence. This section presents an overview of these strategies and resources.

In Chapter 1: Manage Your Time, you learned general time-management skills. By combining those skills with what you have learned about the writing process, you can make any writing assignment easier to manage.

When your instructor gives you a writing assignment, write the due date on your calendar. Then work backward from the due date, and set aside blocks of time to work on the assignment, allocating time for each step in the writing process. Plan at least two sessions of writing time per step so that you are not trying to move from step 1 to step 5 in one evening. Trying to work that fast is stressful, and it does not yield good results. You will plan better, think better, and write better if you space out the steps and devote sufficient time to the process.

Ideally, you should set aside at least three separate blocks of time to work on a writing assignment: one for prewriting and outlining, one for drafting, and one for revising and editing. Sometimes, those steps may be compressed into just a few days. If you have a couple of weeks to work on a paper, space out the five steps over multiple sessions. Long-term projects, such as research papers, require more time for each step.

Figure 3.2 is a sample of a student’s plan for writing a major research paper. Notice that the work begins four weeks before the paper is due—not the night before!

For any writing assignment, use these strategies:

• • Make sure you understand the assignment requirements. If necessary, clarify the requirements with your instructor. Think carefully about the purpose of the writing, the intended audience, the topics you will need to address, and any specific requirements of the writing form. You will learn more about these steps in Part 2: The Writing Process.
• • Plan ahead. Divide the work into small, manageable tasks, and set aside time to accomplish each task in turn.
• • Complete each step of the writing process. Part 2: The Writing Process will guide you through the steps. With practice, this process will come automatically to you.
• • Use the resources available to you. Remember that most schools have specific services to help students with their writing, particularly writing centres and university libraries. Review Chapter 1: Make Use of Resources for information on university resources.

***

To help you succeed in a variety of writing tasks, the remainder of this textbook offers detailed guidance on specific aspects of writing: the writing process, essential elements of paragraphs and essays, characteristics of common post-secondary writing assignments, research and documentation, style, grammar, and punctuation.

• • Post-secondary-level writing assignments differ from high school assignments not only in quantity but also in quality.
• • Academic writing is a distinct genre of writing, and the student essay is a distinct sub-genre of academic writing.
• • Post-secondary writing assignments place greater emphasis on learning to think critically about a particular discipline and less emphasis on personal and creative writing.
• • Follow the steps of the writing process to tackle and complete any writing assignment successfully.
• • To manage writing assignments, work backward from the due date, allotting appropriate time to complete each step of the writing process. Start early!