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Learning how to write will completely transform your experience as a university student. But the weird thing about academic writing is that we're never taught to do it. Professors just assume that we know what an essay is.
That was my experience as a student, anyway.
This guide will walk you through, step-by-step, the tools and actions you need to write an academic essay. I discovered a lot of this material while I was studying English literature in university, where I was fortunate to have been mentored by some exceptional professors. Now that I teach writing for a living, I've hammered out my thoughts on effective writing into a streamlined system.
What is Academic Writing?
Let's define academic writing. The definition of academic writing is pretty self-explanatory: Academic writing is the kind of writing we do in university.
Yes, that's different from the kind of writing we do in newspapers or emails.
However, it's also different from the kind of writing we did in high school.
Writing that is valued by academics does not simply transmit ideas; rather, it is the kind of writing that produces ideas.
The academic writer identifies a difficult question or problem that is important to his field and attempts to solve it. (The word 'essay' derives from the French word for 'to try.') We solve academic problems by gathering evidence and examining it with careful reasoning.
The Stages of Academic Writing
Writing isn't an activity, really. It's more like a process, a series of stages the writer moves through as he tries to work out a solution to a problem. Not all writers move through these stages in exactly the same order. But skipping over any of these stages results in muddy thinking and bad writing.
The Stages of Writing an Academic Essay
Step 1: Finding Ideas
The Stages of Writing an Academic Essay
Step 2: Developing Ideas
Have you answered the question?
Does your evidence and reasoning support your claims?
The Stages of Writing an Academic Essay
Step 3: Organizing Ideas
Are your ideas organized into paragraphs?
Do the paragraphs follow a pattern of development?
Do you signal the relationship between ideas with conjunctions and sentence connectors?
The Stages of Writing an Academic Essay
Step 4: Writing an Academic Essay
Did you choose the right words to express your intended meaning?
Is there a variety of sentence structures? Or is it written primarily in simple sentences?
Next Steps
Congratulations! If you made it this far, you're well on your way to writing an academic essay.
Best Books on Academic Writing
- They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing by Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein
- Grammar Choices for Graduate and Professional Writers by Nigel A. Caplan
- The Elements of Academic Style: Writing for the Humanities by Eric Hayot
Want more books on academic writing? Browse my full list of the best books on academic writing.