Distinguishing between levels of formality

What is academic writing?

There are many different kinds of academic writing in English. Some of these differences arise from the different disciplines and the ways in which they create and share knowledge; some relate to the audience (the reader); and some to the use to which the text will be put.

The rules of academic writing in English are quite complicated; nevertheless most students find that they can recognise the difference between informal writing and formal, academic writing.

Recognising academic writing

Task 1:

A: Look at the following sentence and together with a partner, identify at least three features of this sentence that you think are academic.

Linguists were and remain convinced by Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who discovered that however disparate human languages seem, all share a common, basic structure, seemingly hardwired into the brain.

B: Now look at the following sentence and with the partner, identify at least three features of this sentence that seem non-academic to you.

The way you speak says a lot about you.

Recognising levels of formality

Task 2: Study the Table 1, which identifies two quite different levels of formality, and then complete the table that follows.

Table 1: Different levels of formality

	Academic	Non-academic
Reader	Academics	family and friends
Content	serious thought	conversational
Style	complex sentences showing considerable variety in construction	mostly simple and compound sentences joined by conjunctions such as and or but
Organisation	clear and well planned	less likely to be as clear and as organised
Grammar	likely to be error free	may not always use complete sentences
Vocabulary	technical and academic language	use of short forms, idioms and slang

Read the sentences and tick (✓) either F (formal) or I (informal) after each sentence. Make notes on which features helped you reach your decision.

1) I couldn’t finish the interviews on time.

2) The initial tests were completed and the results analysed by June 2002.

3) I’d like to start by drawing your attention to previous research in this area.

4) In the 1990s, some researchers started to point out the problems with this theory.

5) He agreed with me that this procedure didn’t make much sense.

6) We’ll repeat the test sometime next year.

7) While it is still too early to draw firm conclusions from the data, preliminary analysis suggests the following trends are present.

8) In addition, the research attempts to answer two further related questions.

Distinguishing between levels of formality

Task 3: Put the following texts in order by giving 1 to the most academic and 4 to the least academic. To help you, think about:

- Who is this text intended for?

- Why would readers pick up this text and read it?

- What resources did the writer of the text have available?

Explain your choice.

Text A What makes a good paragraph? It’s difficult to say. Anyway, I’ll try to give you an answer. A good paragraph starts with a main idea of some kind. The rest of the paragraph goes on to develop the main idea by explaining it, or by supporting it with evidence. Text B The reciprocal relationship between reading and writing has become a focal point of L1 and L2 literacy research. Empirical findings have led researchers to recognize that reading and composing (i.e. writing) both involve the construction of meaning, development and application of complex cognitive and linguistic skills, activation of existing knowledge and past experience, and the ability to solve problems. Text C The difference between a paper and an online presentation is that in print your document forms a whole and the reader is focused on the entire set of information, whereas on the Web you need to split each document into multiple hyperlinked pages since users are not willing to read long pages. Text D The University of Aizu was established in April 1993 with the goal of educating and graduating students who would become Japan’s leading professionals in computer science and engineering (Kunii, 1994). With this in mind, the University’s curriculum has been planned to include courses that will provide its graduates with the ability to effectively communicate in English, the international computer science language. The capability to document scholarly and research activities in a form that can be readily disseminated to the international computer science community is considered to be essential for all scientists and engineers. Effective writing is a necessary skill for technical professionals, and it has been claimed that scientists and engineers spend 25% of their professional time on writing a variety of technically oriented documents (15% informal, and 10% formal) (Huckin, 1991). To prepare our students for these endeavours, a two-term English Technical Writing course has been included in the required curriculum of all University of Aizu students.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 1787

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