Academic Writing

Dr. N. P. Sudharshana
Dept of HSS
IIT Kanpur
What is academic writing?
• Academic writing – writing for communicating scientific
knowledge.
• Generally addressed to people working in a field of study
• Most rigorous form – peer reviewed international journals
and doctoral dissertations
• Researchers share with colleagues their research findings
• Assignments, reports in colleges and universities
• In all forms of academic writing - ideas take centre
stage and people are in the background
• Logical rigour, formal language, and some universally
accepted conventions
How is academic writing different from other
kinds of writing?
Journalistic writing
• Found in newspapers and magazines
• News articles - report and sometimes comment on
current events.
• Columns – experts writing about current issues
• Target audience - a wide range of people
• Most journalistic writing: Who? What? When? Where?
How? and sometimes - Why?
• Style is crisp and attention-grabbing – audience-
centred
• Short sentences and paragraphs
• Catchy headlines
• “Raju beats Obama on web popularity charts!”
(Indian Express),
• “When Insurance Is Bad for Your Health” (The New
York Times)
• “The scent of a man” (The Economist).
• Creative uses of language
• Born chicka wah, ker-ching chicka ching (an article describing
three categories of perfume users in The Economist)
• Unfortunately, it seems there’s no simple way to avoid it. For
the love of onions, sometimes you just have to cry (an article
on why onions make us cry in The New York Times)
• Each newspaper has its own code, some general
conventions as well; but not as rigid as in academics
Creative writing
• Novels, short stories, poetry, plays, etc.
• Writer’s subjective interpretation of reality;
sometimes completely imaginary
• ‘Artistic license’
• Creative writing need not be factual always
• Writers not expected to furnish evidence for any
conclusion(s) they reach
• Readers enjoy a piece of literary work or do not;
nobody questions ‘validity’ or ‘credibility’
• ‘Willing suspension of disbelief’ (Samuel Taylor
Coleridge)
• Creative writing - passion, wit and creativity
• Genre conventions – but are being redefined
• Each creative writer has his/ her own distinctive
style.
• Writers manipulate language in creative ways
• “My love is like a red, red rose” (Robert Burns)
• The poet e. e. cummings
• Creating neologisms
• Shakespeare created the word ‘bedazzled’ in The Taming
of the Shrew
• Dr. Seuss created th eword ‘nerd’ in a children’s book ‘If I
Ran the Zoo’
• Can you create a new word or use an already existing
word in a new sense in academic contexts?
Writing in Interpersonal Contexts
• Personal emails, diary entries, blogs, social media posts
• Aim to communicate your personal feelings, thoughts or ideas
• Includes personal judgments and reflections
• Can follow a loose structure
• No strict adherence to rules of grammar, vocabulary or punctuation
• Slangs, abbreviations, mutually agreed upon codes
Let’s look at two texts on the same topic
Version 1
• Inside the intact cells of an onion, a molecule called sulfenic
acid precursor floats around the watery filler like a napping
human in a lazy river. Also floating in that cytoplasm are little
sacs called vacuoles, containing a protein called alliinase,
which is like a little drill sergeant of the process.
• “One has not seen the other, but if you damage the cells, they
can now meet and make these reactions,” said Marcin Golczak,
a biochemist at Case Western Reserve and principal
investigator of the latest study. The molecule and the protein
fit together perfectly, the chemical structure of the molecules
change, and that lazy floater becomes a smelly soldier armed
with tear gas.
Version 2
• In 1961 the Finnish biochemist Artturi Virtanen … showed that
onions contain trans-( + ) S-(l-propenyl)-L-cysteine sulfoxide, a
positional isomer of alliin [see bottom illustration on page
115]. That is, its chemical content is identical with that of alliin;
only its structure differs. (Specifically it differs in the position of
a double bond, which, as the 1 in its name indicates, is
attached directly to sulfur.) Trans-( + )-S-(1-propenyl)-Lcysteine
sulfoxide is the lacrimatory precursor, or LP: the onion's
allinase enzyme converts it into the lacrimatory factor, or LF,
the substance that makes people cry when they slice an onion.
Which of the two is academic writing?
 Version 1 Version 2
Informal/ colloquial More formal language
language
Examples to help No such examples
understand
A few technical terms A lot of technical terms
Focus on conveying the Focus on extensive details
gist
Comparisons No such comparisons
No conventions Academic conventions
• The first one is from The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/science/onions-
crying-chemicals.html
• The second one is from Scientific American, Vol 252, No, 3,
1985, pp. 114-121
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24967598.pdf
Key features of academic writing
• A clear and linear structure
• A research paper - Introduction, Review of previous
research, Research Questions/ Hypotheses, Research
Methodology, Data Collection and Analysis, Results and
Discussion, Conclusion, References, End Notes,
Appendices
• Clarity and no scope for ambiguity – not open to multiple
interpretations as a literary work
• A cohesive and coherent argument backed up with evidence
(well-established facts, details from previous studies which
are trustworthy, findings of experts in that field of study)
• Understated/ cautious tone – not making
sweeping statements
• No figures of speech – no creative uses of
language
• Strict adherence to conventions
• Meticulous citation and referencing
• Rules of punctuation and grammar
Summarising
• Useful for review of research
• Reporting other studies
• Paraphrase vs Summary
Three processes

IDENTIFYING AND WRITING DOWN THE

MAIN POINTS

PARAPHRASING

SUMMARISING
 1: Identifying and
writing down the main
points
• Main points help you understand the content, the writer’s perspective,
attitude and the purpose.
• Read and understand the text carefully - look for signposts while reading -
ask yourself questions about the rationale behind the title, paragraphing
and structure
• Think about the purpose of the text
• What is the author's purpose in writing the text?
• What is your purpose in writing your summary?
• Distinguish between main and subsidiary information.
• Find the main ideas - what is important.
• They may be found in topic sentences
• Do not focus on most details and examples, unimportant
information, anecdotes, examples, illustrations, data etc.
• Identify the meaning relationships between the
words/ideas - e.g. cause/effect, generalisation, contrast.
Express these relationships in a different way.

• Let’s look at an example…

• WHY WOMEN LIVE LONGER
Despite the overall increase in life expectancy in Britain over the past century,
women still live significantly longer than men. In fact, in 1900 men could
expect to live to 49 and women to 52, a difference of three years, while now
the figures are 74 and 79, which shows that the gap has increased to five years.
Various reasons have been suggested for this situation, such as the possibility
that men may die earlier because they take more risks. But a team of British
scientists have recently found a likely answer in the immune system, which
protects the body from diseases. The thymus is the organ which produces the T
cells which actually combat illnesses. Although both sexes suffer from
deterioration of the thymus as they age, women appear to have more T cells in
their bodies than men of the same age. It is this, the scientists believe, that
gives women better protection from potentially fatal diseases such as influenza
and pneumonia. (Source: Bailey 2003, p.15)
Main points…
• British women live longer than men: 79/74
• Reasons? new research suggests immune system > thymus > T cells
• Women have more T cells than men = better protection = live longer
• Explain the ideas of authors in your own words because this shows you
understand the concepts and opinions.
• Need to alter the form in which information appears without significantly
changing the meaning of that information.
• Dictionaries and thesauruses are useful starting points for putting
authors’ ideas into your words.
2: Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing
• When you paraphrase, you rewrite information from an outside
source in your own words without changing the meaning.
• Before you begin to paraphrase, it is really important to build-up your
own idea of the information or try to develop a picture in your mind,
and then use this as a model to help frame or guide your paraphrase
of the author’s idea.
• Paraphrasing aims to rewrite the information by drawing on different
words and phrases.
• Read the original passage several times until you understand it fully.
• Look up unfamiliar words, and find synonyms for them. It may not be
possible to find synonyms for every word, especially technical
vocabulary.
• In this case, use the original word.
 Children spend a very large proportion of their daily lives in school. They
go there to learn, not only in a narrow academic sense, but in the
widest possible interpretation of the word – about themselves, about
Original being a person within a group of others, about the community in which
they live, and about the world around them. Schools provide the setting
in which such learning takes place.
(Leyden, S. (1985). Helping the child of exceptional ability. London: Croom Helm, p. 38).

As Leyden (1985) points out, schools are places where children

spend a significant amount of time. Beyond merely going to school
to learn academic information, Leyden argues that learning occurs
within a far wider context as children also learn about who they are,
Paraphrase by being in groups, their local community, as well as the wider world
which surrounds them. Hence, schools offer the settings to facilitate
children’s learning about a great many things.
Let’s look at another example
• Sleep scientists have found that traditional remedies for insomnia,
such as counting sheep, are ineffective. Instead, they have found that
imagining a pleasant scene is likely to send you to sleep quickly. The
research team divided 50 insomnia sufferers into three groups. One
group imagined watching a waterfall, while another group tried sheep
counting. A third group was given no special instructions about going
to sleep. It was found that the group thinking of waterfalls fell asleep
20 minutes quicker. Mechanical tasks like counting sheep are
apparently too boring to make people sleepy. There are many
practical applications for research into insomnia. About one in ten
people are thought to suffer from severe insomnia. It is calculated
that the cost of insomnia for the American economy may be $35
billion a year. (Source: Bailey 2003, p.22)
According to a research study, age-old techniques to address
the problem of sleeplessness such as counting sheep may not
be effective. The sleep scientists argue that such techniques
are actually boring for people to follow. They, on the other
hand, suggest that if a person imagines being in a very
pleasant environment it really helps. In the study, they divided
people suffering from insomnia into three groups: one group
was asked to imagine a waterfall, the second to count sheep
and the third to do nothing specific. The results showed that
the first group went to sleep around 20 minutes earlier.
Language support for paraphrasing
Use appropriate reporting verb
• articulate, comment, mention, maintain, note, point out, say, state,
suggest, indicate, refer,…
• hypothesise, predict, theorise, conceptualise, understand,
demonstrate, show, convey, portray, support,
• substantiate, corroborate, verify, confirm…..
• investigate, research, experiment, conduct, administer, observe,……..
• acknowledge, assert, claim, …
Change the sentence structure and form
• Restate the information by referring to the author. e.g.: McDonald
(1992) highlights; According to McDonald (1992); As highlighted by
McDonald (1992).
• Embed the author at the beginning of the sentence, the middle, or at
the end. EG: As identified by Smith (1990), social dynamics involve…;
Social dynamics, as identified by Smith (1990), involve…; Social
dynamics involve…, as identified by Smith (1990).
• Try to repackage the idea using the sentence starters:
• This concept is about…
• This idea is organised around…
• This issue focuses on / involves…
3: Summarising
• Let’s read a text and look at three summaries of it.
Researchers in France and the United States have recently
reported that baboons are able to think abstractly. It has been
known for some time that chimpanzees are capable of abstract
thought, but baboons are a more distant relation to mankind. In
the experiment, scientists trained two baboons to use a personal
computer and a joystick. The animals had to match computer
designs which were basically the same but had superficial
differences. The baboons performed better than would be
expected by chance. The researchers describe their study in an
article in the Journal of Experimental Psychology.
(Bailey 2003, p.24)
a) French and American scientists have shown that baboons have
the ability to think in an abstract way. The animals were taught to
use a computer, and then had to select similar patterns, which
they did at a rate better than chance.
b) Baboons are a kind of monkey more distant from man than
chimpanzees. Although it is known that chimpanzees are able to
think abstractly, until recently it was not clear if baboons could do
the same. But new research has shown that this is so.
c) According to a recent article in the Journal of Experimental
Psychology, baboons are able to think in an abstract way. The
article describes how researchers trained two baboons to use a
personal computer and a joystick. The animals did better than
what would be expected.
• Let’s look at a longer text
• Concern mounts in China over Yangtze diversion project
• Financial Times, Oct 14, 2014
• https://www.ft.com/content/a39d9c7c-4fa2-11e4-a0a4-
00144feab7de
On a cloudy September day in the humid central Chinese city of Jingzhou, a group of Chinese
officials quietly inaugurated a new canal designed to address a growing water shortage in an
area normally plagued by flooding. The “Bringing the Yangtze to help the Han River” canal
project is needed because of a much larger project, 250km to the north, that cuts the flow of
the Han, a Yangtze tributary. About a quarter of the water in the Han will be reallocated to
arid northern China in a $60bn engineering effort that critics say will create shortages in the
south.
Water from the middle leg of the south-north diversion project officially begins flowing this
month, a moment that will probably be marked with much greater ceremony. The project,
inspired by an offhand remark by Mao Zedong that the north should borrow water from the
south, is designed to alleviate chronic water shortages in the industrial north and bring
additional supply to growing cities such as Beijing and Tianjin. Beijing argues that its titanic
effort to redistribute water is necessary for the north. But the impact is just beginning to be
felt in the south. “This project from the beginning has been as controversial as the Three
Gorges,” says Dai Qing, a Chinese journalist and environmentalist who led the charge against
the 1990s project, which has been plagued by environmental problems since its completion
in 2006.
• ‘Bringing the Yangtze to help the Han River’ canal
project – Yangtzee river water to Han river
• This is needed because of a larger project – Han river
water to arid north (big cities)
• ‘quietly’ inaugurated
• This larger project as controversial as Three Gorges
Dam
Worrisome signs of shortage are already cropping up in central China, where cities
along the mighty Yangtze were historically far more concerned about floods. The
Three Gorges dam has lowered silt deposits in the river beneath it, causing some
islands in the Yangtze delta to shrink, while barge traffic has been left stranded when
water levels run low. Shanghai, China’s financial centre, has had to fight incursions of
seawater into its water supply when the Yangtze’s flow slows. That could become
worse with the regular diversion of 9.5bn cubic metres a year of water from the
Danjiangkou dam on the Han river, which will feed canals and pipes running
1,400km north across two provinces to Beijing.
The Yangtze’s water is being siphoned off even as the cities, industry and agriculture
along the river claim a greater share than in the past. A 2012 study by the Hubei
Academy of Environmental Science found the diversion project was likely to result in
water levels too low for shipping along the Han, make some irrigation networks
unusable and annihilate fish species that rely on seasonal flood cycles. Less water to
dilute polluted waste and run-off could pose a greater risk to human health and raise
the cost to cities and industry to treat the water.
Problems created by Three Gorges
• Earlier flood – now water shortage
• low silt deposits - some islands shrank
• barge traffic has been left stranded
• incursions of seawater
Study – future problems of the North-South diversion project
• water levels too low for shipping
• Irrigation unusable
• fish species disappear
• Diluting polluted waste problematic - greater risk to human
health – treating water costlier
The diversion project has progressed in fits and starts, resulting in huge cost overruns
(the original budget was about $20bn) and creating a complex cast of winners and
losers. Among them are the 250,000 villagers forced to relocate to make way for the
expanded Danjiangkou reservoir. “They wanted it to be done in one fell swoop but
society has changed,” says Ms Dai. “Now everyone wants to know: what’s in it for me?”
The smaller Yangtze-to-Han canal shows how national authorities have had to
accommodate local concerns. By replenishing water diverted from the upper Han, the
67km canal allows the lower Han to remain navigable and preserves the industrial
base around Wuhan, a city of 6.5m at the confluence of the Han and the Yangtze. “But
that won’t resolve the problem,” says Du Yun, of the Institute of Geodesy and
Geophysics in Wuhan. “The problem of not enough water in the south will certainly
crop up.” An initial phase of the south-north project’s middle route, designed to
increase water supply to Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, depleted reservoirs needed
for irrigation in the impoverished countryside around the capital. This summer water
from the Danjiangkou dam was used to offset a drought in Henan province – a
diversion that will not be allowed once the middle leg is fully complete and the
northern cities claim their full allocation.
Issues
• progressed in fits and starts, resulting in huge cost overruns
(economic)
• complex cast of winners and losers (social)

More details about the Canal project

• allows the lower Han to remain navigable
• preserves the industrial base around Wuhan
• But – wont help much
• e.g. Beijing Olympics water diversion – shortage in rural areas
• Earlier water from a dam to manage shortages – but not possible in
the future
The eastern leg is less complex because it follows the existing route of the historic
Grand Canal. But planners found to their dismay that the water pumped from the
mouth of the Yangtze up the length of the historic Grand Canal to the port city of
Tianjin was too polluted to be used once it arrived, requiring additional spending
on water treatment plants. The tally of the cost and benefits of the water diversion
projects already under way will determine whether Beijing presses ahead with the
most expensive and controversial western leg, which would tunnel through the
hard rock of the Tibetan plateau to bring water from mighty southern rivers into
the upper reaches of the Yellow river. Critics say China would be wiser to raise the
cost of water in places where it is in short supply, rather than engaging in massive
transfers to suit political constituencies in the north. Leo Horn-Pathanothai, an
environmental economist at the World Resources Institute, says: “China’s answer
to date has been engineering to increase supply. Now the problem is national
scarcity and the solutions are better economics and governance.”
(859 words)
Further details about the larger project

• Easter leg: less complex; but initial failure

• Western leg : more expensive and controversial

Critics - raise the cost where water is in short supply,

no massive transfers – political interests

“China’s answer to date has been engineering to

increase supply. Now the problem is national scarcity
and the solutions are better economics and
governance.”
 Summary
China’s answer to water shortage problems, so far, has been
dams, canals and other such expensive projects. However,
such engineering solutions have led to other serious
problems. One such recent case is the ambitious project of
diverting water from the rivers in the South to the North to
address water shortage to industries and to supply water to
the ever-growing big cities. Environmentalists and research
organizations have pointed out that this project will create
problems similar to those created by Three Gorges dam.
Because of this project, the areas which have been traditionally
affected by floods are likely to face severe water shortage
resulting in water levels too low for shipping; depleted water
resources for irrigation; disappearing fish species and increased
cost for treating water among other problems. This project has
also had several socio-economic implications: rehabilitation of
displaced people and addressing local concerns have not been
easy and the project has already incurred huge expenses.
Therefore, some experts feel that China should now concentrate
on better governance and economics rather than ambitious
engineering solutions. (160 words)
References and Other Useful Resources
• Bailey, S. 2003. Academic Writing: A Practical Guide for Students. New
York: Routledge
• Reinking, J. A. & Osten, R. V. D. 2017. Strategies for Successful
Writing. New York: Pearson
• https://owl.purdue.edu/
• https://www.essex.ac.uk/student/academic-skills/ug-writing
• http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillshub/?id=250