5/20/2021 Explore and Explain - PRELIM - 2020_English for Academic and Professional Purposes - Father Saturnino Urios University

2020_English for Academic and Professional Purposes - Period ANDREW KIM MT 1:00-3:00 PM
PRELIM

Explore and Explain

Lesson 5: Conventions in Writing for Academic Purposes
Good academic writing is not a skill you are born with, but it is a skill you can learn. Writing is at the very heart of academic life. Good writing
makes a good student. In this lesson, you learn the different rules that govern academic writing.

Academic Style
An academic writing style is different from the way you would usually write, in the same way that a text to a friend is different to an email you would send at work, which is
different again to a journal or any other kind of writing. Here are the do's and don'ts of academic writing.

Voice in Academic Writing

When should you use passive voice and when should you use active voice. This video gives clear guidelines about these two constructions.

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Common Verb Tenses in Academic Writing

This video describes the four most common verb tenses used in academic writing.

When to use and not to use contractions?

In academic and business writing, we use full form instead of contractions, but in speaking we usually use contractions. This lesson describes the difference between the
two styles.

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Transition Strategies
To help readers see the connections between ideas, you need transitions, but not just one-word transitions. This video gives several techniques to add coherence to your
academic writing.

Hedging Language

It is often believed that academic writing, particularly scientific writing, is factual, simply to convey facts and information. However it is now recognised that an
important feature of academic writing is the concept of cautious language, often called "hedging" or "vague language". In other words, it is necessary to
make decisions about your stance on a particular subject, or the strength of the claims you are making. Different subjects prefer to do this in different ways.

Language used in hedging:

1. Introductory verbs: e.g. seem, tend, look like, appear to be, think, believe, doubt, be sure, indicate, suggest

2. Certain lexical verbs e.g. believe, assume, suggest

3. Certain modal verbs: e.g. will, must, would, may, might, could

4. Adverbs of frequency e.g. often, sometimes, usually

4. Modal adverbs e.g. certainly, definitely, clearly, probably, possibly, perhaps, conceivably,

5. Modal adjectives e.g. certain, definite, clear, probable, possible

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5/20/2021 Explore and Explain - PRELIM - 2020_English for Academic and Professional Purposes - Father Saturnino Urios University
6. Modal nouns e.g. assumption, possibility, probability

e.g. It could be the case that .

7. That clauses e.g. It might be suggested that .
e.g. There is every hope that .

e.g. It may be possible to obtain .

8. To-clause + adjective e.g. It is important to develop .
e.g. It is useful to study .

In this video for the NUST MISiS Academic Writing Center, English Language Fellow John Kotnarowski provides an introduction to the concept of hedging in academic
writing. Defining hedging strategies as tools that allow the writer/researcher to be what John Skelton calls “confidently uncertain”, the video defines the concept of hedging,
explains its importance in academic research writing and offers an overview of three common hedging strategies complete with examples.

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