PRELIMINARIES OF READING AND WRITING FOR

ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL PURPOSES

THE ACADEMIC WRITING STYLE

Questions(preliminary activity)

1. What were the difficulties in witing instructions for our

audience?
2. Do you think the recepients of your instructions will safely
get to their destination? what difficulties do you think they
will encounter and how can these be adderessed?
3. If you can improve your set of directions, what revision
can you make?
Writing is a form of communication that is shaped by the
following factors:

1. Topic
2. Role
3. Purpose
4. Audience
 Think and Share!

Think of a SMS personal message in your social networking

account or e-mail that was missent to you. Reflect on the
details that made you realize that you were not the intended
recipient of the message.
Share your reflections in the class.
ASPECTS OF A PROFESSIONAL AND
ACDEMIC LANGGUAGE
1. FORMALITY - language you use requires precision to
make it legitimate.
• Choosing expanded model forms over contracted forms
such as cannot instead of can't.
• Choosing one verb form over two-word verb such as
damage instead of mess up.
• Choosing expande form over their abbreviated eivalents
such as as soon as possible instead of ASAP.
• Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expression expressions
such as kind of like.
2. OBJECTIVITY - writing must be impersonal and maintain
a certain level of social distance.
• Avoiding the use of personal pronouns such as you,I, and
we.
• Avoiding rhetorical questions such as it marks “closeness”
with the reader and constantly seeks his/her reflection
attention.
• Avoiding emotive language that shows biases and lessens
objectivity.
3. EXPLICITNESS
- Academic writing demands the use of signposts that allow
readers to trace the relationships in the parts of a study.
examples:
However
This is due to
This resulted in
Similarly ín addition to
For examples
4. CAUTION
Academic writing requires care since knowledge is built form
proven theories and concept. therefore, caution is needed to
avoid sweeping generalizaions.

Thus, having generalization can be improved through the

use of devices such as modal verbs, adverbs or verbs.
5. STRUCTURE
Aside from the language, sentenced need to be constructed
in such a way that they show a level complexity that reflects
the sophistication of an academic writer. combining ideas
effectively nominalization and passivation are some ways
to achieve structure fit for academic writing.

In combining ideas you need to avoid redundancy and at the

same time , make sure that ideas are packed effectively.
Examples:

The earthquake caused loss of life.

The earthquake caused massive poperty
damage.
The earthquake caused permanent changes in
the lanscape.
The earthquake was a disaster that caused
loss of life, property damage, and
permanent changes in landscape.
In nominalization, verbs are made central as they denote
action.
Examples:

The company created software to manage the transactions

succesfully.
Nominalization:
The creation of software to manage transactions was a
success.
The president announced a three-day holiday this
September.

Nominalization:

The president's announcement of three-day holiday this

September was released.
The mall distributed several free items to consumers in the
hope to boost sales.

Nominalization:
The distribution of several free items was done in the hope
to boost sales.
In passive construction (passivization), the results of
actions are highlighted.
In acaedemic writing since the writer of the paper is
presumed to have done the collection and analysis of
data, it is understood that all the results of the actions
are a product of the writer's work.
Examples:

The researcher conducted experiments to validate the

hypothesis.

Experiments were conducted to validate hypothesis.

An engineer built sa saltwater lamp to help communities with
no electricity.

Passivization:
A saltwater lamp was built to help the communities with no
elecetricitty.