in Writing an academic style Academic writing tends to be authoritative and objective: the language is formal, technical and impersonal. Academic spoken English is also technical, but slightly less formal and impersonal. The features of spoken and written style can be placed on a continuum: spoken casual spoken features: interactive face to face language as action reflection spontaneous casual non-technical academic spoken written academic written non-interactive distanced language as
interactive face-to-face language as action & reflection mostly planned semi-formal to formal technical
planned formal technical
Casual spoken style is the kind of language you use in everyday situations, such as chatting with family and friends. Academic spoken style is used in teaching and learning situations at university, eg. in lectures and tutorial discussions. Academic writing is usually the most formal and is found in most written assignments and exams. In some (quite limited) academic contexts, writing in a less formal, spoken style is acceptable and even valued (e.g. in subjective writing where you have to describe feelings or personal experiences, such as in a reflective journal). However, in most academic contexts this is not the case: spoken style is devalued and considered inappropriate. For Linguistics 1005 an academic written style is required for your essay and other related assignments. You can be less formal with the short answers in the problem sets, particularly if personal interpretations are asked for.
Vocabulary in academic writing
There are two main kinds of vocabulary (words and phrases) that make academic writing distinctive: formal vocabulary and technical vocabulary.
Formal vocabulary
Formal vocabulary includes a number of words (such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, conjunctions) and phrases (such as idioms that are more formal than their colloquial spoken counterparts) that you see used in academic writing across academic disciplines. Verbs
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Contractions Generally, you do not contract verbs in academic style (but again this may depend on how strict your particular discipline is about this). That is: Someone who is illiterate basically doesn't (does not) have the knowledge to understand what they are voting for. Phrasal verbs Phrasal verbs are very common in spoken English. They are made up of a main verb followed by one or more prepositions. Usually, the phrasal verb can be substituted with a single verb. For instance, get by is a phrasal verb which has the same meaning as the formal verbs manage or cope. Typically, the meaning of phrasal verbs is not apparent from the component parts: e.g. put up with (= tolerate). This is one reason why academic writing tends to use more formal expressions with precise and transparent meanings. Notice that not all combinations of verb and preposition are colloquial, eg. invest in, differ from and combine with are formal. Colloquial phrasal verbs frequently contain common English verbs like take, make, go, come, put and get. Nouns Contractions Abbreviations of words tend to be informal, eg. TV for television. Adjectives (eg. big, good, bad, a lot of, etc.)
A big problem with Rogers' counselling methods is the length of time the therapy takes. A major problem with Rogers' counselling methods is the length of time the therapy takes.
Intensifiers
Discrimination isn't just in the workplace but is part and parcel of everyday life too. Discrimination does not exist only in the workplace but is a feature of everyday life also.
Conjunctions
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The hypothesis that this personality would be often involved in violent crimes was not supported, but at any rate the value of personality studies has been demonstrated from this research. The hypothesis that this personality would be often involved in violent crimes was not supported. However, the value of personality studies has been demonstrated from this research.
Idioms (colloquial language) Spoken language is liberally sprinkled with colloquial language and idioms which are less acceptable in more formal styles.
By and large, despite all the hype, the policy remains unchanged. Nonetheless, despite a considerable amount of attention, the policy remains unchanged.
Technical vocabulary, vocabulary
Technical like the content-specific vocabulary described earlier, tends to be specific to different subjects and includes the specialised terms of each discipline, eg. psychology, linguistics, economics, etc. Many of these technical terms are relatively impenetrable to outsiders, eg. in linguistics: phonology, morphology, ergativity Other terms, referred to as semi-technical vocabulary, are more likely to be known to people outside the field, eg. text, discourse, verb, noun However, this semi-technical vocabulary usually has a slightly different meaning within the field than it does to those outside the field.
Being impersonal in academic writing
One of the most frequent comments that lecturers make about students writing is that it is too `personal'. You can avoid this by using specific grammatical strategies which will make your writing impersonal. There are several grammatical strategies which allow you to write in an impersonal style. The main one is voice.
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Active voice We provided each subject with a tape-recorder. Passive voice Each subject was provided with a tape-recorder.
Using the passive voice Passive voice is often used to background the person in the sentence who performs an action, eg. we in the previous example. When you change the voice of the sentence (eg. from active to passive), you have to be careful not to change the meaning of the sentence. In particular, you need to keep the same tense (past, present or future) or modality (can, will, must, etc). Using the `impersonal passive' voice
When analysing the different pronunciations of the sound, I found that older people used the front variant exclusively. (active) When the different pronunciations of the sound were analysed, it was found that older people used the front variant exclusively. (impersonal passive)
Often a change in one clause in the sentences leads to changes in other clauses, eg. analysing becomes were analysed in the example above. The following verbs are the most commonly used in the impersonal passive construction. Notice the auxiliary verbs used: the auxiliary has and the modal auxiliary can:
it has been found that ... it has been discovered that ... it has been learnt that ... it has been suggested that ... it has been argued that ... it has been decided that ... it can be / has been concluded that ... it can be seen that ... it can be argued that ...
Using the active voice Sometimes students are tempted to use a personal form when expressing an opinion ...