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Academic writing

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Students give advice on academic writing

Khadine gives the student perspective and offers various tips to first year students on developing academic writing skills.

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Staff give advice on academic writing – p.1

Helen Drury from the Learning Centre gives advice on the challenges of and support available for academic writing skills.

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Staff give advice on academic writing – p.2

Helen Drury from the Learning Centre gives advice on strategies to use in academic writing and different writing genres.

There are many elements that contribute to the success of academic writing. These range from students allowing themselves enough time to do the planning, researching, reading, critical thinking and writing to understanding the question and structuring the essay (or report, case study, reflection) into a coherent piece of analytical work that adequately answers the question.

There are different genres of academic writing that are often related to the discipline that is being studied. One of the best ways to understand the genre that should be modelled is for students to refer to the academic papers that are being read in the subject being studied and to ask their lecturer or tutor for clarification. In the Faculty of Education and Social Work students will find that they will do a variety of tasks including writing essays, case studies, reports, and reflective writing.

Academic writing is very formal in style and uses a formal vocabulary. The formal structure that should be used helps to ensure that an academic argument is being supported. The better students become at structuring their work the better they become at giving a coherent academic argument.

Academic writing is a complex task and it is the mode in which many assessments will be judged and marked. The University's Learning Centre runs courses and provides resources on academic writing. There are also a number of online sites that students can use relevant to their area of study. These are all highly recommended for students to explore and they have been listed in the resources below.

Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism

Referencing and academic honesty is an important element of academic work. In essence, this means that through a formal system of referencing, students acknowledge the sources of the ideas and research that they are using in their work. The reason that referencing is done is because creating new knowledge is a process of building on the work of others. Referencing and acknowledging the sources of the ideas that are used is therefore considered to be ethical conduct and to show academic integrity and honesty. Because of this, students are required to comply to this principle. The University has a policy on academic dishonesty and plagiarism and this outlines the process and penalties that are incurred. However, there is also support to learn more about this via the resources listed below. In the Faculty of Education and Social Work the system of referencing used is called APA (American Psychological Association) referencing. However, you may find that other disciplines will use other referencing systems.

Strategies

The following is a summary of some of the strategies to consider in successful academic writing:

  • Use planning strategies. such as those in the Time Management section, to begin the process early and to plot the tasks that need to be done.
  • Analyse the question – identify key words such as task, content and limiting words - to help break the question down in order to understand what is required.
  • Before undertaking extensive reading do some preliminary work around how to answer the question based on pre-existing knowledge and the reading that has been done in the course – this will give some shape to the essay and indicate where to go with the research. It also helps to establish a preliminary position on the question.
  • Be strategic about the reading – start with the course reading list and use this as a basis to explore other readings that may be relevant. Use bibliographies found in readings to identify other relevant academic papers.
  • Begin writing the first draft early
  • Be systematic in notes and drafts about where the ideas have come from to avoid plagiarism and to make reference checking in the final draft easy.
  • If possible leave some space between the penultimate and final draft. The distance can help give clarity to the final edit.
  • Undertake a course on using Endnote with the library as using this program can help with the organisation of your references.
  • Schedule enough time to do a final edit and the reference list. Do not leave this until the last minute.

Resources at Sydney

Other resources