Definition

Academic writing refers to the scholarly works done to fulfill academic requirements. It includes undergraduate assignments, reports on research, or monographs based on new theoretical perspectives and interpretations.

As a University student or an academic writer, it is essential to develop your writing capabilities. This means being able to identify and utilize the different writing styles, planning and structuring your work properly, and arranging your information sources (references) appropriately.

The academic writing languages include:

• Formal,

• objective, and

• technical

  
  

There are 4 main academic writing types:

1. Descriptive

2. Analytical

3. Persuasive

4. Critical

Each one of these writing forms has unique language elements and purposes. Still, the academic assignment that you have might require that you apply more than just one writing type. An example of such is when writing a research paper. You may be required to do as follows:

• apply critical writing to explain the gap you discover when analyzing past studies, in the Literature Review section

• employ descriptive writing present the procedures you employed during data collection and analysis, under Methodology and Results sections

• use the analytical writing Discussion section to compare and contrast your findings and those of previous researchers whose work you reviewed

1. Descriptive Writing

This is the simplest of all these writing forms, and its aim is to present facts and other additional information that support the statements.

It is mostly used when writing research studies and report abstracts or summaries.

To determine if the assignment you have requires descriptive writing, look for the following keywords:

• define

• identify

• record

• summarise

• report

For example, the assignment question may go like this:

Read the passage and identify the factors that led to the escalation of the Shay Rebellion

OR

Please summarise the passage you read in Chapter 12 of the course textbook.