Academic writing

 

Let’s go deeper in the language learning !

 

As an Erasmus student we would notice that language is not just about social engagement, of course we have to deepen in the socioculural practices of the country we are living in but there are some issues that we won’t learn out in the streets. I’m talking about academic writing.

This is a very important area to learn about in our target language, because we usually learn faster what our collegues say in class, or what our new friends say when we hang out with them, even if it is more difficult than academic language , since it is constantly changing and it will be different depending on where our friends are from.

Academic language however, is a more generalised area and it is actually easier to understand. Usually, academic language contains a lot of latinism, so it is easier for foreing speaker to remember and to understand them. The tricky thing is that as foreing speakers we don’t realise the different registers of the language, we usually know less vocabulary and it is difficult to differentiate if it is academic or informal. Therefore the following tasks could help us to learn more about academic writing.

Task 1: Informality Replace the phrasal verbs in the sentences with a more appropriate verb from the list below.

1.  Researchers have been looking into the problem for 15 years. : investigating / examining/ exploring

1. This issue was brought up during the seminar. : discussed / highlighted / adressed
2. It is assumed that the management knows what is happening and will therefore step in if

there is a problem. : intervene / interrupt / act

4. Schools cannot altogether get rid of the problem of truancy. : eliminate/ erradicate
5. The number of staff has been cut down recently. : reduced
6. It was very difficult to find out exactly what happened. : discover / ascertain/determine
7. House prices have a tendency to go up and down. : vary
8. A potential solution was put forward two years ago. : proposed / suggested/ presented
9. The locals could not put up with the visitors from the city. : stand / endure/tolerate
10. The decline was brought about by cheap imports. : caused
11. The university is thinking about installing CCTV. : considering to
12. Sales are likely to drop off in the third quarter. : declaine
13. He went on speaking for over an hour. : continued to speak
14. The meeting was put off until December. : delayed/ postponed
15. The cinema was pulled down ten years ago. : demolished
16. People have cut down on their consumption of beef. : reduced their

 

Task 2: Informality

Use a more formal word or phrase to replace those in bold.

1. The reaction of the officials was sort of negative. :slightly
2. The economic outlook is nice. : positive
3. Car manufacturers are planning a get together to discuss their strategy. : a meeting
4. The resulting competition between countries is good. : favourable
5. The economy is affected by things that happen outside the country. : factors
6. She was given the sack because of her poor record. : fired
7. The examination results were super. : outstanding

 

Nevertheless , we shouldn’t just be careful with vocabulary, but also with the structure of our writing and we should also take into account that the academic writing is more nominalised, that means that we should use more nouns than verbs. All those little details would make our results in academical writing outstanding and we won’t have any problems to write our essays in our target language.