There is almost no possible way to escape academic writing both at university and college. As professors continuously declare the importance of this type of academic assignment, students become more and more frustrated when coping with numerous writing assignments. However, academic writing is not that hard and complicated, unless you really hate the subject, when you know how to approach it. In this article, we will try to help you manage your time and improve writing skills, and possibly even become an A-level student.
Why Academic Writing Requires So Much Effort
Just as in any other field, if one wants to succeed, he or she should put some effort. Unless you really do not have the time or desire to write it by yourself and prefer to outsource to www.edubirdie.com, there is not much effort required. The effort, in case of academic research and papers, means spending hours in libraries reading and analyzing articles, searching online for relevant studies or cases, and later turning all these ideas into an insightful academic piece.
Since writing a paper is nothing like preparing an Instagram or blog post, students have to acquire certain skills to master such assignments without much effort. Despite the ever-increasing discussion of how burdensome essays became for students, they constitute a major part of students’ competencies upon graduation and also possess value for scientific research.
Tips to Nail Academic Writing
To become an essay master, one may simply follow the instructions below:
• know your audience: not every paper is to stay in the professor’s folder, some will then be published and thus will see a larger audience. That is why it is worth deciding on a target audience and try to compose text understandable and readable by them;
• do your research: however time-consuming and difficult it is, this step is inevitable and necessary to properly understand the topic and examine the issue thoroughly;
• define your point: without a statement, hypothesis, or opinion, an essay is useless. There should always be something to defend, explore and expand on in your paper.
• support what you state: in academic writing, no assumptions are allowed. Prove everything you say either with the already conducted researches or your own data and their analysis;
• use academic language: try to follow a specific style and format in order to deliver an easily readable piece. Create your own academic writing vocabulary or set of words and use them accordingly.
Sometimes essay writing helps to actually formulate one’s position regarding an issue owing to an extensive research carried out before. Without having read a number of sources one is likely to build his or her assumptions on personal experience or some word of mouth thought and thus will bring bias into the scientific piece. That is why lecturers and professors emphasize the role of essays in the development of critical thinking skills and ability to present strong arguments.
For some, it seems that writing brings writing skills only which will never be used after university. This is, however, a wrong belief as academic writing teaches us much more than simply combining letters into the texts having any meaning. In the modern times, ability to analyze and think critically is one of the most valuable competencies seeked in employees and essay writing equips you with this.
Among other skills acquired in the course of the university and especially from the perspective of academic writing are:
• expressing one’s opinion in a clear and concise way;
• language skills, especially for non-native writing in lingua franca English;
• research skills when it comes to extensive desktop research or even conduction of scientific experiments;
• data analysis skills which may include the use of an advanced software like STATISTA;
• creative skills;
• organization skills when it comes to text composition and illustration of cause-effect relationships;
• management skills as this supplement almost anything you do at university.
All in all, traditional education as well as the scientific environment is unlikely to refuse the common education methods like academic writing in future. For students not to suffer from such a ‘cruelty’ on the part of an academic staff, it is worth getting to know the above-mentioned tips and tricks and applying them. There is nothing difficult in doing a research or presenting ideas in a clear and concise way once you know how to do it easier. In the end, practice makes perfect.
