This year, in my realm of academic writing and language, I did something I had never done before – I wrote and published a book ! Like many things in life, it was something I had thought about for a while but I kept procrastinating and finding any excuse not to actually make a start. However, once I began and saw progress, the rest of the book started to come together. In fact, the biggest headache was not content or language, it was the formatting of the document! The book has the same title as this post and contains an extensive range of academic language exercises for anyone studying at university click here to see .
Why Academic Language?
Well firstly, I think academic language is a neglected part of academic writing. This is often because the grading criteria of many university assignments focusses more on content rather than how effectively the content is expressed. This can then appear to mean that the academic language element takes a back seat. Obviously any content has to be clear or no marks can be awarded, but as you progress at university, you are expected to develop the way you write, and I do not think this happens as much as it should, and that students are not always concerned with doing this. Secondly (and in contrast) there are other students that do want to develop their university writing based on feedback from lecturers, which says they need to “improve their grammar” (or something similar). Yet when I see the academic writing, the grammar is not the issue, the issue is the vocabulary! So basically, not everyone seems to know what to do. Therefore, after many years of academic proofreading and academic tuition, I thought I should concentrate on producing something that is accessible for any student and also practical i.e. a book you can actually use in your academic assignments. Have I done this? Well I hope so.
www.neilacademictution.com
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