Friday, March 26, 2010

Reading An approach to academic writing(Swales)


After reading An Approach to Academic Writing
Before I was permitted in this graduate school, I had not seriously considered how to write academically and Whom to write for. But after reading this article, I became to know how many varieties I should keep for writing. According to Swales' article, there are many characteristics to consider for academic writing: Audience, Purpose, Organization, Style, Flow, Presentation. The most previous characteristic is to ponder audience. We should consider our audience' expectations and prior knowledge. And then purpose and strategy are connected with audience. Our purpose of writing depends on audience' levels of knowledge. Organization is next stage. One main strategy for academic writing is to organize information by way of problem-solution (Hoey 1983) This pattern includes four parts: Description of a situation, Identification of a problem, Description of a solution, Evaluation of the solution.
I think the next feature is very impressive. That is Style. We should consider many elements in this part. First, when we use verbs, it's a better way to select a single verb. Second, we must choose more academic and difficult words. Third, avoiding contractions is appropriate. Forth, limiting the use of "run on" expressions, such as "and so forth" and "etc." Fifth, we should avoid the use of direct questions. Finally the location of adverbs is within the verb.
When we consider style, we also have to think about a clear connection of our ideas. It's very important for readers to understand our writings. It's called flow.
Finally a correct presentation can give us pleasure. So we should consider some conditions: incorrect homophone, basic grammar errors, and misspelled words are those.
Swales' writing is very beneficial for novice-writers. Thus we should appreciate those ways in writing from now on before writing.
I think his description is basic. But we should keep the rules in detail. That's the reasonable way for academic writing.

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