What Makes a Good Academic Writing?

Academic writing is not only one of the most important skills needed in schools but also useful in the workplace. Academic writing is a formal writing that focuses on specific subject through providing facts, examples, arguments, reasoning, opinions, story telling and so on. Due to its types of variety, some people find it difficult to write a good academic writing. In this connection, this article discusses what makes a good academic writing.

Good Linguistic Ability

No matter what language you are writing in, you need to possess a good language basics in order to write well. A good academic writing has the right spelling content, the right grammatical and punctuation usage. A piece of writing that contains a lot of spelling mistakes, grammatical and punctuation errors sounds awful regardless of how good the content is. Therefore, the first step you have to improve is to improve your language basics including wording, spelling, grammatical and punctuation usage.

Clear Introduction, Body and Conclusion

Good language basics are not enough to produce a good academic writing. It is compulsory to include a clear introduction and a clear thesis statement and then follow by clear examples, evidence and a conclusion.  These elements are just as important as your language basics. Possessing a good linguistic skill does not mean you can write academically well.

Your introduction must be clear, reflect to your topic and contain a thesis statement or a statement of purpose. However, you should make sure that your introduction says nothing about what you want to say in your body paragraph. It should be a bit general but related to your topic.

Unlike introduction and conclusion, body of your academic writing can be more than one paragraph depending on the types of writing you are writing. They should be well-organized clear and logical. Be sure that you start-with a topic sentence and then follow by a good example, evidence or reasoning. It is optional if you want to add a hook at the end of the body paragraph to grab your readers’ attentions.

Conclusion should be the last paragraph of your writing. It should be short, concise and reflective to what you have written in your whole writing. Instead of stating the exact same sentences as what you write in body paragraph, you ought to paraphrase the main ideas and try to sum them up briefly. You had better not mention any examples in your conclusion. Besides, if it is applicable, you also can add one or two sentences at the end of your conclusion as your personal opinion, recommendation or future expectation related to your topic.

Read more: Types of Academic Writing

Write in Simple Language

You do not need to use complicated words in your writing. Simple words or plain English are good enough as long as your content, examples, reasoning, paper organization and so on are good. Complicated words or complex sentences are sometimes difficult to understand for some readers. Therefore, writing in plain language is a better option.

Draft and Revise Your Writing

For a good academic writing, It is a good idea to write a draft first so that you can proofread and revise if necessary. While proofreading, you should make sure that all sentences are logically make sense. There are no spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. Do not forget to check punctuation as well!

Read more: How to Use Punctuation Properly

In the conclusion, there are four elements that make a good academic writing. First of all, you should obtain a good language basics. Second, the paper or essay must include clear introduction, well-organized body and well-brief conclusion. Third, it should be written in a simple language. Last but not least, it is recommended that you ought to write a draft and revise the article a few times before you publish your submit it to your teacher.

Read more: How to Improve Your Writing: 8 Tips