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Using English for Academic Purposes
A Guide for Students in Higher Education


Academic Writing


Andy Gillett
School of Combined Studies
University of Hertfordshire
Hatfield, UK

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Writing is necessary for all students in higher education. It is a process. It starts from understanding your task. It then goes on to doing the research and reading. The next stage is planning and writing various drafts. This is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this should lead to the final text.

Academic writing is a social practice. By a social practice I mean that it is what people do together. This means that you always write with a readership in mind. You always write with a purpose: to explain, to persuade etc. It also means that what is right and wrong, appropriate or inappropriate is defined by the users in the social community. In your case these are other students, lecturers or examiners. There is nothing natural about the organisation and the way language is used in a scientific report, for example. It is as it is because that is the way it has developed through centuries of use by practitioners. For that reason it has to be learned. No-one speaks (or writes) academic English as a first language (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1994, p. 8). It must be learned by observation, study and experiment.

Academic writing is clearly defined by having a clear audience; a clear purpose, either an exam question to answer or a research project to report on. It is also cleary structured.