Education

Tips for improving academic English: for natives and foreigners

Many students find academic English very difficult! How do you write a good paper in academic English?

The tips presented in this article will help you to solve this problem.

What is Academic English?

There are two types of language: general English and academic English (or English for Academic Purposes).

General English is understandable for everyone, it is constantly used in everyday life: when we go shopping, sit in a restaurant, ask for directions, and so on.

Academic English, on the other hand, is used in rather formal situations such as academic discussions, speeches, debates, interviews, and presentations. When writing in Academic English, students are expected to have excellent language skills and certain qualities, such as the ability to analyze arguments, critical thinking, and the ability to effectively justify their point of view.

Successful academic English learning always begins with a good base of general English. If we’re talking about foreigners when a child begins to learn a foreign language at an early age, and as early as middle school, the ability to write in academic English comes to the forefront.

Now that we understand the importance of Academic English, let’s try to figure out where the line is between Academic English and General English. Here are two examples, let’s try to distinguish one variant from the other:

Assignment One.

Write a 100-150 words text about some interesting incident.

Assignment Two.

Write a 300-500 words text on the following topic:

‘The government should spend more money on developing the arts instead of developing parks and gardens. Do you agree with this statement?’

For the first assignment, you simply need to create a descriptive text. For the second, you need to demonstrate your opinion on the problem and provide a list of arguments and examples to support it. Therein lies the specificity of the academic style.

How to develop the skills needed to write texts in academic English:

  1. Read as much as you can.

All the knowledge you gain from reading is reflected in the way you write. Through reading, you will gain a good general knowledge of many topics as well as develop your analytical skills.

After all, when a topic is truly engaging, you start reading the materials with passion and often clarify new words in the vocabulary, and as a result, this practice is very good for the vocabulary.

  1. Broaden your horizons

In academic English, every idea we have should have some clear reinforcement. For example, if you write three reasons why you don’t like something, then you should also write the arguments for each reason you’re relying on.

So we advise you to read journals in various humanities disciplines as often as possible and remember to write down the strong arguments for a particular point of view that are found there. This way, you start to feel much more confident when you have to make similar arguments in your writing.

  1. Write a lot to practice your skills in presenting your thoughts clearly and logically

Many people read a lot and memorize a lot of good words, but they don’t practice writing at all. So progress can be expected for a very long time. You should write a lot and with further correction of mistakes, only this way real growth happens. If you cannot check your mistakes by yourself, you can use different services. For example, you can go by the link edit my essay.  There’re a lot of professionals waiting for your request and hoping to please you with the work.

You should start from personal diaries, news, movie, and book reviews. The goal of such work is the ability to express one’s opinion and the ability to have a discussion. After all, these skills will always be needed, not only in academic papers.

 

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