Revlective Jornal 1 - What is Academic writing???

Last week was the first meeting in the academic writing course. This course is taught by the lecturer, Udi Samanhudi Ph.D. Last week, he explained some material about academic writing and also the initial introduction to lectures. There are 4 questions given regarding academic writing. First of all, I want to explain what is writing.

What is writing?

Nunan in Yuniati (2015) believes that writing is the act of creating ideas, thinking the way to express thoughts, and managing the concept into sentences or paragraphs to make them clear to a reader. Gaith, also in Yuniati (2015), said that writing is the process that passed by a writer to scour his ideas and thought and make their ideas are concrete.

Barli Bram defines writing as producing or reproducing a written message. It is an active process to organize and formulate the ideas on the paper. Therefore, before we write we need to determine what to write should have something meaningful to convey.  Writing is a process of organizing ideas, opinions, and feelings into written form. It is a complex activity with the control language both of the level of the sentences (grammatical, structure, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and later information) and beyond the sentence rank (organizing and integrating information into a cohesive and coherent paragraph or text). What we want to write should have something meaning to convey.  

The next is about academic writing

What is academic writing?

Academic writing is the kind of writing used in high school and college classes. Academic writing is different from creative writing, which is the kind of writing you do when you write stories. It is also different from personal writing, which is the kind of writing you do when you write letters or e-mails to your friends and family. Creative writing and personal writing are informal, so you may use slang, abbreviations, and incomplete sentences. However, academic writing is formal, so you should not use slang or contractions. Also, you should take care to write complete sentences and organize them in a certain way. Academic writing in English is probably different from academic writing in your native language. The words and grammar and also the way of organizing ideas are probably different from what you are used to. In fact, the English way of writing may seem clumsy, repetitive, and even impolite to you. Just remember that it is neither better nor worse than other ways; it is just different. This book will help you learn and practice the format, sentence structure, and organization appropriate for academic writing.  

According to Hartley in Brodhacker (2016), academic writing pertains to a specific form of depiction that professionals utilize to establish the intellectual specifications associated with their disciplines as well as their particular fields of expertise. Components of academic writing comprise of usage of the third-person point of view as opposed to the first-person point of view, a formal tone, a precise concentration on the study issue under examination, plus an exact and elaborate word choice. Similar to specific dialects acquired within various other fields, most notably, legislation, the law, or the practice of medicine, academic writing was created to show harmonized meaning regarding problematic methods or designs for a field of educational professionals.

 What is the characteristic of academic writing?

 Clear and limited focus. The focus of academic writing is clear and usually mentioned in the problem statement. The paragraphs in the academic essay are always related to the topic or focuses.

   Logical structure. All form of academic writing has a consistent structure. Academic writing always consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. The background, statements, and scope ever discussed in the introduction part. The supporting thoughts of the comments are addressed in the body paragraphs. The conclusion part, it is often talking about the arguments, the review of the main ideas, and the paper findings. 

    Evidence-based arguments. Academic writing requires well-informed discussions — statements in academic writing supported by evidence from many sources.

         Impersonal tone. Delivery of arguments in academic writing should contain logic and objective, and not use emotional or biased language. 

        The next is

       What common problems do most students encounter in dealing with academic writing?

    Plagiarism In academic writing, the work or idea of someone else can not be copied and presented in our paper.

  Grammatical Errors It can be said an excellent academic paper if it has no errors in terms of grammar, punctuation, language, or style.

    Lexical Difficulties The lexical difficulties are the difficulty in choosing words or the diction election, or any problem related to terms.

    Lack of Planning Any academic writing problems mostly occur because of the lack of planning. 

        And the last is 

       What about ‘digital’ writing? what do you understand about this?   

Digital writing is not simply a matter of learning about and integrating new digital tools into an unchanged repertoire of writing processes, practices, skills, and habits of mind. Digital writing is about the dramatic changes in the ecology of writing and communication and, indeed, what it means to write—to create and compose and share." Structuring Online Writing. Digital writing is more than just a skill; it is a means of interfacing with ideas and with the world, a mode of thinking and expressing in all grades and disciplines. Digital writing can help students develop critical thinking skills and support learning across all subject areas. 

Name : Arisya Putri 

Class  : 4 A

NIM   : 2223200027 

References 

Barly,Bram. Write Well: Improving Writing Skills.(Yogyakarta: Kanisius, 1995), p.23

Oshima, Alice, and Ann Hogue. Introduction to academic writing. Pearson/Longman, 2007.

Those were some of the questions and their answers regarding academic writing.

 thank you for reading guys!!!!