Running head: ACADEMIC WRITER 1

How To Become An Effective Academic Writer

Melia Rebluud

NUAMES

How To Become An Effective Academic Writer

ACADEMIC WRITER 2

Academic writing is a style of writing used a lot in education or in research. This style of writing

is much more than your average writing. Researchers usually use this type of writing to display

their findings. In an educational situation, it is used when writing essays or even literature

reviews. Academic writing is more professional than other styles of writing. When you are doing

academic writings you aren’t as free with how you write. In a creative writing class or even just

a text message, you are writing more casually. The rules are different with Academic writing.

It takes a lot to be good at academic writing. There are some people who are lucky

enough to have academic writing come easily to them, but that isn’t always the case. You

would also want to be an effective academic writer, so it may seem difficult, but you can do it if

you follow a process. The three most important steps to becoming an effective academic writer

are quite simple. However, it just takes practice to make sure that you are doing it correctly.

The steps go in this order: research, make yourself a first draft, go through the editing process,

check for plagiarism and make sure your citations are correct. If you follow these steps you will

be on your way to becoming an effective academic writer.

The first step to becoming an effective academic writer is to research. This is important

because research is how you find extra information. When you are writing you can’t always use

your own information, you need to find other people’s opinions. For example, if you are writing

an argumentative paper, it helps to prove your point if you use more than just yourself. If you

add in other people’s opinions you make your argument stronger.

In the introduction reading, it talks about search strategies and tools. These are

important to know because it will help you find information. The strategies can help tackle how
ACADEMIC WRITER 3

you go about researching for information. The tools can help you when you use those

strategies. They all help you with finding information. I think that tools and strategies are great

because when you use them you are researching in a smarter way. The tools and strategies can

help you get exactly what you need without having to sit and go through dozens before finding

the right one.

When do your research you need to determine the appropriate scope of the project.

This would be determining what you actually need to be researching. For example, for my

literature review, my research question was based on the existence of vampires. When I am

determining the appropriate scope of the project, I would need to establish what I do and do

not need to focus on. I would need to focus on the evidence and the history rather than

werewolves, witches, and The Vampire Diaries. If I look for things that have to do with evidence

of vampire existence or the history of how the creature became known to the public it would

benefit me in the end. If I look for things like werewolves or witches it wouldn’t help me

because I would be looking for things that are completely different. Research is the most

important step. If you can find the correct information for your work, then all you have to worry

about is putting it together.

The second step in becoming an effective academic writer is making your first draft. This

seems like such a basic step, and obviously you can be a writer if you don’t write, but there is

more to it than one would think. When you are starting your rough draft you want to take a

second to think about what you are writing about. Once you start thinking about it, ideas will

start to come to you so you can actually start writing. When you start writing your first draft, it
ACADEMIC WRITER 4

is best if you let all your ideas out at once. Editing is not a part of this step. This step is just for

you to let out all of your initial thoughts.

The next step to becoming an effective academic writer is going through the editing

process. After you have let out all of your initial thoughts you need to go through and read

through your paper. When you are reading, you need to check for any errors. Whether it be

with punctuation or even grammar, you need to get those mistakes out of the way. Editing is

very important. It isn’t all about the technical stuff, you need to see if what you are saying

makes sense. It happens all the time when you are first writing out everything sometimes you

may type something that doesn’t really make sense. This is also a good time to check if you can

make it better, for example, you can see if there is a better way to word a sentence. You can

even find synonyms of words to make it better.

The fourth and final step is to check your citations and check for plagiarism. This is such

an important step. If your goal is to be an effective academic writer, you can’t plagiarize. There

are many rules for citations and plagiarism. When you are writing you need to establish what

format you are using. Once you establish what format you are using, you need to stick with it.

You can’t use APA in-text citations and have MLA references. There are specific guidelines and

rules that need to be followed for each of the different formats. The formats also change, so

you might want to watch out for that as well. An important thing to remember is to have

citations. You can’t have a quote, paraphrase, or even summarize people’s ideas without citing.

If you do that, it is considered plagiarism.

ACADEMIC WRITER 5

According to the book, there are several different types of plagiarism, three to be

specific. The first type is direct plagiarism. This is the most common, and most known type of

plagiarism. A good example of direct plagiarism would be copying something word for word

and not using quotations or citing it. The next type is self-plagiarism. Self- plagiarism is basically

recycling work. For example, if you used a paper for the current semester that you wrote in the

previous semester, it would be self-plagiarism. You are taking the work from yourself, and

saying that you had just recently written it. The last type of plagiarism is accidental plagiarism.

Accidental plagiarism is the most common and it occurs when people do not cite correctly.

Citations are very simple and very important. When writing your paper, look through and make

sure you didn’t forget anything. When you cite your sources in your work it can help strengthen

your argument. Also, when you use in-text citations it can help your readers to understand

what information came from which source. This is important for strengthening your argument

as I said before, you can strengthen your argument when you show that people are on the

same side as you and they have the same ideas.

Finally, it may be concluded that there are four main steps to becoming an effective

academic writer. The first step is researching, then writing your first draft, editing, and checking

your citations and checking for plagiarism. These steps are all important, and in personal

experience, these steps have worked for me just fine. The steps are actually simple if you tackle

them one at a time. Don’t half do the steps either, make sure you do them to the best of your

ability and you will be a very effective academic writer.

ACADEMIC WRITER 6

References

Information Navigator (n/a).

ACADEMIC WRITER 7