Self-Study Resources for Academic Writing and Reading
A. Genre-specific writing (e.g., problem-solution essay, literature review, abstract)
Useful for: | Link/Source | |
|---|---|---|
✓ Argumentative writing [undergraduate] | They Say I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, Graff & Birkenstein | |
✓ Research papers (problem-solution, data commentary, abstracts, methods), book reviews [graduate-level] | ||
✓ Literature review (e.g., organization, paraphrasing, citation, synthesis) | Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature Review, Feak & Swales | |
✓ Abstracts (conference presentations, research papers) | Abstracts and the Writing of Abstracts, Swales & Feak |
B. Discipline-specific writing
[Writing across the Curriculum (WAC) / Writing in the Disciplines (WID)]
Useful for: | Link/Source |
|---|---|
✓ Legal writing [introductory] | The Pre-Writing Handbook for Law Students: A Step-by-Step Guide, Graham & Felsenburg |
✓ Science research writing | |
✓ Science writing (e.g., structure, paragraphs, words/vocabulary) | Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature Review, Feak & Swales |
C. Flow in Writing
Useful for: | Link/Source |
|---|---|
✓ Improving the flow of writing (old-new information structure) | Academic Writing for Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills (pp. 30-36), Swales & Feak |
✓ Improving the flow of writing (examples/ exercises for old-new information structure) | https://student.unsw.edu.au/using-old-new-information-order-sentence , University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia |
D. Grammar
Useful for: | Link/Source |
|---|---|
✓ Grammar activities and examples of advanced academic writing (companion to Swales & Feak’s Academic Writing for Graduate Students) |
E. Citations
Useful for: | Link/Source |
|---|---|
✓ Source usage and citations in academic writing | https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html , Purdue OWL |
✓ Formal citation styles (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) |
F. Academic Vocabulary and Phrases
Useful for: | Link/Source |
|---|---|
✓ Language commonly found in published academic writing, organized by function | Academic Phrasebank, University of Manchester, UK. (online interactive version; downloadable PDF version) |
✓ Academic vocabulary options | |
✓ Academic collocations: Words frequently paired together
| |
✓ Formulaic language: ‘Chunks’ of words (short phrases) commonly found in academic writing | |
✓ Avoiding redundancy in writing: Free online thesaurus
| Online Thesaurus |