A Letter to Myself

I don’t pretend to be an expert on academic writing, so I hardly feel qualified to explain it to anyone else, let alone give tips on how to do it well.  Instead, I’ll attempt to give myself advice before my first essay of the year, and maybe one of you will find it interesting as well.

Dear self,

Best of luck on your first essay for the year! They say first impressions are hard to change, but no pressure.  In the hopes that this will help you knock it out of the park, here are some important components of academic writing.

In academic writing the most important thing is to convey your ideas effectively.  “Entering the conversation” involves connecting those ideas to existing pieces of work in order to share how your perspective is unique and show what new thoughts you can bring to the table.  Academic writing is not, as you formerly believed, merely an exercise to demonstrate what you have learned.  It involves showing how what you’ve learned matters, and why people should pay attention to it.  Ultimately, academic writing seeks to solve problems and expand human understanding, so each writer attempts to build upon the work of others to contribute their perspective to this overall goal.

An important part of this process is showing how your ideas fit into the already existing conversation.  Writers use various “moves” to demonstrate this, by showing how they agree, disagree, or otherwise respond to various sources they have used in their research.  From the templates found in They Say/ I Say to the sophisticated integration of personal anecdotes and supporting research found in The Shallows, I’ve seen that there are many ways to accomplish this.  All of them, however, use research as more than simply a way to back up one’s claims (you know you do this, so make sure you do more this time).  Research can be a launching point, a disagreement to clear up, a reinforcement of one’s own experiences, a misconception to address, an expert opinion to support one’s point, etc.  For example, one common move is to say “most people think _____, but according to ______ it’s really more like ______, and I agree.” This type of move incorporates many different sources, in instances of both agreement and disagreement.  This enables writers to establish their own opinion as well as how it fits in the opinions of others.

In addition to establishing how one fits in with the perspectives of others in the “conversation” of academic writing, it’s important to remember who we’re talking to, our audience.  Who we are trying to convince plays a large role in how we craft our arguments.  First graders understand arguments with simple language, where scientists require arguments with extensive evidence.  Audiences who already know about the topic may be insulted if it is presented in layman’s terms, but those unfamiliar with the topic may lose interest if lofty language is used.  In general, it’s important to know what your audience expects from you so you can understand how best to convince them that what you have to say matters.  Do they want to be entertained?  Enlightened?  Amused?  Do they need a problem solved? How much do they already know about my topic? These are the sort of questions to keep in mind throughout the writing process.  Addressing these effectively will make your writing much more interesting and convincing to your intended audience.

But all of these moves and considerations are only effective when you have a good topic for your writing.  What do I mean by a good topic?  I mean a topic that is specific enough to be adequately covered by your writing and that you can convince your readers is something they should care about (and of course, you should care about it too, otherwise this step is much more difficult).  Once you have a general topic, ask questions about it to figure out what angle you want to take in addressing it.  Evaluate these questions to see which ones are worth pursuing.  Then, once you establish your perspective, keep asking “so what?” until you get an answer that will make your readers care about it too.  Make sure that your topic holds significance with them, not just yourself.  Doing this will help you develop a specific problem, rather than a broad topic, that is much more manageable to tackle in this type of paper.

Keep these principles of academic writing in mind as you develop your essay so you can put your best paper forward!

Best wishes,

Me

P.S. Don’t procrastinate!