WHAT IS "ACADEMIC" WRITING?
According to L. Lennie Irvin, most people who arrive at college or university often fear the unknown and have misconceptions about what "Academic" Writing is. The author claims that after their freshman years, students have half-baked ideas about what they are doing when they write an essay. At the very worst, some of them have no clear idea at all.
L. Lennie Irvin points out the importance of developing a "writer´s sense" within the writing situation. In writing, learners are separated from the audience in place and time so they must create a context. As their words are silent, they need to use punctuation and word choice to communicate their tone. Furthermore, students need to develop researching skills, complex text reading ability, key disciplinary concepts understanding, and some strategies for synthesizing, analizing and responding critically to new information. This context must be physical, social and cultural.
The author explains that Academic Writing is an argument and also an analysis. First of all, learners support a presentation of a viewpoint to earn their audience´s consideration. With this in mind, an essay will be the result of an analysis which must be supported with clear evidence. An analysis involves engaging in an open inquiry where the answer is not known at the beginning, identifying meaningful parts of the topic and examining these separate parts and determining how they relate to each other. This relation constitutes students´ claim or thesis.
As regards Irvin, there are three kinds of writing assignments based upon the instructor´s degree of direction for the assignment. The first one is the Closed Writing Assignment, which asks you to determine from your own analysis the more valid of two claims. Another kind of writing assignment is The Semi-Open, which the author says, resembles a kind of archeological dig. It means that students have to dig the subject matter and see what they find in order to present an argument after a deep analysis. Finally, the Open Writing Assignment requires learners to decide the topic of the essay and the thesis (claim).
To conclude, if learners understand what they are doing and approach the writing task in a adequate way, then that is a step in the right direction to success with the academic writing. It is not easy, but with lot of thinking, hard work and practice, students will be able to shape and accomplish successful college essays. As Irvin says "You´ll write best when you write from both your head and your heart".
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