The Language Features of Academic Texts
This set of self-study materials will enable you to improve your academic writing style and your ability to read academic texts. You will learn more about several typical language features of academic writing – what to include in your writing and what to avoid – and you will understand why academics write in this particular way. You will have the opportunity to practise strategies that help you build up your knowledge of academic vocabulary and, finally, you will be able to improve your academic writing by focusing on one particular language feature at a time.
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PART ONE - The Language Features of Academic Writing
TASK 1
Skim the texts A and B below and decide which one was taken from an academic research paper.
Learning what language features to include in your academic writing at university is a major step towards improving your academic writing style, but to achieve this you need to know what features to generally avoid. Extract B would not be accepted as an academic text because it contains too many non-academic language features. These features are listed below, but the examples of non-academic language taken from extract B are in the wrong place. Can you drag them next to the feature that describes them? 
Now you know the language features you should try to avoid in your academic writing this activity focuses on what you should try to include in your writing at university. Read extract A in more detail, identify the different language features that are typical of an academic writing style and type these into the box below. You don’t need to understand everything in the text to be able to do this. What you learned in Task Two should help you with this task, but if you get stuck, click on the hint buttons below to get some help.Click the tabs to show contents.
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