1 Chapter 1: What is Academic Writing?
“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”
– Kenneth Burke, Philosophy of the Literary Form (1941)
This course, English 101, is focused on building the necessary skills for writing in college. Since writing is linked with thinking, we will also be working on building strong critical thinking skills.
Join the Conversation
College level writing takes place within the broader context of academic writing. This means that the writing you do in college will join the academic conversation already going on about whatever topic you are writing about. That’s right. There is already an academic conversation happening about the ideas and issues you’ll write about in this class and any other college class you write in. Joining the academic conversation will require us to do some reading and develop our critical reading skills. It will also require us to figure out how to use sources in our writing, to demonstrate that we are knowledgeable about the broader academic conversation and build our authority as a writer.
When you write and join the academic conversation, your writing adds your unique and valuable perspective to the conversation. When you draft, revise, edit, and publish writing, you are putting your ideas out there for someone to read. In this class, it will only be myself and your classmates that are likely to read your writing, but this is practice for all the other writing you’ll do in academic contexts.
Audience in Academic Writing
The audience for our writing in this course will be a general academic one. We can assume this audience is skeptical and educated, but we can’t assume they have read our sources or will easily agree with us. Since they might not have read our sources, we need to set up the context and explain where quotes and ideas come from. Since they might not be inclined to agree with us, we need to provide evidence and reasoning to support our claims.
Just like any other genre of writing, academic writing has its own rules and best practices. Some of them are very rigid, like citation format. Others are up for debate, like if and when to use first person in academic writing. Some people will say never. Some will say sometimes. We’ll talk about that one more in chapter 2. When it comes to the best writing strategies for academic writing, because this is a beginners class, for the most part we will try to adhere closely to the standards of academic writing. And you will learn about these strategies throughout the chapters in this Writer’s Handbook. But we will also try to work toward you adapting and molding these writing strategies for your own purposes.
As you start practicing academic writing, you might feel stifled or restricted. But with practice, you’ll be able to manipulate and play with the structures and strategies of academic writing to make them fit your voice and style of writing. Despite the rules and best practices of academic writing that we will try to adhere to, your unique perspective and ideas are welcome and encouraged. To join the conversation, you’ll need to figure out how to communicate your ideas within the constraints of academic writing. When learning, it will feel as if you have to fit the writing style, but after you master the skill, you can mold it to fit your style.
Reading Strategies
Academic writing involves incorporating sources. Thus, there are some reading strategies that can help us read academically, which will set us up nicely to write with our sources.
Annotation
As you read, one of the best ways to stay engaged with whatever it is you are reading is to read with a pen or pencil in your hand. That way, you can note your own ideas and connections as you read. If you are reading on paper, you can take notes directly on the page you are reading. This is called annotating a reading. Annotation allows you to utilize underlining, arrows, etc. Annotation directly on the page you are reading puts your ideas in the closest proximity to the reading, and allows you the best engagement. But, of course, sometimes we are reading on a screen. Printing readings is always an option (you can even print these Writer’s Handbook chapters), but if that’s not possible, taking notes on a separate sheet of paper is a good second best option for annotating. Also, if for some reason you don’t want to write directly on the printed page (you are renting your textbook for example), you can use sticky notes to mark your ideas in your book.
Example of an annotated text:
Reading With and Against the Grain
For almost anything you read, you’ll bring your beliefs, ideas, and perspectives to your reading. Your unique perspective will often determine whether you are inclined to naturally read with the grain or against the grain for any given text. Reading with the grain means that you generally agree with the author and think what they write is true, valid, and/or valuable. Reading against the grain means that you are generally skeptical about what the author says and you think what they write is untruthful, invalid, and/or flawed.
The problem is that reading with or against the grain limits our understanding of a text. If we allow our already held beliefs to impact our ideas while we read, we may miss important new information that could develop our perspective. We should aim to approach reading with an open mind.
When we recognize that we are naturally reading with the grain or against the grain, we should resist that inclination. If we are inclined to read with the grain for a particular text, we should challenge our perspective by asking questions like: How could I argue against the author’s position? What is the author leaving out? How is the author’s position limited and/or flawed? If we are inclined to read against the grain for a particular text, we should challenge our perspective by asking questions like: How could I argue for the author’s position? What is the author getting right? What else could strengthen the author’s ideas?