Academic Writing

Class:11119 Name:马茜 Student ID:1101154059

The beauty of academic writing lies in both content and structure. A good topic can make the writing of great value, a rigorous structure can make it simple to understand. Generally, the academic writing should follow these steps below.

First, just like title is the microcosm of the paper, the abstract part can be regarded as the microcosm of Chapter one, especially the parts about purpose, results and significance of the study. The words in abstract part should not be repeated in preface part that followed. Usually, people get a general idea of the study after reading the brief introduction in abstract and preface parts.

Chapter 1 is the introduction of the study. After a leading paragraph of this part, it’s time to state need for the study. This part is the explanation paragraph about why you need to do this study in this field. Three points should be mentioned here: In this field, what has been achieved, what has not been achieved and the difference between previous studies and the one you want to do. Then it’s purpose (or purposes) of the study. You can express the aim of your study by using a sentence at the beginning. For instance, this study investigates/examines/discusses whether there exists any significant correlation between students’ pronunciation and their listening proficiency. Then you raise no more than 3 Research questions that will be answered in Chapter 4. The questions should be definite and can be answered with yes or no, so they are normally general questions. The hypotheses that followed are to show your attitude towards the former question, whether you reject or accept it. Then give definitions to terms in your study. After that, present the significance or values of the study. The last part in Chapter 1 is organization of the study.

Chapter 2 is Review of Literature, expanding need for study part in Chapter 1. Literature here refers to anything has been documented and published, even a movie or a piece of news can count in. The introduction part in Chapter 2 is actually restatement of the purpose, research question and hypothesis mentioned in Chapter 1. Then you can choose if it’s necessary to write historical background. Theoretical Background should contain theories related to your study, in which induction and deduction can be used. As for related studies, you can find studies related to your topic from currant Journal articles. In these 3 parts, the author should be well-informed, and the study of this issue should be well-grounded. At last, summarize this chapter and briefly introduce the next section in summary part.

Chapter 3 is Methodology, mainly talk about methods or procedures of the study. It can be regarded as a further explanation of Purpose (or Purposes) of the Study in Chapter 1. First, restate the purpose, research question, and hypothesis of Chapter 2 in introduction part. Then present research design of your study and state which kind of research did you choose. There are 3 kinds of research design: argumentative research, empirical research and literature research. Quantitative research and qualitative research can be used in empirical research. Quantitative research means doing deep analyze on one case without mass data, while qualitative research means gathering data from many cases and leading to a conclusion. Next is Sample and Sampling Procedures. A Sample is a subject in your research, more than 5 samples are subjects. Here you should make it clear why they are taken as sample, and describe your sampling procedures. In Instrumentation part, introduce the Instrument or Instruments you used in the research. Then describe the treatment you used in research in Treatment part. Remember to make your description step by step or round by round, and describe in what different ways you treat the different groups of sample. In Data Collection Procedures and Data analysis Procedures, state the statistics knowledge you used in your study, and describe how the data is collected and analyzed by you. Then present the limitation in your research, especially the limitation of Experimental results and Statistics. The last part in Chapter 3 is summary part, you should summarize this chapter and make a brief introduction to the next section.

Results of your research are mainly talked about in Chapter 4, which give a detailed explanation to research question and hypotheses in chapter 1. First, you should restate the purpose, research question, and hypothesis in introduction part. Next is results part, which is organized by research question and hypothesis. Then present your Case Data and answer research questions you raise before, so that you can come to a conclusion whether your hypothesis it accepted or rejected. At last, summarize chapter 4 and briefly introduce the next section in summary part.

Chapter 5 is Conclusions, Interpretations, and Implications. At the beginning, restate the purpose, research question, and hypothesis in introduction part. Then restate the general idea of Chapter 4 in conclusion part. Interpretation is the most important part in chapter 5, in which you can present your own idea. Actually, you can’t present your own idea until here. The last part is Implication. In implications for practice, you can state the influence of your study on practical issues. For instance, a study about the correlation between students’ pronunciation and their listening proficiency can help improve the teacher’s teaching methods. In implications for further research, you can point out the SHORTAGE OF your study or the problem you still want to solve to leave a research gap for latter researchers.

Once you choose a topic that worth researching, you should write the academic writing following these steps, then a great academic writing can be finished.