English for Academic and Professional Purposes Teacher: B.L.
Fuentes
FEATURES OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
Four Important Features of Language Use That You Need to Know.
Formality, Objectivity, Explicitness, and Caution
I. FORMALITY
Formality reflects your dignified stance in your writing as a member of the academic
community. This means that since your audience are fellow members of the academic
community, the language you use requires precision to make it a "legitimate" piece of academic
writing.
Formality can be achieved through the following ways:
1. Choosing expanded modal forms over contracted forms, such as using cannot instead
of can't, do not instead of don't.
2. Choosing one verb form over two-word verbs, such as damage in stead of mess up.
3. Choosing expanded terms over their abbreviated equivalents, such as soon as possible
instead of ASAP.
4. Avoiding colloquial/trite/idiomatic expressions, such as kind of like, as a matter of fact,
I need to go to the John.
II. OBJECTIVITY
Academic writing requires special knowledge and use of more complex language and
objectivity. This means that the writing must be impersonal and maintains a certain level of social
distance.
Objectivity can be achieved by:
1. Avoiding the use of personal pronouns such as you, I, and we.
Poor example: You need to conduct the experiment.
Improved version: The researchers need to conduct the experiment.
2. Avoiding rhetorical questions as it marks "closeness" with the reader, and constantly seeks
his/her attention.
Poor example: How can these problems be solved?
Improved version: Certain measures must be discovered to solve the problems.
3. Avoiding emotive language that shows biases and lessens objectivity.
Poor example: The investigators were very shocked to see the outcome of the tests.
Improved version: The investigators did not expect the results.
III. EXPLICITNESS
Academic writing demands the use of signposts that allow readers to trace the relationships
in the ports of a study.
If you intend to show a change in your line of argument, make it clear by using, however.
Example:
It is apparent that the government hopes to provide assistance to the poor. However,
giving dole outs to the "poorest of the poor" does not work in the long term.
Dr. Vicente F. Gustilo Memorial National High School – Senior High School 302730
Cabahug Street, Zone 2, Cadiz City, Negros Occidental PH 6121
English for Academic and Professional Purposes Teacher: B.L.Fuentes
FEATURES OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
The following phrases may be useful in making ideas explicit:
1. This is due to the...
A number of MERALCO consumers trooped to the City Hall to claim a PHP 500 cash
incentive. This is due to the Supreme Court ruling that overcharges must be returned to
the end users whose electric consumption for the April-May period was below 100kw/hr.
2. This resulted in...
With the Supreme Court ordering MERALCO to return overcharges to the end users,
government offices have been tapped to operate as claim centers. This resulted in a
number of MERALCO consumers trooping to the City Hall to claim the PHP 500.00 cash
incentive.
When two ideas seem the same, express each one clearly.
The study showed that eighty percent of the 200 participants involved in the study were
dissatisfied with the operations of MERALCO. Similarly, the data revealed that majority of
the participants were not aware of the charges imposed on them by MERALCO
If you intend to give extra information in your sentence, make it clear by writing "In addition..."
MERALCO has been operating as a business conglomerate involving foreign stakeholders
and independent power producers or IPP. In addition, MERALCO owns major IPPs
operating in the region.
If you are giving examples, do so explicitly by writing "For example..."
The MERALCO issue hos led to disputes between opposition and administration senators.
For example, those who have been labeled as against the president considered the issue
as the administration's way of avoiding the NBN-ZTE scandal
*NBN – National Broadband Network
*ZTE – Zhong Xing Telecommunication (a Chinese multinational telecommunications
equipment and systems company located in Shenzhen, China).
IV. CAUTION
Academic writing requires care since knowledge is built from proven theories and
concepts: Therefore, caution is needed to avoid sweeping generalizations. Consider the
following example:
Government officials are corrupt.
The statement is not completely true, and the rhetorical impact of the statement may be
misleading. The statement can be improved through the use of devices such as modal
verbs, adverbs, or verbs.
Improved versions:
Some government officials may be corrupt. (modal verb)
Corruption is commonly linked to some key government officials (adverb)
A number of government officials tend to be linked with cases of corruption. (verb)
Dr. Vicente F. Gustilo Memorial National High School – Senior High School 302730
Cabahug Street, Zone 2, Cadiz City, Negros Occidental PH 6121
English for Academic and Professional Purposes Teacher: B.L.Fuentes
FEATURES OF ACADEMIC LANGUAGE
In academic writing, caution needs to be observed in the following parts of your paper:
1. When a hypothesis needs to be tested
2. Drawing conclusions or predictions from your findings that may generalize certain
matters or may not be conclusive
3. Referencing others' work to build on your own paper
Below are some forms that you may use in observing caution in writing. Verbs indicating caution:
tends, suggests, appear to be, think, believe, doubt, indicate
Example:
The findings of the survey suggest that students who use the social networking in their
academic work tend to be more updated on recent developments in their respective
subjects.
Modal verbs: will, must, would, may, can, might, could
Example:
The observations of students' use of social networking sites may lead to the different
behaviors that manifest in real-life communication.
Adverbs of frequency: often, sometimes, usually
The essays that were given marks were usually high.
Since academic writing draws on previous writings done related to your topic (in the case
of research writing), it is important that creating knowledge is expressed through means that do
not lead to sweeping generalizations that may directly attack other writers' point of view.
If your results show something different from another author's ideas, there are possible ways
in writing these points:
1. The results contradict Meyer's findings
2. The results appear to be different from Meyer's findings
While both sentences essentially mean the same thing, sentence 1 expresses an explicit
difference between your findings and of Meyer's. This may be interpreted by readers as an
attempt to highlight your findings as superior compared to Meyer. On the other hand, sentence
2 shows that you are distancing yourself from your work (basing conclusions on what is observed)
and comparing it to previous works done by other researchers relating your contributions to
other ideas in the discipline. Remember that in academic writing, since you are part of a
community, it is important that you express ideas with openness, striking a balance between
being concise and cautious.
Dr. Vicente F. Gustilo Memorial National High School – Senior High School 302730
Cabahug Street, Zone 2, Cadiz City, Negros Occidental PH 6121
