As a student, you’re probably very familiar with academic style. It’s a formal style of writing aimed at scholars and experts in a particular discipline (not just your professor). The essential elements of academic style include tone, organization, word choice, and sentence structure, and it’s used in various assignments including literature reviews, analyses, and research papers.
Two UWC-produced videos that offer advice regarding academic style:
0:00 - Academic style introduction
1:38 - Point of view: writing in first and third person and positioning yourself in relation to your academic audience
3:41 - Active v. passive voice: understanding the difference between them, and when and why to choose one over the other
7:16 - Information flow: helping readers to move from what they already know to what they need to know
0:00 - Objectivity: how to seem and be objective
3:33 - Strength of claims: avoiding generalizations and qualifying claims
5:28 - Verb choice: choosing precise, one-word, academic verbs
6:26 - Concision: eliminating wordiness and using the "paramedic method"
