Delving into academic writing: A question of practice and reflection.

Writing academically is not just a question of combining sentences to create pieces of writing showing the mastery of grammar and vocabulary; rather, it should be understood as a means to construct knowledge (Pintos, 2008). As Myles (2002) claims “[a]cademic writing requires conscious effort and much practice in composing, developing, and analyzing ideas”(p. 1). Hence, competence in the use of quotations, omissions, insertions, introductory phrases, in-text citations as well as reporting verbs seems to be crucial at the moment of producing interesting, reliable and not plagiarized pieces of writing. In doing so, a combination of critical reflection along with exposition of own ideas appropriately supported becomes fundamental.
When referring to somebody else’s words or ideas, Myles (2002) makes illustrating uses of the aspects mentioned above. Regarding in-text citations, it is possible to identify direct quotes where the phrase referred to is presented between inverted commas, followed by the author’s name, the year of publication and the page number between brackets. Example of this is a phrase claiming that writing “should not be viewed solely as an individually-oriented, inner-directed cognitive process, but as much as an acquired response to the discourse conventions…within particular communities” (Swales, 2002; as cited in Myles, 2002, p. 3). Besides, the use of an omission in the preceding quoted passage is possible to be identified by the presence of three full stops within the original phrase.
Continuing with the analysis of in-text citations, a variety of introductory phrases can be recognized. As their definition indicates, they should include the source accompanied by the main idea. To illustrate this, the following examples may account sufficiently well “[t]he Flower and Hayes (1980, 1981) module focuses on …” (Myles, 2002, p. 2); “[a]ccording to Mc Laughlin (1988)…” (Myles, 2002, p. 7); or “[a]s Yau (1991) points out…” (Myles, 2002, p. 13). Furthermore, the use of letter insertions can be exemplified by quotations like “[L]earners lack the necessary information…” (Myles, 2002, p. 7) or “[A]lthough we should not cripple…” (Myles, 2002, p. 13). As well as this, it is possible to identify a wide range of paraphrased citations such as “those who have difficulty … to help them in their L2 writing development (Sasaki & Hirose, 1996)” (Myles, 2002, p. 4).
Last but not least, the variations within the use of reporting verbs contributes to make Myles’s (2002) article more academic; not only because they help to avoid structure and vocabulary repetitions, but also because they convey different meanings. Thus, verbs like mention, propose, advocate, point out, argue, stress, state or claim all preceded by the original author’s name and the year of publication between brackets are just a few examples of them. The author’s selection of precise words allows the reader to recognize differences regarding the objectivity of the idea that follows.
All in all, composing texts in academic contexts appears to involve an information transformation process where knowing about the topic to communicate is not enough. It becomes essential to know how to present ideas efficiently as well as support them properly following an academic style. In other words, language proficiency proves to be insufficient if not accompanied by the mastery of writing skills. As Myles (2002) points out “the process of writing in an academic environment is challenging” (p. 12), but not impossible to be handled. Acquiring the basic principles required to develop into effective academic writers turns to be a question of deliberate practice and constant reflection (Myles, 2002).




















References

Myles, J. (2002). Second Language Writing and Research: The Writing Process and Error Analysis in Student Texts. TESEL-EJ, 6, 2, 2002. Queen’s University. Retrieved September 2009, from
http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730



Pintos, V. (2008) Unit 3: Academic writing. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved September 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=2730