Reading 4, Week 4
The reading this week was about how to write properly in an academic setting. The aim is to have a hypothesis and a conclusion based on evidence pulled from reliable sources. Nobody is reading to hear an opinion, they want facts backed up by evidence. The way we achieve this is by citing sources whenever relevant info such as a statistic is mentioned.
The first step in a piece of academic writing is to state a conclusion in the opening paragraph so people know what the piece is about. next we support our argument with a variety of evidence that has been gathered.avoid quoting word for word as that doesn't show you've understood what you're citing and there's no point reading my paper if all I do is talk about other papers.
Next you must provide detail, you want there to be a very clear conclusion reached in the paper. Achieve this by quoting other papers and paraphrasing what others have said on the topic at hand. Summarizing things in a short sentence or two is helpful with this.
Don't be repetitive. No matter how interesting the topic at hand is, it will be boring if every sentence is 10 words or if you only quote people or only quote the same people etc. Avoid repeating yourself.
A good way to strengthen an argument is to summarize other papers/paragraphs from papers in a couple sentences. This shows why you have reached your conclusion and citing your sources is a very valuable tool in writing a good academic piece of writing.
