HOW TO PRACTICE WRITING ACADEMIC ENGLISH? WHERE TO START?

Academic English is a distinct form of English used in study and research, which is demanding and complex.

Academic English has characteristics such as a style that is often formal and objective, expressed through the use of sentence patterns, grammar, and vocabulary in different forms of writing such as essays, reports, research articles, or summaries, each with its own standards of structure and organization, rarely found in spoken language.

This article will cover how to practice writing academic English. Where to start?

Improve your academic vocabulary through topic-based lessons

Learning academic vocabulary by topic is more interesting than memorizing vocabulary lists that are several pages long, which is mechanical and not very effective.

You should put vocabulary into specific contexts, not only will you remember the word more easily because you understand the context and topic of the lesson, but you will also learn how to use the word and the context in which the vocabulary is used to apply it in real life.

Academic lessons by topic are good examples of how to use academic vocabulary. First, skim through the lesson to get a general idea of the content. Then read it again to identify the academic vocabulary used and highlight any interesting or new vocabulary.

Write these words down in a notebook to review from time to time. After marking them, try to guess the meaning of the words based on the context, you will remember the words faster. Note that academic vocabulary often has a professional, formal and serious nuance.

Read more academic documents to recognize those words and get familiar with their usage. From there, your vocabulary will increase a lot.

Understanding writing style in academic English

With its formal tone, academic English often uses a large number of noun phrases, each of which contains a lot of important information. In terms of grammar, academic English requires a variety of sentence patterns, alternating between simple sentences, complex sentences, and multi-clause compound sentences.

In an essay: An essay needs to be presented systematically and logically, with a title, divided into large and small sections and have enough parts such as a summary, introduction, conclusion, and references. Similar to Vietnamese theses, academic essays in terms of language often use simple grammar points but have complex sentence structures with many main and secondary parts.

It can be seen that academic essays are completely different from regular essays, requiring you to have studied and have a certain amount of academic English.

In citing references: If articles are written according to personal feelings, then formal articles such as theses, proofs, etc. need to follow the citation rules.

At the academic level of English, each sentence written must have a specific basis, absolutely avoid general sentences with popular knowledge, so when referring to research documents, books, citations and building an essay based on that, all must seriously use specialized English.

Academic English has its own rules to ensure that the meaning of a structure remains constant across all applications.

Standard grammar

To master this knowledge, you need to use standard grammar materials (Grammar style books). These materials will guide you through everything from capitalization and abbreviations to how to use commas and semicolons in sentences.

It also helps you determine what types of books, articles, research papers, and other sources you are allowed to use or cite in your essay writing. The most common grammar standards today are:

• APA (American Psychological Assocation): used mainly in theses, journalism, business or in social sciences (such as psychology, economics...)
• MLA (Modern Language Association): used mainly in articles about arts and culture.
• Chicago Manual: is one of the oldest and most complete standards. It is not widely used, but appears frequently in the fields of business, criminology, and history.

Read industry news

To practice writing academic English, you need to read many English books, newspapers, and documents to get familiar with how to use a variety of vocabulary and sentence patterns in essays.

Moreover, use grammar and vocabulary continuously and persistently to supplement your knowledge for essays. Because the main purpose of professional academic English is to support research work, write essays to reap great achievements in the future, in many new positions and create new products based on existing knowledge.

Academic English is also used in professional working environments. Therefore, you can read more specialized news in English. Famous news channels such as BBC, CNN, VOA, TED will provide you with many articles on different specialties.

It is a great source of material for you to learn academic vocabulary and also a very effective way to learn English through newspapers. Read the news carefully, use a dictionary to look up unknown vocabulary and take notes.

Moreover, the news here updates events every day, the vocabulary used will be used a lot in the series of articles, repeating new words to help you remember better.

Besides, learning words through news also helps you create the habit of appropriate context for words, helps you have the reflex to choose words in certain contexts and is convenient for learning specialized English communication.

Use a dedicated dictionary

You often use a dictionary to learn English, why not take advantage of this dictionary to improve your vocabulary by using a thesaurus. The nature of academic vocabulary is sometimes academic expressions of words we already know.

So you can find academic vocabulary in the list of synonyms in the dictionary. Although this method will sometimes overwhelm you with too many new words at once, it is a way to help you at least have a little feeling for the vocabulary you have not encountered. Then, every time you read academic documents, you will encounter those vocabulary again and remember them more easily.

So, where is a good place to learn academic English to improve yourself? The advanced English course at Etest that takes students as the standard can help you.

Take some writing courses at a center specializing in studying abroad.

Academic English is a special type of language used in universities and research institutes, as well as in specific jobs related to academic disciplines.

So, to start trying your hand at Academic English, your level should be at intermediate or advanced level, and you should have a solid foundation in grammar and vocabulary.

You may also realize that academic English requires a significant investment of both time and money, so self-study is almost impossible or learners must have solid knowledge and perseverance.

Therefore, where to study academic English well is also something that many people consider to have a good preparation of academic English foundation from the beginning, both saving costs and being more confident and successful when studying abroad.

You can take some academic English writing courses at Etest English Center. These courses will guide you through the basics and essentials of academic writing, such as structure and experience. Under the guidance of a team of professional, well-trained native speakers, you will achieve optimal results in a short period of time.

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