Developing Your Academic Writing
- Many students tend to worry that their academic work might not be of the required standard; and it’s true that a common problem with many students is that they tend to write in a very casual and informal manner, particularly at first. Generally speaking, assignment writing at university needs to be relatively ‘formal’ in tone, professional, well structured, as well as clear.
- It can take many months of hard work developing your writing skills to get to this ‘preferred level’ of writing. However, there are many resources and materials which can help you improve your writing to this desired standard. For help and information, take a look through the resources mentioned on the Learning Support page of this Business School website, as well as the recommended reading on this site also.
- As a general rule, look at the style and tone of the articles and journals you are reading in your subjects. Whilst you may not be able to (nor wish to) write in the same manner, trying to adopt some their features (such as formality, vocabulary use, professional tone and well referenced and properly formatted citations) will help your writing to sound and become more 'academic'.
- The UTS library has many useful texts on how to develop and better your academic writing skills. Search through the catalogue or ask a librarian. Many of these books include samples of academic essays, paragraphs, sentence structures and sample report writing which can give you a sense of how to develop your own academic writing skills.
- Look at some of the recommended texts in the Further Self Study Resources / Further Reading folder for more useful books to help you.
