Fine tuning and editing

EAP Writing

1. Academic Writing for Graduate Students
Tutorial 6

2. Structure of this tutorial
-Fine tuning your work
-Editing
-Academic Writing and Culture

3. Fine-tuning
Academic Language Centre

4. Fine-tuning
This tutorial concentrates on:
-The consistency of your line of argument
-The support for your claims
-The logic behind your arguments
-Improving clarity and flow
-Writing more concise sentences
Academic Language Centre

5. Supporting claims
Evidence that supports your claims should be:
Clear
Accurate
Relevant
Credible
Significant

6. Critical thinking:
Make sure that you clearly distinguish
between
-facts and opinions
-certainties and uncertainties
both while you are reading and when you
are writing.
Academic Language Centre

7. Logical fallacies:
•Hasty generalisation (jumping to a conclusion, claim based
on too little evidence):
•Commercials in favour of unhealthy food should be
forbidden,  because they lead to a consumption-oriented
society and subsequently to overweight .
•Oversimplification (linking 2 events as if one caused the other
directly, whereas the causes may be more complex):
•Obesity leads to people becoming depressed.
 
•Inappropriate appeal to the reader / inappropriate tone
•Obesity costs an unnecessary amount of valuable health
care time, time  that could be better spent on curing other
diseases.
Academic Language Centre

8. Relative clauses:
There are two types of relative clauses:
1.Defining relative clauses, in which the
information that you give is essential
2.Non-defining relative clauses, in which the
information that you give is extra.
Compare:
My sister who lives in London is a musician.
My sister, who lives in London, is a musician.
Academic Language Centre

9. Relative clauses:
-Defining:
By 4.30, there was only one painting which /that
hadn’t been sold. (essential, no comma)
-Non-defining:
The train, which was already an hour late, broke
down again. (extra, commas used)
Academic Language Centre

10. Being concise:
Concise: short and clear, expressing what needs to be
said without unnecessary words
(Advanced Learners’ Dictionary)
Typical examples of unnecessary words:
•really
•quite
•basically
•totally
•completely
Academic Language Centre

11. Editing
Academic Language Centre

12. editing
Final check before submitting the paper:
-Think of a good title
-Argumentation check
-Vocabulary check (formal English)
-Grammar and spelling check (not everything
is picked up by a computer!)
-Bibliography
-Consistent lay-out
Academic Language Centre

13. Spelling checkers
-“Can we use a spelling checker?”
-Yes, however……….

14. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise
by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar (1992)
(also known as “Ode to a spell checker”)
“I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea…..

15. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (continued)
…….Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished inn it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew…….

16. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (continued)
…..A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime…………….”

17. Style Sheet (on BB-site)
-Font and font size.
-The line spacing
-The margins
-paragraphing
-Use of page numbers
-Personal details, name of tutor, word count etc.
-Title, footnotes, style of referencing Bibliography.

18. The title:
Titles often contain one or more of the
following elements:
-a reference to the main topic
-a reference to the aim of the author
-a reference to the conclusion
-the main topic as a question
-a general statement which is then refined
Academic Language Centre

19. nominalisation
Academic writers frequently use the noun
forms of verbs; rather than focusing on the
action (verb) they focus on the concept (noun).
Water hyacinths are rapidly spreading into drainage
systems and are restricting the rate at which the
water flows.(=verb)
The rapid spread of water hyacinths into drainage
systems is causing restrictions in the rate of water
flows.(=noun)
Academic Language Centre

20. Academic Writing and Culture
-Paragraph Structure
-Plagiarism in a cultural context

21. Linguistic differences
Languages differ in:
•Vocabulary
•Syntax
•Grammar
These are linguistic criteria

22. Rhetorical differences
-Sociologists and anthropologists: logic is a
cultural phenomenon
-Diversity in culture leads to diversity in logic
-Logic is not a universal phenomenon
-Logic is the basis of rhetoric, so rhetoric is
not universal either

23. Rhetoric and academic writing
-English: thought patterns evolved from
Platonic Aristotelian thought (ancient
Greece)
-Thought patterns are linear:
-Paragraph starts with a topic sentence;
-Subdivisions of topic statement;
-Each subdivision supported by
examples/illustrations;
-Goal: to develop idea in topic
statement, then relate that to rest of
essay.