By Micaela Belén Ferreira dos Passos

1. Advice on Academic Writing
College: ISFD°41
Subject: Prácticas Discursivas de la Comunicación Escrita IV
Teacher: Stella Maris Saubidet Oyhamburu
Student: Micaela Belén Ferreira dos Passos
Date: 24/5

2. Index
➥ Some General Advice on Academic Essay-Writing………………….…………………...3
➥ Successful methods of composing an essay………………………………….……………..4
➥ The Transition from High School to University Writing…………………….…………5
➥ Essay characteristics…………………………………………………………………………………6
➥ Argumentative essays……………………………………………………………………………….7
➥ Organizing an Essay…………………………………………………………………………………8
➥ Myths about Thesis Statements………………………………………………………………...9
➥ Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing………………………………………………….11
➥ Taking Notes from Research Reading………………………………………………………..12
➥ Standard Documentation Formats…………………………………………………………….13
➥ Specific Types of Writing……………………..…………………………………………………..14
➥ Revising and Editing………………………………………………………………………………..16
➥ Using the Computer to Improve Your Writing……………………………………..…….18
➥ Using articles…………………………………………………………………………………………..19
➥ A useful set of rules for using articles……….……………………..………………………..20
➥ Bibliography………………..………………………………………………………………………….21

3. General Advice on Academic Essay-Writing
An essay should have an argument. It should answer a question or a
few related questions. It should try to prove something by reasoning and
evidence, especially including apt examples and confirming citations from
any particular text or sources your argument involves.
Your first effort should be to formulate as exactly as possible the
questions you will seek to answer in your essay. Next, develop by
thinking, reading, and jotting a provisional thesis or hypothesis.
The essay’s organization should be designed to present your argument
clearly and persuasively.

4. Successful methods of composing an essay:
1. They start writing early as a means of exploration and discovery.
2. They don’t try to write an essay from beginning to end, but rather write
what seems readiest to be written, even if they’re not sure whether or how
it will fit in.
3. Despite writing so freely, they keep the essay’s overall purpose and
organization in mind, amending them as drafting proceeds.
4. They revise extensively, attending to the whole essay and draft and
redraft.
5. Once they have a fairly complete and well-organized draft, they revise
sentences, with special attention to transitions.

5. The Transition from High School
to University Writing
University writing encourages critical
thinking and discourages formulas and
repetition.
It provides freedom for you to come up with
your own way of structuring your argument. It
also offers discipline-specific guidelines for
approaching written work and rewards you for
engaging in analysis.

6. Essay characteristics:
The essay structure can have as many paragraphs as needed.
Paragraphs will be clearer and more coherent if they begin with
a topic sentence that sums up the main point of the paragraph.
The opening paragraph often ends in a thesis statement, but not
every essay needs one.
The introduction should raise the essay topic or question as
soon as possible in specific and concrete terms.
The conclusion should do more than merely summarize what
you have already done in the paper.

7. Argumentative essays
should be supported by
evidence from your sources.
Professors are concerned
with your ideas and your
writing and expect you to
submit your essays with an
appropriate presentation, in
a plain format with no fancy
fonts, colours, title pages,
and binders.

8. Organizing an Essay
The best time to think about how to organize your paper is
during the pre-writing stage because it allows you to pay more
attention to sentence-level issues when you sit down to write
your paper.
When you begin planning, ask the following questions:
1. What type of essay am I going to be writing?
2. Does it belong to a specific genre?
Most university essays are argumentative, and there is no set
pattern for the shape of an argumentative essay. You must be
flexible and you must rely on your wits to convince your reader
of the validity of your position.

9. Myths about Thesis Statements:
Every paper requires one. Assignments that ask you to
write personal responses or to explore a subject don’t want
you to seem to pre-judge the issues. Essays of literary
interpretation often want you to be aware of many effects
rather than seeming to box yourself into one view of the
text.
A thesis statement must come at the end of the first
paragraph. This is a natural position for a statement of
focus, but it’s not the only one. Some theses can be stated
in the opening sentences of an essay; others need a
paragraph or two of introduction; others can’t be fully
formulated until the end.

10. A thesis statement must be one sentence in length, no matter how
many clauses it contains. Clear writing is more important than rules like
these. Use two or three sentences if you need them. A complex
argument may require a whole tightly-knit paragraph to make its initial
statement of position.
You can’t start writing an essay until you have a perfect thesis
statement. It may be advisable to draft a hypothesis or tentative thesis
statement near the start of a big project, but changing and refining a
thesis is a main task of thinking your way through your ideas as you
write a paper. And some essay projects need to explore the question in
depth without being locked in before they can provide even a tentative
answer.
A thesis statement must give three points of support. It should
indicate that the essay will explain and give evidence for its assertion,
but points don’t need to come in any specific number.

11. Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing
To read critically is to make judgements about how a text is argued. This is a
highly reflective skill requiring you to “stand back” and gain some distance from
the text you are reading.
Read looking for ways of thinking about the subject matter and not only for
information.
How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?
1. First determine the central claims or purpose of the text (its thesis).
2. Begin to make some judgements about context.
3. Distinguish the kinds of reasoning the text employs.
4. Examine the evidence (the supporting facts, examples, etc) the text
employs.
5. Critical reading may involve evaluation.

12. Taking Notes from Research Reading:
If you take notes efficiently, you can read with more
understanding and also save time and frustration when
you come to write your paper. These are three main
principles:
1. Know what kind of ideas you need to record so you will
know what to look for in your research reading.
2. Don’t write down too much, compress ideas in your
own words.
3. Label your notes intelligently. Record bibliographic
information in a master list when you begin looking at
each source.

13. Standard Documentation Formats
➽ Traditional Endnotes or Footnotes with Superscript Numbers
(humanities)
➽ MLA System: Parenthetical Author-Page References (humanities)
Author, Title of Source. Title of Container, Other Contributors, Version,
Number, Publisher, Publication Date, Location.
➽ APA System: Parenthetical Author-Date References (social sciences)
➽ Numbered Note Systems: citation-sequence system (sciences)
➽ Electronic Sources

14. Revising And Editing ➽ Start Large, End Small
Revision may mean changing the shape and reasoning in your
paper. It often means adding or deleting sentences and
paragraphs, shifting them around, and reshaping them as you
go.
1. First check whether you have fulfilled the intention of the
assignment. Revise your work to be sure you can say yes to
these questions:
-Have you performed the kind of thinking the assignment
sheet asked for?
-Have you used concepts and methods of reasoning discussed
in the course?
-Have you given adequate evidence for your argument or
interpretation?

15. 2. Then look at overall organization.
3. Now polish and edit your style by moving
to smaller matters such as word choice,
sentence structure, grammar, punctuation,
and spelling.
-Read passages aloud to see if you have
achieved the emphasis you want and be
sure to use spell check.

16. Specific Types of Writing
The Book Review or Article Critique
Writing an Annotated Bibliography
The Literature Review: A Few Tips
On Conducting It
The Abstract
The Comparative Essay
Writing about History
Writing about Literature
Writing a Philosophy Essay
Writing in the Sciences
How to Use Active Voice in the Sciences
Effective Admission Letters
Application Letters and Résumés
The Academic Proposal
Academic Proposals in Graduate
School
The Lab Report
Oral Presentations
Writing for the Public

17. Using the Computer to Improve Your Writing
You may be surprised how much power you gain by
doing nearly all your drafting on the computer:
1. You don’t have to create a clean or fully developed
text for your first draft. Try jotting down your
ideas as they come.
2. Try doing brainstorming on screen.

18. 3. Outlining is made easy too. You can use
Enter and Tab to set up an initial structure.
4. The computer can streamline the work of
documenting your sources.
5. Keep all your drafts in case you want to go
back to an earlier version.

19. Using articles
Articles are special modifiers that appear
before nouns or noun phrases. Like other
adjectives, they help clarify the meaning of
the noun in your sentence. There are only
two articles in the English language: the
and a (and its variant an, used before a
word that starts with a vowel sound).

20. A useful set of rules for using articles:
You can determine which article to place in front of
almost any noun by answering the following three
questions:
Is the noun countable or uncountable?
Is it singular or plural?
Is it definite or indefinite?

21. Bibliography:
● Silber, C. A. General Advice on Academic Essay-Writing. University of Toronto. Available
at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/general/general-advice/
● Vogan, V. & Plotnick, J. The Transition from High School to University Writing.
University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/general/transition-to-university/
● Plotnick, J. Organizing an Essay. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/organizing/
● Procter, M. Using Thesis Statements. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/planning/thesis-statements/
● Knott, D. Critical Reading Towards Critical Writing. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/critical-reading/

22. ● Procter, M. Taking Notes from Research Reading. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/researching/notes-from-research/
● Procter, M. Standard Documentation Formats. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/using-sources/documentation/
● Procter, M. Revising And Editing. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/revising-and-editing/
● Procter, M. Using the Computer to Improve Your Writing. University of Toronto.
Available at: https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/revising/using-the-computer/
● Plotnick, J. Using Articles. University of Toronto. Available at:
https://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/english-language/articles/