Download Basic Academic Writing Notes

Basic Academic Writing Notes
Or, Pitfalls College Freshman Just Can’t Seem To Avoid
There are five major pitfalls that freshman composition students usually fall into. The major
goal of the first unit is to engage students in sentence-level editing to avoid these pitfalls. Read on…
Pitfall #1: Informal Voice
Voice refers to person – first, second, or third. See the Pronoun Chart attachment listed on
Canvas.
First Person – informal
I, me, my, us, we, our
Second Person – informal,
You, your
address
Third Person – formal
He, She, It, They, Their, They’re
Getting person straight is a matter of remembering which pronouns belong to which voice, and avoiding
first and second person voice in academic writing. So, where’s the pitfall?
First, many assignments are delivered in 2nd person voice because the assignment is addressed
to the students: ‘explain your reaction to the movie,’ ‘do you believe American Idol exploits
teenagers?,’ do you think Stephen King reuses characters in his novels?,’ ‘what do you see as most
significant in relation to Constitutional changes coming out of the 82nd legislative session?’ Note that all
of these, from movies and TV to Congress, are all phrased in 2nd person because the instructor addresses
the assignment to the class. And what’s the normal way to respond to something addressed to you in
second person? With a first person response: ‘I liked the movie,’ ‘I don’t think American Idol exploits
anyone,’ ‘I don’t know if Stephen King reuses characters,’ and ‘I think Congress will….’ But this often
leads a student author to leave gaps in an essay.
For instance, the student author may not introduce or justify the topic in the introduction
paragraph because the essay is written as a response to the instructor who clearly knows what he/she
asked the student to write about; or, writing the essay as if it is a conversation existing within the class
only using statements such as, ‘when I read the assignment, I thought,’ or ‘the John Leo handout led me
to think that….
A first person voice response is the natural, default, conversational way people respond to 2nd
person address. The problem with this is that despite the voice the assignments are written or
articulated in, none of those assignments call for informal voice. The product to address those
assignments should still be written in third person, formal voice (meaning no I or you).
Pitfall #1 – assuming that informal voice in
an assignment, or an assignment addressed to you, means you
can write the essay as a first person response.
Pitfall #2: Opinion vs. Position
Most students have a common question after learning about Pitfall #1: ‘how on earth do I
answer any of those assignments without using I?’ After all, each example assignment above asks for
your opinion, doesn’t it? Well, here’s the long and short of it: formal voice is an opinion stated as a
position. That means rather than using informal voice, which places you in the subject of the sentence,
focus on the topic in the subject of the sentence.
For example, in response to ‘do you believe American Idol exploits teenagers?,’ rather than
responding with, ‘Yes, I think American Idol exploits everybody,’ drop the first person pronoun out of
the sentence subject and focus on the topic of discussion – the show. So the first person opinion, ‘Yes, I
think American Idol exploits everbody,’ becomes the formally phrased position statement: ‘American
Idol exploits everybody.’ The opinion doesn’t change; the way the opinion is articulated does.
Pitfall #2 – making the essay a narrative about yourself
or your experience because you used first person voice
rather than keeping something about the topic in the sentence subjects.
Pitfall #3: Verbs
Believe it or not there is one verb that most people use in approximately 75% of the sentences
they write: be. Now the verb may appear in any of its forms, but most likely the majority of sentences
have it: am, is, are, was, were, will be. To see more on this useful but dreadfully overused helping verb
see this useful Writing Commons webpage: http://writingcommons.org/collaborate/commoncomments/stylecc/grammar/519-avoid-unnecessary-to-be-verbs.
Be is not a bad verb (I used it in this sentence!). But, it is not an active verb; meaning it does not
convey a vivid action. Compare is to any number of verbs for proof: run, skip, dance, cry, scream, walk,
read, cartwheel, scamper, abuse, berate, exploit, get a dictionary and do more on your own. A verb is
the heart of a sentence. And if the majority of sentences in a paper rely on a verb without action (the
only action be expresses is a state of existence), then it is safe to say that the paper is dry, dull, even
boring. A word to the wise here: bored teacher grading papers = less than happy grades.
Moreover, better and more active verbs quite often hide right behind the helping verb ‘be,’ or
elsewhere in the sentence. Take this sentence for example:
The teacher is preparing notes for the class to read.
What’s the verb – is preparing. But isn’t prepare a much better active verb choice? So can the sentence
rest on that action without burying it behind the helping verb? More often than you think, yes!
The teacher prepares notes for the class to read.
Lesson: find the best active verb possible and make sure helping verbs are absolutely necessary.
Pitfall #3 – producing action-less, repetitively phrased and constructed sentences
because the real action-words are buried behind be verbs.
Pitfall #4: Passive Voice
One reason for or effect of weak verbs is writing in passive voice: emphasizing the receiver of
an action rather than the actor. See chapter 2 of the Clarity section in the Pocket Style Manual.
Passive voice deflates action because the thing or person performing the action is moved to the
end of the sentence. For example:
The tower was struck by lightening.
What’s the verb – was struck (note the helping verb burying the better action word?) Who or what
performed that action? Lightening. But is lightening at the start of the sentence? Is it in the subject of
the sentence? Nope – the person or thing who received the action rests in the subject. Active voice
would emphasize the actor, followed by the active verb:
Lightening struck the tower.
What’s different? A better verb without the helping be verb and an unnecessary preposition (of)
dropped entirely.
Passive voice can not only reduce action in a sentence; students unknowingly writing in passive
voice often leave out necessary information. Take this additional sample sentence for instance:
Therefore, all of the others in the movie are just portrayed as villains even though they
are not.
First – check the verb: ‘are just portrayed.’ Second, what’s the subject – is it the person or thing that
portrays? Nope! In fact, what is the person or thing that performs the action ‘portray’? What portrays
– most likely a movie or show or text – isn’t even in the sentence. So much like pitfall #1 causing gaps,
passive voice can lead an author to omit specifics, likely causing the instructor to write comments such
as: Who? What? Be specific. Vague.
Pitfall #4 – being a passive author and remaining unaware that you don’t always
identify the people or things (i.e. nouns) that add depth and specificity to your
sentences because you’re constructing passive voice sentences.
Pitfall#5: Prepositions Gone Wild
Weak verbs and passive voice most often lead to unnecessary prepositions and prepositional
phrases in a sentence because the author has to work harder and string the sentence out in length in
order to get everything in it. And quite often, prepositions are repeated in a sentence as a writer tries to
work the thought out of his or her mind. Take this sentence, for instance:
There are many films in which a secondary evil character leaves more of a vivid lingering
image in the mind of the movie-goer.
Notice the same prepositions popping up: in and of. Why?
Prepositional phrases are modifying phrases – they act as an adjective or an adverb, meaning
the phrases modifies a noun or a verb. But as in the sentence above, writers often use prepositional
phrases instead of a simple adjective or adverb. In other words, the sentence gets longer because the
author uses additional words rather than utilizing certain words in the part of speech that fits its
purpose in the sentence. And the result is what’s seen in the above sentence: duplicated prepositions
and multiple prepositional phrases stacked up: 1. In which a secondary evil character, 2. Of a vivid
lingering image. 3. In the mind 4. Of the movie-goer.
Better choice – figure out what the phrases modify and use the descriptive element as an
adjective or adverb: And while we’re at it, why not make sure the sentence starts with a noun as the
subject and features the best verb word, too? Both of those are already in the sentence - just buried
behind a pronoun and a be verb:
Many secondary evil film characters leave a more vivid lingering image in the moviegoer’s mind.
Result: concise, more accurate, active voice, fewer prepositions, and more descriptive, all at the same
time.
Pitfall #5 – Not taking time in the writing process to edit so that you can improve
your point while also reducing length and phrasing not necessarily necessary in the
sentences.
Avoiding these five pitfalls drastically improves writing style, rhythm, and sophistication. Remember
this: editing improves writing. That means editing work begins after the writing – so consider this the
motto from this point forward:
You must write something in order to work on your writing.
So consider most things you write as first drafts. Once the draft is on screen or on paper, now the work
begins:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Is the sentence subject a noun and not an informal pronoun?
Is formal voice consistent through the sentence?
Does the sentence feature an active verb?
Does the sentence follow active voice structure – actor, action, receiver?
Can any prepositional phrases be better used as adjectives, adverbs or possessives?