Developing Academic Style

Your students will need to develop an academic writing style that is appropriate for their discipline. Student writing can suffer from informality, poor expression, and a lack of awareness about  academic writing conventions.

Academic style involves expectations – which can vary between disciplines, and even between teachers. You won't be able to assume that your students will have already learned the particular style you're specifying. Conventions regarding particular aspects of academic writing can include:

• genre of writing (For example, does your discipline require the writing of essays, reports, reflective journals, case studies, statistical analyses, or other types of written work?)
• level of formality (For example, is first-person writing accepted, and if so, in what specific contexts? What degree of personal expression is accepted?)
• discipline-specific terminology and phrasing (Are there terms that are used in characteristic or unique ways in the discipline? Is there an expected way for results to be presented and expressed?)
• citation style (Is there a designated citation format?  What types of assertions must be supported with citations?)
• formatting (What are the conventions regarding headings, bullet points, spacing, indented quotations, spelling, and punctuation?)

Your students will need to know what's expected of them in all these areas. 

Strategies

With all the potential variations in academic style in mind, how can you encourage your students to write in an appropriate style for your discipline without significantly increasing your own workload?

• First, clarify your own thoughts about what you mean by academic style in your discipline. Reflect on how you acquired the accepted writing style of your discipline. Remember, it probably didn't happen overnight. How did you develop your style? How long did the process take? What kind of academic writing is valued in your discipline? Communicate this to your students early in the course.
• Does your school or faculty have clear guidelines on appropriate formats and language style for assignments? Are there authentic student model assignments or examples for students to consult? Circulate them or direct your students to them.
• Provide authentic examples of appropriate academic style from within your discipline. Ask your colleagues for examples of good student assignments that demonstrate an appropriate style. With the permission of the authors, and taking suitable measures to protect their anonymity, use them to explain to your students what you require in written assignments.
• Provide – or encourage students to develop, as part of an online course – a glossary of discipline-specific terms that the students should understand and be able to use correctly by the end of the course. You might also want to recommend the use of discipline-specific dictionaries.
• Discuss academic style in lectures and tutorials. Tell students how to use their writing to show that they are members of the academic community and their particular discipline; discuss the use of appropriate genres and the level of formality you expect.
• Early in the course, as part of a lecture, tutorial or other lesson, analyse an example of inappropriate academic writing style. Explain and diiscuss why it is inappropriate to the discipline, or in a higher-education context. Ask the students to rewrite it in a more appropriate style, either in class or for homework, and give them feedback on their efforts (or have them pair up to give each other peer feedback).
• Throughout the course, encourage students to give each other feedback on draft assignments, focusing specifically on aspects of writing style as well as on content.

Case study

This UNSW case study discusses the development of an academic writing style in the discipline of law.