Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. You’ll encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics and be expected to write your essays, research papers, and dissertations in a literary style.

Academic writing follows the same writing process as other types of texts, but it has specific content, structure, and style conventions.

You will need to use more than one type in many academic texts. For example, in an empirical thesis:

  • you will use critical writing in the literature review to show where there is a gap or opportunity in the existing research.
  • the methods section will be primarily descriptive to summarise the methods used to collect and analyze information.
  • the results section will be primarily descriptive and analytical as you report on the data you collected.
  • the discussion section is more analytical, as you relate your findings to your research questions, and persuasive as you propose your interpretations of the findings.

Different types of academic writing include:

  1. abstract
  2. annotated bibliography
  3. academic journal
  4. article
  5. book report
  6. dissertation
  7. essay
  8. conference paper
  9. dissertation
  10. research proposal
  11. thesis
  12. textbook

By: Desi Indrawati

BINUS @Bandung