Advanced Academic Writing

This course aims at taking you a step further in familiarizing you with the various rules governing academic writing including punctuation, summaries, critical reviews, opinion editorial(s) (Op-Ed), citing sources, short and long papers, research papers, etc.
As you have learned, writing is necessary for all students in higher education. It is a process. It starts from understanding your task. It then goes on to doing the research and reading. The next stage is planning and writing various drafts. This is followed by proof-reading and editing. All this should lead to the final text.
In a nutshell, academic writing is a social exercise. Differently put, you write with an audience in mind. This means that you always write with a purpose: to inform, to explain, to persuade, to convince, etc. In other words, what you write is defined by the users in the social community as appropriate or inappropriate. In your case, these are professors, lecturers, examiners, your peers, or other students. This social practice has developed through centuries of use by practitioners. For that reason, it has to be learned by observation, study and experiment.
Academic writing in English is clearly defined by having an obvious audience; a clear purpose, either an exam question to answer or a research project to report on. It is also clearly structured.
Academic writing in English is linear. It starts at the beginning and finishes at the end, with every part contributing to the main line of argument, without digression or repetition. This line of argument must be made clear whatever kind of writing you are producing and you, the writer, are responsible for making this line of argument clear and presenting it in an orderly fashion so that the reader can follow.