Essay on How to become good at academic research writing
FOR STUDENTS
I want to tell you about the basic principles of writing academic papers. This knowledge will help you to establish yourself in publishing world, and you will be confident research writer. This article is built on conversations with a researcher whose academic writing is recognized and valued. Let’s learn step by step how to become skillful at academic research writing.
Consider your target audience
There are three main points that you need to think about before you start writing your academic research.
And first of all you need to determine your target audience. Many people know about this, but they often underestimate this aspect. If you have not determined who will be interested in your writing, then it will be very difficult to write.
It’s important to determine who your reader is before you start writing. In order to do this, think and answer to yourself a number of questions
1. Who is interested in the topic you work in?
2. Who are these people? What is their gender, age, social status?
3. What problems do they experience?
4. How do they perceive the world?
5. What articles would they read?
You can see that a good writer should be the good psychologist. The connection between the reader and writer is very important, another way how do they suppose to get your message?
Sometimes it is difficult to determine your target audience by age, social and financial situation. In some topics, this is not necessary. It is easier to combine their peculiarities and come up with general one word. For example, you can select a category such as housewives or businessmen, students or teachers. Among them, there may be people of different sex and age and with different levels of prosperity. But it becomes clear what they are doing, what they usually do and what problems they want to solve.
A good technique when approaching writing is to create a portrait of one typical reader. Take the time to describe such person in detail. After that, it will be much easier to write. You can already mentally see your reader and refer to them in the text.
Expand your background information to be certain about every detail
First of all, remember if you want to be a successful writer a lot of reading that what you need. While reading other authors pay attention to the details, be not just a reader try to perform duties of a reading expert. This will
help you to find different strategies used by the author. However, listen to your voice and create your own writing style.
From the time when Hemingway was writing till nowadays, there is bullet-proof advice – write every day 1000 words. This is very effective technique, even if you are busy and don’t have enough time to think carefully about the content of the writing- write, the ideas will come once you started to press the buttons. Everything you revised and found out about your topic will fit your writing. You know that without hard work and discipline it is difficult to be a top professional.
Find the motivation to start writing
Once you determined the target audience, set the topic and revised the useful information you can start writing a text. However, if you do not have a goal (why did you suddenly start writing your paper?). In this case the article would turn out to be empty and non-informative.
Why does it happen? Without a specific purpose, there is no motivation for writing. You need to know why you write this or that article? Then a bright motive will accompany creativity and will not allow quitting at the halfway. Do not forget about it.
Write just the way you think and get the success for your uniqueness
Read the best works on your chosen topic. Then, write a summary on one page. Now, you have the clear understanding of your topic. Start writing your own thoughts, sharing what has been already presented to the readers won’t make you a good writer. Don’t doubt your own ideas, if you already have started to write you definitely have your point that needs to be shared with others.
When your writing is complete, give it to your friends, parents, whoever can provide you with reasonable feedback. Ask them the following questions:
- Is everything clear?
- Should you cut out something?
- Did they get the main idea?
- Is the conclusion reveals the key point?
- Are there some parts that need to be explained in more detail?
After the feedback, I’m dead certain you will deliver a decent academic writing. And remember self-believe and hard work will always earn you success.