Resource Strengthen Your Academic Writing

By Graduate Student Center

Want to strengthen your academic writing? Here are tips from The Weingarten Center to help you approach your writing intentionally.

  • Writing process: The writing process is often non-linear where we reevaluate our writing throughout
  • Early steps: Define and outline the following:
    • Main argument: purpose of your paper - what do you want the reader to walk away knowing;
    • Key terms: words & concepts you will need to define in your paper;
    • Scope: what you are writing about & how much of it;
    • Evidence: needed to support your argument
  • Researching:
    • Build reference list in real time by using a citation manager like Zotero or Mendeley;
    • Read deeply the papers that support your argument;
    • Snowballing citations: check bibliographies in relevant papers for additional sources;
    • Don’t cite non-academic sources such as Wikipedia
  • Paragraph structure:
    • First sentence (Tell me): arguments/statement/opinion;
    • Mid-sentences (Show me): sub-arguments/evidence/why the evidence supports the argument;
    • Final sentence (Tell me again): reiterate argument/statement/opinion
  • When to cite:
    • Scholarly alignment;
    • Credit for unique phrasing, idea, or wording;
    • Using 2-3+ words from another author in same order;
    • Providing official scholarly evidence or statements
  • How to cite:
    • Direct quote/paraphrasing;
    • Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab) citation rules for various forms of sources, can also autogenerate citations for you
  • How to end: If it is for a class, you can end by stating how relates to class/what you learned through research & writing or how you grew from the work. If it is for other academic writing, you can identify missing info (e.g., gaps in research/literature) or identify uses of the info you presented (e.g., implications for practice, industry & policy).

More resources:

They Say, I Say – book by Gerald Graff & Cathy Birkenstein

https://bit.ly/TheySayISayBook

Purdue OWL

https://owl.purdue.edu/

Citation management software

https://guides.library.upenn.edu/citationmgmt

Weingarten Resources

https://bit.ly/StudyTools-Strategies

Graduate Student Center Resources

https://gsc.upenn.edu/academic-writing