English for

Academic and
Professional
Purposes
Context: business & technical
Context: Academic Setting
fields
Language: impersonal Language: Personal
Audience: teachers, students,
Purposes: to Audience: professionals, government
members of the academe
inform and corporations, businessmen
Products: Academic essays, book persuade
reviews, literature reviews, research Products: business and technical
reports, project proposals, position reports, business correspondences
papers, reaction papers Language:
Formal Style and format: follows standard
Style and format: needs wide- structure and format of professional
range, field specific vocabulary, texts, objective, unemotional,
needs more citations and accurate, concise, straightforward,
referencing, follows standard of a needs few relevant citations
well-written academic text
Message: conveys academic Message: conveys business and
content technical content

Academic Professional
Most Essential Learning Competency

Differentiate the language used i

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Hello!
I am Ma'am Tital
Hope you'll learn from me today.

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Language Used in
Academic Writing
Lesson 1

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Don Roff
“
“A day of bad writing is always better than a day of no
writing.”

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Objectives
+ Determine language style in academic writing;
+ Differentiate language style used in academic texts
from various disciplines; and
+ Construct paragraphs using academic language.

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BIG CONCEPT
Academic writing is a challenging but satisfying act
ivity. It needs great preparations. One of the neces
sary preparations is on language use.
Academic writing requires academic language. Languag
e use is a qualifying component of a text to be cate
gorized as an academic text.

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What is Academic Language?
 represents the language demands of school (academics)
 includes language used in textbooks, in classrooms, on
tests, and in each discipline
 includes variety of formal language skills such as
vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, syntax and the likes

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What is Academic Language?
 can always be associated with academic disciplines
such as discourse features, grammatical
constructions across different language domains
 is generally quite formal, objective (impersonal)
and technical

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+ FORMAL + EXAMPLE/S
 Choose formal instead of informal  ‘somewhat’ - ‘a bit’, ‘insufficient’ -
vocabulary. ‘not enough’
 Avoid contractions.  did + not = didn't
 Avoid emotional language.  ‘wonderful’ or ‘terrible’, - ‘helpful’
or ‘problematic’.
 The government will increase the tax.
 Government is in talks of to increase
the tax rate in spite seeing the present
per capita situation and the below
poverty line statistics.

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+ FORMAL + EXAMPLE/S
 Use more cautious evaluations Instead  ‘proof’ or ‘wrong - ‘strong evidence’
of using absolute positives and or ‘less convincing
negatives.  put off, bring up
 Avoid two-word verbs  ASAP - as soon as possible
 Expanded terms over their  raining cats and dogs - raining very
abbreviated equivalents. heavily
 Avoid Colloquial words and
expressions and idiomatic expressions

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+ OBJECTIVE + EXAMPLE/S
 Move information around in the  ‘I believe the model is valid, based on
sentence to emphasize things and these findings’ - ‘These findings
ideas, instead of people and feelings. indicate that the model is valid’.
 Avoid evaluative words that are based  ‘amazing’ or ‘disappointment’-
on non-technical judgments and ‘valid’ or ‘did not demonstrate’
feelings.  ‘Parents who smoke are obviously
 Avoid intense or emotional abusing their children’ - ‘Secondhand
evaluative language. smoke has some harmful effects on
children’s health’

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+ OBJECTIVE + EXAMPLE/S
 Show caution about your views, or to  ‘I think secondhand smoke causes
allow room for others to disagree. cancer’ - ‘There is evidence to
 Find authoritative sources, such as support the possibility that
authors, researchers and theorists in secondhand smoke increases the risk
books or articles, who support your of cancer’.
point of view, and refer to them in  ‘Language is, in my view, clearly
your writing. something social’ - ‘As Halliday
(1973) argues, language is
intrinsically social’

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+ TECHNICAL + EXAMPLE/S
 You need to develop a large  discourse
vocabulary for the concepts specific to  Linguistics - identifies and describes
the discipline or specialization you’re written and spoken communication
writing for. To do this, take note of
terminology used by your lecturer and  Semantics – a conceptual
tutor, as well as in your readings. generalization of conversation
 Be careful about the meaning of  Inquiry and Social Practice – coded
technical terms. Often the same word or specialized vocabulary for
has a different meaning in another investigation (legal discourse,
discipline. religious discourse, etc)

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+ TECHNICAL + EXAMPLE/S
 Use the key categories and  In the discipline of Law, law is
relationships in your discipline, that separated into two types: common
is, the way information and ideas are law and statute law
organized into groups.

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Distinctive Attributes
of Academic
Language

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+ PRECISION + EXAMPLE/S
 facts, figures, graphs, illustrations are  “several workers” - “10 million
given precisely workers”
 The exactness and accuracy of the
data presented are visible

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+ EXPLICITNESS + ACCURACY
 writer makes sure that the various  Academic writing uses vocabulary
parts of the text are related to one and statistics accurately that conform
another, free from obscurity and easy to the correct value or standard.
to understand.  A writer chooses the appropriate
word; let us say “meeting, assembly,
gathering, and conference”.

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 Writer makes decisions about his/her stance
on a particular subject.
 The strength of the claims must be
considered.
 He/She also uses cautious language.
Language used in Hedging
Introductory Verbs Certain Lexical Verbs Certain Modal Verbs
+ seem, be sure + believe + will, must
+ tend, indicate + assume + would, may
+ look like + suggest + might, could
+ appear to be
+ think
+ believe
+ doubt

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Language used in Hedging
Adverbs of Frequency Modal Nouns That Clauses
+ often + assumption + It could be the case
+ sometimes + possibility that
+ usually + probability + It might be suggested
that
+ There is every hope
that

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Language used in Hedging
Modal Adverbs Modal Adjectives Phrases
+ Certainly + certain + on the whole
+ Definitely + definite + more or less
+ Clearly + clear
+ Probably + probable
+ Possibly + possible
+ perhaps
+ conceivably

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Try!
+ Modal Adverbs
Not Hedged:
Human expansion of the greenhouse effect is the caused of global warming.

Hedged:
It could be that human expansion of the greenhouse effect is the caused of global
warming.
Try!
+ Modal Adjectives
Not Hedged:
The study’s results are due to chance.

Hedged:
The study’s results are likely due to chance.
Try!
+ Adverbs
Not Hedged:
We could finish the design by Friday.

Hedged:
We could conceivably finish the design by Friday.
+ RESPONSIBILITY + ORGANIZATION
 Writer must be responsible for  Academic writing is well-organized
demonstrating and understanding of where the ideas are presented in a
any source text used. logical manner.
 All evidences and justifications are
provided to support the claims.
 the writer has to paraphrase and
summarize the read academic text and
acknowledge the source of ideas and
information through proper citations.

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Language used in
other disciplines

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Activity
+ Identify whether each term presented is
MATHEMATICS, BUSINESS, SOCIAL
SCIENCES,NATURAL SCIENCE or LITERATURE AND
THE ARTS.
+ Write your answers on your notebook
Activity
1. collateral 1. Business
2. square root 2. Mathematics
3. greater than 3. Mathematics
4. suicidal 4. Social Sciences (Psychology)
5. impulse 5. Natural Science
6. gothic 6. Literature and the Arts
7. hue 7. Literature and the Arts
8. remit 8. Business
9. communism 9. Social Sciences (Political Science)
10. social class 10. Social Sciences (Sociology)
 easily recognizable
 use of symbols in place words
 uses letters with special meanings like x, y and z
which are used to stand for a variable or the unknown
 notations, numbers and formulas are typical of math
texts
 you have to understand the social meanings that the discipline
of math has assigned to these symbols and expressions
 watch out for the use of ordinary words which could have
different meanings
 ex: universe
 In Stat, this word means the total count of the subjects under
study
 the use of linking verb “is”
 3 is the square root of 9
 3 is equals or is the same as the square root of 9
 5 is a prime number
 5 is an example of a prime number
 also has a special vocabulary (jargon)
 examples
 remit
 obligate
 loan
 collateral
 stocks
 tax collection system
 company car
 price list
 bulk buying
 learn some of the conventions, or established
practices of business writing such as familiarizing
the standard formats of business letters, memo,
minutes of a meeting, proposal, etc
 remember that business requires cordiality to
sustain it, to keep the customer
 Hence, even if the content of the communication is
negative - like a complaint - the communication
must still be polite
 polite expressions to use:
 “Could you please...”
 “We are extremely sorry...”
 “May I suggest...”
 “Thank you for your inquiry on...”
 “Please let us know...”
 requires knowledge of the jargons of its specific
disciplines
 Political Science
 Economics
 Sociology
 Psychology
 communism
 monarchy
 executive branch
 market
 profit
 equity
 migration
 social class
 discrimination
 depression
 suicidal
 personality
 graphs and tables are common features, therefore,
knowledge how to analyze graphic data is an
advantage
 physics, chemistry and biology
 technical terms, symbols and abbreviations are
common
 examples
 power
 pressure
 work
 impulse
 To help you understand many of the technical
terms, you have to know some prefixes (uni, semi,
multi), root words (bio, geo, derma), and suffixes
 diagrams and drawings
 the typical sentences in science texts are dense; that
is, they are information - heavy
 example
 Each nucleus is packed with information coded in
the form of a chemical called Deoxyribonucleic
Acid (DNA) and organized into groups called genes
which are arranged on thread-like structures, the
chromosomes.
 The lengthy and dense sentences found in science
texts suggest slow reading for comprehension and
retention of facts.
 also have their content-specific jargons
 examples
 gothic
 symbol
 balance
 mosaic
 hue
 dominant use of connotative language to describe
and convey content
 vivid language is used to create images and
impressions
 gives importance to language and structure due to
the value attached to a work's 'style' (creativity)
 in literature, texts may not have a one-to-one
correspondence between the situation it depicts and
reality
 literary texts even violate language rules
 unique use of language
Thanks!
Any questions?
You can find me at:
+@Kris Ta La (Facebook)
+kristalentrino@[Link]

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