The key idea of education is to deepen and broaden students’ knowledge, to prepare students for professional activities, career paths, and, partially, life itself. Academic writing is a critically important part of this process, and here, we will analyze why.
Every year thousands of students complain about the necessity to write papers, deal with research, complex analytical work, “ridiculous” citing and formatting rules, and, of course, the deadlines. Every year professors complain about academic writing losing its value for students, about frauds and shallow thinking, about the Internet ruining the idea of a profound research for academic writing and many more things. However, the important part is, academic writing as a part of education is not going anywhere — fifty years from now students will keep complaining, and professors will keep giving new and new topics for research and analysis.
So, why is academic writing that important?
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Academic Writing as a Fundamental Part of the Educational Process
Academic writing has properties and characteristics that make it unique, make it differ from any other type of writing. Not everything you write while being in college or university is academic writing. For example, if you have a task to create a short story, you will be writing to succeed in your academic studies, but you won’t be performing academic writing. Here is what we are looking for in writing to consider it academic:
- Research. Academic writing is not just about your opinions, it is about the data, opinions of others respected people in your fields, etc. If you don’t need any research to write a well thought out paper, you are not working on an academic paper.
- Academic sources. Another trait of academic writing is being always limited in which sources you can use for research, which references you can use to support your argument. Those can be academic journals, books, textbooks, etc.
- Specific tone. Nowadays academic writing is getting less and less formal, but you still need to use specific ways and rules of expressing your thoughts. This rule is a key difference between academic and creative writing.
- Specific formatting. There are strict rules on how academic writing should be formatted, and if those rules are not followed, your paper does not get accepted. Simple as that. To comply with the requirements students need to follow the recent updates of academic citing and formatting styles – APA, MLA, Harvard, etc.
Getting back to the importance of academic writing in education, we should first of all pay attention to the following functions:
Academic writing develops research skills
The fundamental part of academic writing is research. Everything starts with it. It is a rare occasion when even the most creative idea should be put aside in case you cannot find evidence that will support your arguments. Doing research is valuable not only in the academic world, that is why academic writing is preparing you for what you have to face as a part of your job description. At first, you need to deal with research for your essays, later, for term papers, and, finally, for your dissertation. You get ready for writing the most complex assignments gradually, it enhances your learning process.
Academic writing strengthens analytical skills
When doing research you have to look through enormous amounts of information, data sources, arguments, opinions, often contradicting. You need to collect those pieces of evidence and later create something unified based on the sources you have researched. It is not an easy job. Here, your analytical skills come in handy. At first, writing simple essays, you learn how to see the most evident connections in materials you research. However, with experience, you learn how to analyze more and more information faster. It is another skill that stays useful once you leave college or university.
Academic writing enhances discipline
It is not a direct virtue, but it is how it works exactly. Academic writing is a multistep complex activity that requires you to be focused at many things at the same time, put some fun activities aside and write (with a deadline in mind). The more papers you write, the more you know about your strategies in dealing with complex tasks in a limited time frame.
Academic writing broadens the horizons
Academic writing is not a torture that was specifically invented to make students around the world suffer. It can be fun, interesting, of course, educational, and it broadens your horizons. Preparing an essay or research paper you have to deal with numerous sources. Maybe only 10-20% of them you will use for this paper, but others will form your understanding of the world just a little bit more.
Academic writing helps to standardize learning
Professors use academic writing as the most convenient tool to assess the learning abilities and the progress in a particular discipline. When you teach individually, you can use many forms of assessments, but when you teach a class, you need a standardized form to keep everything going. As academic writing unites analytical work, research, using knowledge acquired in class, it serves as a perfect tool.
How to Deal with Complex Academic Writing Assignments
With all its virtues, academic writing remains a complex process that takes time and energy, that can be exhausting and even too difficult from time to time for some students. While education is obviously supposed to be more complex than playing video games or watching movies, it should not be critically complex, as it turns into a calamity, a punishment, not a key part of the educational process. In case you find it too difficult to deal with a particular academic assignment now, you can address a professional service e.g. SmartWritingService for getting academic writing help from a team of experts.
Ordering one or two academic papers you receive some extra time and can beat procrastination, finish everything important before the deadline, without risking your academic progress. Such academic writing is done by experienced experts and is strictly confidential. At an affordable price you receive an original piece of writing you can use as you please. Academic writing will always remain a key part of the educational process. It can change its dorm slightly, but it’s core, it’s essence will stay the same.