When I just came to the UK to study, I was very confused about the standard academic writing in social science subjects. I was worried because I was bad in this and I knew this was very important that no one of us can afford to be without. I am quite sure that some of you might also struggle with academic writing for your study as well. I was recommended the Manchester University Academic Phrasebank. It is absolutely a useful resource you can make use of to help your study, particularly when you need to improve your academic writing significantly. Today, I would like to give my comments of this resource such as its effectiveness, advantages and disadvantages combined with my advice.
First of all, let me share the link of this resource with you: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/
User navigation
Although the page does not look ‘amazing’, it is comprehensive enough already to give users a simple but clear direction towards the information they are seeking for. First, the pop-up menus at both the top and left-hand side are constantly displayed; this brings you convenience to find particular information when you are on different pages. Second, this resource is downloadable in both PDF and Kindle format; the icons of PDF download and Kindle are always there available for you to download. Third, every single piece of academic guidance is displayed as a superlink under a clear hierarchical structure from the top level of the classification through to the lowest. I believe these three advantages with regards to user navigation will keep you accurately navigated without confusion of where you are on the site.
Menu
The menu on the top of the page follows the structure of a typical and standard academic paper in a majority of academic disciplines. This structure usually begins with introduction and background of the topic, followed by its supporting review of literature by drawing on the evidence from existing studies. Methods/methodology will be the third step in this structure where the way of conducting the study is described including research design, research data collection and data analysis. Following the methods is the presentation of findings and results emerged from the study, which should be discussed with arguments later in the ‘discussion’ section. The final step is to give your conclusion. This resource provides you with a huge number of standard academic expressions and phrases in each section under the above structure. What you should do is just to click on the items on this menu. Then you will be able to see a brief introduction and key points of the section. At the bottom of the page, you will see a lot superlinks in relation to different situations where you need to express a particular statement. What you can do is to paraphrase your writing by these standard academic writing expressions suggested for you. For example, if you want to include a reference about what other researchers do in their text, a good way to express so is “Smith (2000) questions whether mainstream schools are the best environment for …” This is one of the ‘off-the-peg’ templates provided on the site available for you to use.
Similar to this is the menu on your left-hand side where a range of general language functions are provided for you within various contexts of your writing, such as ‘being cautious’, ‘defining terms’ and ‘giving examples’. What you can do is also to click on the links inside each of these functions and refer to yourself specific use of these functions.
Content
The most important section of my evaluation is the content of this resource. From my personal experience point of view, this is a very useful resource for non-English speakers particularly when you are not so confident in academic writing. Basically, I believe that this resource has three main advantages to your study.
Firstly, by using the suggested writing expressions, your writing will no longer look cumbersome or run-of-the-mill. A good writing in academic context should avoid repeatedly using the same kind of expression. Either you can change the structure of the sentence and paragraph, or, you can replace some key words with the ones you have not been using. For example, when you make an argument in a literature review, you may encounter the situation where you need to cite previous studies. An awkward way to do so is to keep using the expression like “Many researches (citations) have shown that….”. Instead, you can change the way of your articulating by saying “Traditionally, it has been argued that … (citations)”, or saying “There is a consensus among scholars/researchers… (citations)”, or even saying “Several lines of evidence suggest that … (citations)”. See? Do use different expressions for the same type of arguments. Your writing will then look more ‘good-looking’.
Secondly, this resource will bring you a habit of thinking and expressing really in academic terms, using academic logics. You may encounter quite a lot writing occasions in your daily life, e.g. emails, letters, short messages, social media posts etc. You may have been inclined to informal writing without considering the appropriateness of language usage. If you regularly spend some time reading this resource, you will be able to convert your writing style towards academic writing every time when you start knocking at your keyboard. This will bring you comfort when you finally accomplish your essay.
Thirdly, this recourse is useful to almost all academic subjects no matter what study you do. The resource also can be used to a large range of types of writing; for example, writing for the description of an experiment, the findings of social investigation, and the citation of a particular existing research, etc. To put it simply, this resource is able to facilitate your writing at any point from the beginning to the end of your essay whatever the type of the essay is.
You have now found out how useful this resource is. However, you also need to pay attention to the disadvantages of this resource. The main disadvantage is that you might be completely relied on this resource whenever you start writing. This is absolutely not the purpose of this resource. Even though you really think the writing tips and templates provided by this resource are helpful to your own writing, you should utilise it in a smart way. Instead of looking up which suggested expression is the most appropriate, you ought to think it over first by yourself. If you are still struggled, then you can have a look at these expressions to decide which might be the best for you. After this, you should keep it in your mind for your future reference rather than just forget it and come back again next time when you encounter the same issue.
Secondly, do not always use the exact suggested key phrases on this guidance. In order to ensure your expression best fits with the context of your writing, you need to think about the most suitable key words or phrases you use. This means that you can still follow the template of the expressions, but it is not good to always use the same word suggested there for your writing without considering your writing context.
If you are an undergraduate student now you can consider improving your academic writing skills; if you are a postgraduate taught student, you should start strengthening your writing to a more in-depth level; if you now are doing a PhD, you should definitely arm yourself with pretty decent academic writing skills and develop your own writing style.
I believe this resource is useful to most of you who are not confident in academic writing. But this is not the only good resource. If you want to significantly improve your academic writing, you may also want to attend some academic writing workshops or classes alongside your reference to this resource. That will be much better!
Hope this resource can give you a hand to your writing. Good luck!
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