Demystifying Academic Writing: Genres, Moves, Skills, and Strategies

by Zhihui Fang

Overview

Informative, insightful, and accessible, this book is designed to enhance the capacity of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as early career scholars, to write for academic purposes. Fang describes key genres of academic writing, common rhetorical moves associated with each genre, essential skills needed to write the genres, and linguistic resources and strategies that are functional and effective for performing these moves and skills.

Fang's functional linguistic approach to academic writing enables readers to do so much more than write grammatically well-formed sentences. It leverages writing as a process of designing meaning to position language choices as the central focus, illuminating how language is a creative resource for presenting information, developing argument, embedding perspectives, engaging audience, and structuring text across genres and disciplines. Covering reading responses, book reviews, literature reviews, argumentative essays, empirical research articles, grant proposals, and more, this text is an all-in-one resource for building a successful career in academic writing and scholarly publishing.

Each chapter features crafts for effective communication, authentic writing examples, practical applications, and reflective questions. Fang complements these features with self-assessment tools for writers and tips for empowering writers. Assuming no technical knowledge, this text is ideal for both non-native and native English speakers, and suitable for courses in academic writing, rhetoric and composition, and language/literacy education.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367653545
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/20/2021
Pages:	286
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Zhihui Fang is the Irving and Rose Fien Endowed Professor of Education in the School of Teaching and Learning at the University of Florida, USA.

Table of Contents

Section I: Unpacking Academic Writing 1. Introduction to Academic Writing 2. The Building Blocks of Meaning 3. Discursive Features of Academic Writing Section II: Skills and Strategies for Academic Writing 4.  From Establishing Context to Evaluating Sources 5. From Defining Concept to Expressing Surprise 6. From Entertaining Opposition to Engineering Flow Section III: Writing Academic Genres 7. Writing a Reading Response 8. Writing a Book Review 9. Writing a Literature Review 10. Writing an Argumentative Essay 11. Writing an Empirical Research Article 12. Writing a Grant Proposal Section IV: Maximizing Success in Writing and Publishing 13. Building Capacity for Academic Writing 14. Writing for Scholarly Publication. Appendix A: Survey of Academic Writing Needs. Appendix B: Personal Review Checklist for Academic Writing