Category Archives: EAP Resources

This is a list of helpful resources for students learning to use English for academic purposes for university and beyond, curated by the FAE Program.

Academic Vocabulary and the Academic Word List (AWL)

ENG 101/102 courses are designed to help you expand the range and accuracy of your academic vocabulary. Course materials contain many of the words found on the Academic Word List (the AWL), which is comprised of 570 word “families” that form a core academic vocabulary necessary for general academic study (for more information, see the video “What is the AWL?” below). Why not have a look at the list at one of the links below and note how many of the words you don’t yet know?

Learning all of these words will certainly help improve your comprehension of academic texts and your ability to write in an academic way. It would be inadvisable, however, to simply try and memorize the whole AWL out of any context. The best way to use it is as a resource, combined with learning tools including:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfZnqhynhsI

Academic Writing: Essays and Research Papers

Developing as an academic writer in English involves learning to structure, support and defend a coherent and persuasive argument, to control the tone, register and style of your writing so it is efficient and accessible, to use a range of advanced and conceptual vocabulary, and to apply the principles of source attribution and referencing common across academic disciplines.

There is a lot of advice and lessons online on the subskills you will need to develop to improve as an academic writer and on how to write different “types” of essays. Please remember, however, that such advice may be of varying quality or relevance to the writing task your instructor has set for you. In your FAE class, the writing tasks will be “argument-led” or “argument driven”, and you might also see this described as “critical”, “evaluative”, or “analytical” writing.

As well as exploring the advice available at the links below, make sure you understand your instructor’s task requirements and read any instructions provided though the course Moodle page very carefully.

Argument-led Essays

Arguments and Critical Thinking

Citation & Referencing

There are several accepted formats for essays and research papers used by university students and professional academic writers, and each has been developed to meet the needs of academic writers in particular fields of study and research, e.g., the social sciences, humanities, or science and engineering (STEM) fields. The styles are named after the organizations which have developed and maintain the standard formats (see the list of styles used by FAE instructors/courses below).

A very important aspect of each style is the format used to present information about the published sources and evidence used in the paper, which might include quotations/citations of another author’s words or summary-paraphrase of their ideas and evidence. The format for referring to sources in this way will usually include a reference list or bibliography at the end of a document (end-text referencing) and a shorthand or footnoted way to refer to that list at the relevant points in the flow of the writing (in-text referencing). The styles may also include editorial manuals that specify the format of other parts of the paper, such as page layout, number formats, and even tone/register.

Your FAE instructor will let you know which of the academic styles to use in your essays and papers. The resources below will help you to learn more about these styles. Always check your own instructor’s task requirements carefully, however, for the details of how to apply the required style.

Although individual access to the official handbooks for the styles is generally via a paid service, you can often find helpful resources and learning aids on the official homepage of each style. The Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides one of the best-maintained and most student-friendly guides to all the major citation and referencing styles (see the links below), and includes sample papers in each format.

Citation and Referencing Styles

APA (American Psychological Association)

The APA style for social sciences uses concise parenthetical in-text references (AKA, “Harvard”/”Turabian” format) that include the author-surname(s) and year of publication and an end-text reference list in alphabetical order.

MLA (Modern Language Association)

The MLA style for social sciences uses concise in-sentence and parenthetical in-text references that include the author-surname(s) and an end-text works cited list in alphabetical order.

Chicago Manual of Style (CMoS/Chicago)

The Chicago style comes in two different types:

  1. a “notes and bibliography” style for humanities papers using detailed in-text footnote references which can be abbreviated after the first mention of the source and a detailed end-text bibliography
  2. an “author-date” style (AKA, “Harvard”/”Turabian” format) for social sciences with concise parenthetical in-text references including the author surname(s) and date of publication and a reference list in alphabetical order.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

The IEEE style for STEM subjects uses parenthetical in-text references that include the number of the source in order of appearance/use in the text and an end-text reference list in the same order.

Academic Integrity / Avoiding Plagiarism

All academic research is created and furthered through collaborative human effort. Academic Integrity is about maintaining moral and ethical standards in how all stakeholders are treated during the processes of learning and research. Beyond simply avoiding the temptation to cheat on tests or assignments, it includes an ethical approach to data and collaboration.

The aspects of academic integrity relevant to FAE courses are plagiarism, cheating, and contract cheating (see below).

Plagiarism

Bilkent University defines plagiarism as: “The use of somebody else’s ideas, viewpoints, findings or works in a paper, project, report, or any similar document which is presented as part of a course requirement, without proper acknowledgment of the source.”

For many students avoiding plagiarism is a difficult skill to learn. In your lessons and tutorials your instructor will explain how to avoid plagiarism by summarizing/paraphrasing, quoting/citing, and referencing properly (see also Citation and Referencing). If you need extra help, you can make an appointment for an additional tutorial.

It will, however, be your responsibility to avoid plagiarism in your work. Should the final draft of your assignment still have problems with plagiarism, you will likely receive a very low or failing grade, and, if the plagiarism is considerable, disciplinary action may also be taken according to Bilkent University rules and regulations.

Cheating

In-class drafting sessions and presentations are taken under exam-like conditions, and getting help from somebody else or copying from pre-prepared written or recorded materials other than your outline notes and course readings is considered cheating. If you cheat in these ways,
disciplinary action can be taken according to Bilkent University rules and regulations.

Contract Cheating / Ghost Writing / Commissioning

“Ghost writing” is contracting/commissioning another person to produce written or oral coursework for you, and it is another form of cheating. The use of online or informal services to cheat in this way is against university rules, and engaging in it can affect both your disciplinary record / academic transcript, and if undetected can undermine the validity of the qualifications provided by a university.

If your instructor decides that you are not the sole author or creator of work submitted for grading, or that you have had significant and inappropriate help in preparing it, you will likely fail the assignment and/or course and disciplinary action will be taken against according to Bilkent University rules and regulations.

Below is an interesting short film about “Essay Mills” (online contract cheating services) made by 3 final year Broadcast Journalism students from Nottingham Trent University as part of their final assessed project.

Academic Presentations

During your undergraduate education at Bilkent, you will often be asked to present your semester projects to your classmates and your instructor. In English classes in particular, a lot of the grade will depend on your presentation and communication skills as much as on the content of the project you are presenting.

Academic presentations have different structural and rhetorical requirements from other talks you may have seen, such as YouTube videos or TED talks. The links below will help you to understand these requirements.

  • Aditi Javheri from the Polytechnic University English Language Center gives an overview of how to make your presentation performance both academic and engaging (see video below):