Tag Archives: logic

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