Tyrone Greene Megan Keaton ENG 111-06 6 June 2013 Definition of "Good Academic Writing" I'm sure we all

have been tramatized the the typical middle school and high school writing rituals. I don't know how you do it where your from, however here in the south they get us started writing at the young age of nine. It seemed like every year in school it got a little more intense with the topics we should write about and the depth of detail that needed to be presented. It all lead up to one of the most important writing/research papers I had done in my whole school experience. Those that are from North Carolina can fully understand where I am coming from when I speak about the Senior Exit. What is the Senoir Exist you ask? Basically it is a three part task to graduate from high school that includes a research paper: eight pages long, a product which displays your research and backs your points, and your project. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong! The ironic thing about this paper is that it isn't being graded by your English teacher but teachers from different schools, parents, volunteers, etc. So if you weren't "up to par" with anyone at your school or surrounding area chances are one of those people could be grading your material. We all claim that we know what a good academic writing paper is when in reality the sad truth is we have no idea. When it comes to writing we often have to step outside the box and out of our comfort zones and even bend the rules just a tad to come up with a paper that not only catches the reader's attention, but keeps them engaged and willing to read it from top to bottom. Like I stated before, everyone has their view on what "good academic writing" should be

but I'm here preaching to you today to give you what good academic writing is from my perspective. Just to be clear this is only my opinion! I'm not saying that I'm some kind of "writing expert" but hopefully after reading this and seeing my argument, it can give you a vivid and a clear understanding on what good academic writing looks like and will help you know what to look for when your either reading over a paper or writing one yourself. The difference between academic writing and free-writing is that free-writing is more of an unorgainzed, unstructured type of writing where the writer just expresses themselves imformaly, nothing wrong with free-writing but, it may be considered unprofessional to those of authoritarian positions. As far as academic writing goes, it is more structured, it has a purpose, it's organized, well thought out, and very formal. Another difference between the two forms of writing is that academic writing goes through phases. It gets revised and goes through what we call rough drafts. It gets looked over and scanned for any type of grammatical errors or things that can be altered and then later on transformed into a flawless final draft. With free-writing, everything is spotaneous and full of creativity. There is no chain in which it goes through to get finalized or picked apart for any error. School papers should be much more simpilar for the students to project if everything was just free written but school systems try to teach us a more efficient way to learn things such as writing to sharpen our skills so this is another reason why academic writing is used. Good academic writing goes through a varitey of stages to be completed. For each writer these stages may be different and how they are come across may vary. Since this is my point I will walk you through on what I feel is the best steps to take when it comes to good academic writing. First, I pefer to brainstorm ideas and really think about my topic and what I'm going to be writing. This process could go on for either hours or days. Once I have a head full of ideas it

is then time to capture them and organize them on paper. One of these ways is a Concept Web or a Bubble Map as some may say. Basically it's a diagram that holds your main topics and focuses on points which will get discussed in your paper. To elaborate more on this, I'll even go as far as outlining these thoughts in a way where I can map out a blueprint to follow as far as the way I choose to present the information I would like to. Writing a paper can be very time consuming and frustrating but the calmer you are and the more positive you remain the better your writing will be. How I get in my comfort zone is by putting on music. I then grab my note pad and just type a central idea and keep going until I have a paper of the required pages and my first draft is complete. Your first draft will not be picture perfect, so sweating the small grammatical errors or changes you will be making is not a issue. This brings us next into the revision phase. Most people either get ahead and send their teacher a copy of their paper to get feed back or have a mentor or family member read over it and give feedback that way as well. Most writers aren't comfortable with letting their peers oversee their work because they feel that another student won't be capable enough to help them since they aren't of such professionalism. It will be up to you to take their advice and constructive criticism to make the necessary adjustments to get your paper evaluated once it has been revised. This will bring you to your second draft. Make any changes you need to and get your paper to the point where it can be accpetable to be read and eventually turned into your teacher. Take one last look over it and add or deduct what is needed and even manuever sentences around that you feel best for your paper. You will take your finall draft to now be turned into your teacher or professor. Ladies and gentlement that's a good academic paper. As I previeously mentioned we claim that we all know what "good academic writing" is and how it is suppposed to be, but in reality as long as your paper is classroom proof and eligible to be read and worked

on in a classroom setting, and later read by your teacher for grading you know you have yourself a good academic paper!