Academic Language

thinking: how and why)
Impartial (gives a balanced point of view,

more than one point of view)
Logical (ideas flow logically from one to another: signposts, topic sentences and linked paragraphs)
Structured (keeps to the structure of an essay, report etc)

Supported (evidence and examples, referencing)

than usual.
“In five experimental conditions we found that subjects took

the recipients’ attentional state and their own communicative effectiveness into account by adjusting signal production accordingly. More importantly, in case of communicative failure, subjects repeated previously successful signals more often with a familiar than unfamiliar recipient…”

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thinking and reasoning.
But what is critical thinking?
Assessment of the

relationship between claims and the evidence given to support them
Exercising judgement in order to interpret and evaluate arguments and evidence
Questioning taken for granted assumptions
Involves both openness to new ideas and appropriate scepticism
Good thinking is always about ability to ask good questions.

is logical requires planning.

A good way to plan an

assignment is to put down your ideas in bullet points using one page. You can also create a ‘mindmap’ for your ideas or list a series of questions.

Another key aspect in creating a logical piece of writing involves writing in paragraphs.
A report or essay is made up of a series of related paragraphs.
Paragraphs organise meaning. They help your readers to think clearly about what you have written.

the main idea is introduced through a topic sentence, which

is usually the first sentence
all sentences in the paragraph need to relate to the main idea in a logical way
paragraphs are linked together and flow logically on from each other
in-text references need to be included in the paragraph if supporting ideas come from other sources.

find that there are a number of words contained in

your writing that can be safely eliminated without any kind of danger to your meaning whatsoever. X

words contained in your writing that can be safely eliminated

without any kind of danger to your meaning whatsoever. (Beer & McMurrey, 2005, p. 34)

– alternatives
Actual experience - experience
‘Various differences” (Various implies difference so

you do not need both words)

Avoid starting sentences with linking words such as but, and or yet.
Beer, D., & McMurrey, D. (2005). A guide to writing as an engineer (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons

in introduction when referring to other people’s ideas, suggestions or

fundamental findings.
“This study… demonstrates that the residues lining the substrate binding pocket and N-terminal lid are the primary determinants of their substrate specificities”. “We also report the experimentally determined structure of mArAT-aromatic amino acid complex.”

Present Perfect is often used as an alternative to the present simple, but is particularly used to emphasise current relevance or continuing debate.
“Berg and Hudson have emphasized that modern factories need not have been large…”
Present Perfect is used to summarise points or arguments, especially in the concluding sections:
“The qualitative analyses in this chapter have illustrated crucial aspects…”

in individual studies:
“Borgen et al statistically modelled the magnitude of

such temperature…”
“Our functional assays clearly showed the inability of mArAT to catalyze Hsp as substrate, but it exhibited broad specificity for aromatic amino acids.”
“To explore the conservation of active site residues of Iβ aminotransferases across species, we performed a structure and sequence based alignment of mArAT and mHspAT”

used to refer to things which are to be found

later in the text or to predictions which the authors make. Both simple and progressive forms are used. Sometimes Future perfect can be used as well.
“The ‘rare resource’ hypothesis predicts that two monkeys that are both holding anointing resources will not form anointing dyads, whilst the ‘mutual application’ hypothesis predicts that monkeys holding anointing resources will continue to seek out other monkeys that hold resources, and that social anointing actions will target parts of the body that are inaccessible to a monkey rubbing individually.”
“After organisational-transformations the “right” environment will likely have changed, but the right internal state remains the same.”

contrast, capuchin monkeys in other studies 34,35, baboons, Papio papio

36, tonkean and rhesus macaques, Macaca tonkeana & M. mulatta 37, rooks, Corvus frugilegus5, and African grey parrots, Psittacus erithacus 38, did not pass the delay and/ or solitary control conditions, suggesting that they do not pay attention to the other’s role or even lack an understanding of the need of a partner.”

since it is often necessary to shift the focus from

human agency to the actions, processes and events described.
“Cooperative hunting has been described in social carnivores7–10, chimpanzees…“
“most emphasis has been put on whether animals understand the need and role of the partner in cooperation.”
“In experiment 1, seven ravens were confronted with the string pulling set-up in a group setting”
To signpost the section dealing with personal stance and evaluation, the author shifts to active voice:
“We investigated the cooperative problem solving abilities of ravens by using a set-up comparable to most other studies based on the loose string paradigm.”

impersonal subjects, as well as to describe activities etc. of

the objects studied.
“In a group of captive Sapajus sp. the frequency of aggression increased, and durations of affiliative behaviours decreased…“
„individuals form multiple highly differentiated affiliative and agonistic relationships with others”
“The ravens cooperated successfully in 397 out of 600 trials (66.17%).”

as well as in spoken academic style. It is usually

followed by such verbs as:

than one author of an academic paper:
“We investigated the cooperative

problem solving abilities of ravens”
Also, “we” can be used by a single author as an inclusive strategy, referring to the author and reader together, making him a part of the team:
“We know the molecular biology of this virus in very great detail”
“You” and “one” can both be used to refer to people in general, and to academic community of writer / speaker and readers / listeners. “You” is less formal than one.
“It is possible that the more words you already know, the easier it is to aсquire the meaning of new words”
“One” is less frequent than you, particularly, in spoken academic language.

desire to avoid making claims and statements that are too

direct and assertive. Therefore, hedging (making a proposition less assertive) is very important in academic styles.
“The anger experience may culminate in a variety of behavioral reactions…”
Sometimes, however, it is necessary to assert a claim or viewpoint quite directly and confidently (boosting).
“We must remember, however, that migrants may not need information about more than one destination”

English often needs to state possibilities rather than facts, and

academics frequently hypothesise and draw tentative conclusions.
Can is often used to make fairly confident but not absolute assertions:
“Genetic mutations, infection by parasites or symbionts, and other events can transform the way that an organism’s internal state changes in response to a given environment.”

assertions:
“In some cases, the disadvantageous effects of these events could

be reduced or neutralized”.
“An argument is then made as to why we might expect interoceptive behaviour to be more robust to organisational-transformations than exteroceptive behaviour.”

normally do occur. In this usage it is a formal

equivalent of can:
„Increased coverage on the upper back may result from self-directed rubbing a
against other anointing individuals that may be a secondary source of material”.
May is also widely used in a more general way in academic texts to make a proposition more tentative. May is less tentative than could or might:
“The social anointing behaviours in capuchin monkeys may have lead to the formulation of the social bonding hypotheses for the function of anointing in the species.”
“They may well be explained in terms of innate behaviours”.

challenged when it precedes such verbs as “advocate”, “argue”, “assume”,

“claim”, “expect”, “propose”, “suggest”.
„Since the behaviour must be costly, we would expect it to provide significant benefits to the subjects.”
“This would suggest that birds that did not receive a reward in the previous successful cooperation trial, are less motivated to cooperate again.”

aggression in our study groups.“

„Bouts in our groups typically included

salivating and tail coiling, behaviours previously only observed in anointing Cebus”.

a sense, in a way
In most cases
In principle
In some (many)

respects
More or less

of impersonal constructions with passive voice to avoid a more

direct commitment to a proposition:
“It is suggested that the analytic procedure…”
“It is claimed…”, “It is assumed…”, “It is generally agreed…”
Also passive constructions (in complex subject) are used with the following expressions to make propositions less direct:

Be believed to
Be claimed to
Be considered to
Be found to
Be said to
Be seen to
Be shown to
Be thought to

“Operating practices are said to have been a major obstacle to improvement.”

in complex subject constructions in active voice with the same

effect as the previous passive constructions:
“Within a well-defined niche constant environmental conditions seem to be the exception rather than the norm.”

more assertive and is often carried out by the use

of a range of adverbial and prepositional constructions (plus some other types of expressions):

“This is clearly a very restrictive hypothesis, which requires verifications…”

Academic style, especially in writing, packs a great deal of

information quite densely into noun phrases.
Field observations have shown animal cooperation | within a variety of different social contexts|.
The underlined words are premodifiers (in this case they are nouns playing a role of attributes).
The phrase beginning with “within” is a postmodifying noun phrase. This type of phrases is also very frequent in academic English because of the need of specification and definition.

a possible explanation for effective population sizes inferred from genetic

data”. (The Impact of Environmental Fluctuations on Evolutionary Fitness Functions, “Nature”, 2015)
“The latter becomes especially important as the crossover between selection driven and fluctuation driven evolution is a major focus of modern research”.
“To test our hypothesis that the drift term and the resulting stable fixed point is responsible for this behavior…”
“Zebra fish embryos are ideal for studying the formation of new blood vessels because they are naturally transparent, and many embryos can be collected every day”.
“Thornes and Shao tested the sensitivity of individual meteorological parameters in a road weather information system by using a range of input values.”

are more frequent in written academic style.
“All individuals (n

= 7) had simultaneous access to the apparatus”. (Normal style would be: “All individuals accessed the apparatus simultaneously”)
“The time lag between marking and first recapture was higher than the lag between second and third recapture” (NOT “The time lag between when we marked the animals and when we first recaptured them…”)
Compare everyday style: “I decided to start a new experiment” and academic style: “The decision was (taken) to start a new experiment”.

important aspect of academic style. The impersonal pronoun it and

the demonstrative pronouns this and that are used in different ways to organize references to text segments and are frequently not interchangeable.

“They differentiated between a cooperative and solitary setting depending on the availability of a partner, and waited for the partner to come if it was delayed.”
“Low-luminance flickering patterns are perceived to modulate at relatively high rates. This occurs even though peak sensitivity is shifted…”

in the current study is specific for the paradigm used.

It seems that the ravens had problems with inhibiting to pull when the partner was absent…
Existential there
“However, there is mixed evidence for social anointing in Sapajus.”
Third person self-reference
Academic writers often refer to themselves as “the author”, “the researcher”, and often refer to their work impersonally, especially in abstracts and summaries:
“The author focuses on the conflicts, stresses, and transformations…”

in academic writing. In complex sentences different types of subordinate

clauses are used: subjects, object, predicate, attributive.
“Nevertheless, all these animals did spontaneously and successfully cooperate in the experimental task, suggesting that they can achieve cooperation through acting apart together [object subordinate clause], most probably motivated by a mutual attraction to the apparatus and the food.”
“Moreover, the distinction between species that do or do not understand the need and role of a partner [attributive subordinate clause] is not that clear-cut, because…”

cooperate in the experimental task, suggesting [present participle] …”

“To test

what possible factors might explain the difference in success between the different dyads [infinitive], we ran a GLMM on the number of successful cooperation trials, including the same factors as in study 1. [participle]”.

the computer influenced their behavior, students most commonly mentioned an

increase in their level of effort”.
“Nevertheless, the ravens did not seem to pay attention to the behavior of their partners while cooperating…”
“I.e., ravens have been shown to deceit others while caching food…”

language, especially writing, to give coherence to the text and

organize it.
The following occur frequently in academic contexts, but not in day-to-day conversational language:
1. Additive (adding further ideas):
Additionally / in addition
Equally
Furthermore
Likewise
Moreover
similarly

result
Consequently
Hence
In consequence
In (the) light of this (that)
In view of this

(that)
Therefore
thus

…. On the other hand

brief
In conclusion (to conclude)
In its (their) turn
In short
In sum

(to sum up, summing up, to summarize)
In summary
Lastly
Respectively
subsequently

to and act upon the outcome of a cooperative interaction
In

particular, we think that the larger the difference in dominance rank, the fewer direct competition is at play
Although the experimenter in our study placed the two rewards within the dyadic setting with ‘the intention’ of an equal reward division, sometimes one of the two birds got two rewards, whereas the other got none.
Alternatively, this pattern may be obtained by associative learning, where a negative experience leads animals not to act anymore.
In contrast, ‘cheaters’ remained motivated to pull (Fig. 3b).
Therefore, more controlled experiments in which defection rates can be manipulated are needed to precisely study the proximate mechanisms
Finally, the results of this study suggest that ravens do not understand the need of a partner while cooperating

comprehensive guide. / Cambridge University Press, 2013.