Academic Writing Dos and Don’ts: Navigating Common Pitfalls
Academic writing has often led students to experience a horrible time during their college and university days. Despite trying their best, most students can’t figure out what they’re doing wrong to incur horrible grades on their assignments. This inability to find answers often results in frustration. As this negative feeling keeps rising, students often lose interest in their courses.
After assessing the assignments of millions of students, experts from a reputed website providing assignment help in Sydney have discovered something interesting. It seems like most of these students aren’t even aware of the basic dos and don’ts of assignment writing. Most of the mistakes that they make in their assignments are very elementary. They don’t even realize they are making these errors that are chipping away at their chances of scoring A+.
This lack of understanding often leads students to rely on a website like MyAssignmenthelp.expert. After all, the professionals here have proved themselves capable of assisting students successfully in boosting their grades. But how long do you plan to keep relying on such services? Unless you know what issues are present in your assignments, you can’t even take the necessary steps to fix the issue. So, let’s get back to the roots and learn how to navigate the process of writing assignments.
What Should You Do When Writing Assignments?
There are a lot of things to keep in mind if you’re aiming for an A+. Let’s skip the basic things like reviewing spelling and grammar. Surely, you already know how important proofreading your paper is. Instead, let’s go through a few other important details that you might not have considered too important to follow.
Gather information from reliable sources
If you search for “World War II possible causes,” you’ll find a million articles on it. Now, suppose you have to write an essay on this topic. If you’re going to refer to particular sources, you need to make sure that they are authentic. Don’t just choose the first option that pops up in the results until you have confirmed that the source is one of the following –
- An academic journal
- A government website
- An official academic website
- A published research paper
Only such sources hold weight in any academic paper. If you use a random blog written by a person with zero credibility, you’re not doing yourself any favors. So, make sure to review the sources and check their authenticity before writing any assignment.
Work on a draft before writing the paper
If you’re someone who completely skips over writing assignment drafts, it’s time to change. It’s tempting to skip this step when you’re already under a lot of pressure to complete an assignment within a tight deadline. However, a draft can improve your assignment quality significantly. Here’s how this helps –
- Allows you to figure out which points to include
- Gives you a basic idea of the flow of the writing
- Ensures that you don’t go off-topic while writing
It’s easy to make changes in your draft if you think there is a scope to improve your writing. But it’s equally difficult to make changes when you just start writing your paper without creating a draft. So, be on the safe side. Plan out the things that you want to include in your paper, and make sure to follow it diligently when writing the assignment.
Use examples to substantiate your points
Making baseless claims won’t get you anywhere. If you want to convince the reader of a particular notion, you have to substantiate your points with examples. That’s where your research will come into play. The more you research, the more perspectives you’ll come across. If some of them match your view on a particular topic, you can use them as evidence to prove that you’re not the only one who thinks so.
The best types of examples are numerical data. If you can find case studies or other types of academic papers where the writer has provided solid numerical data after conducting research, always prefer those over other types. That’s because people tend to be more inclined towards believing numerical data over other types of examples.
- Keep a formal tone throughout the paper
Tone matters a lot in academic papers. You’ll rarely find assignments where you have the liberty to use first-person pronouns. Most of the time, you have to use the third person. You can also apply the following suggestions:
- Avoid using ‘you’ when addressing readers.
- Avoid using colloquial language.
- Use full words instead of contractions.
- Do not use abbreviated words.
If you want to become more familiar with the formal tone, read more research papers, dissertations, and all other kinds of academic articles.
What Should You NOT Do When Writing Assignments?
It is extremely frustrating when you spend hours researching a topic only to get a poor grade because your writing wasn’t up to the mark. Well, here are some mistakes that you might be making unknowingly.
Do not make generalizations
If you conduct a case study on a niche group, you shouldn’t make any generalizations when drafting your conclusion. The results won’t be accurate. Besides, this is just a mark of laziness. Unless your sample group has representatives from all demographics, avoid assuming that everyone has the same opinions on particular issues.
Avoid plagiarism at all costs
It’s quite tempting to take snippets from other works to write your paper when you’re in a hurry. But unless you add your own input, you’re just plagiarising. Many Australian universities are extremely strict about plagiarised content. So, be extremely careful to maintain originality.
Never use slangs or clichés
Slangs do not mesh well with academic writing. Social media has completely ruined people’s sense of proper English. Let’s not even get into the horrid grammar. When you’re very active on social media, you unconsciously incorporate this wrong usage in your own language. Well, make sure you keep that vocabulary out of academic writing. Avoid clichés and well since it shows that you have nothing original to contribute.
Do not use AI content generators
It’s very tempting to use AI tools like ChaptGPT to write your academic papers. Well, here’s why you shouldn’t.
- AI tools do not maintain a logical flow.
- The tools do not understand the academic context.
- They don’t add any additional value to the writing.
If you rely on such tools to write your academic papers, they’re bound to suffer in quality. So, make sure you steer clear of such shortcuts.
In conclusion,
Improving academic writing doesn’t happen overnight. You have to identify where you’re lacking and make necessary adjustments to your papers. The writing suggestions in this blog are just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to improve your writing quality, the best option is to review multiple published academic articles and research papers. That should give you a better idea of the standard you should maintain in your work.
