Lesson 1--What is academic writing, exactly, and what do introductions "do"?

A Question

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Have you ever wondered what makes certain writing "academic"?

• Fancy words? (Ahem--"impenetrably convoluted vocabulary")
• An academic subject, like writing that discusses science or French poetry?
• Or just writing that happens at school?

What is academic writing, anyway?

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Let's ask a couple experts. Joseph Harris, director of the writing program at Duke University, considered the question on the first two pages of his book Rewriting:

In the academy, you will often be asked to situate your thoughts about a text or issue in relation to what others have written about it. Indeed, I'd argue that this interplay of ideas defines academic writing--that whatever else they may do, intellectuals almost always write in response to the work of others...The question for an academic writer, then is how to come up with this something else, to add to what has already been said. (emphasis in original)

A similar response is offered by Gerald Graff, professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois and former president of the Modern Language Association. He begins his famous co-authored academic writing primer They Say, I Say with the following:

When writing responds to something that has been said or might be said, it thereby performs the meaningful task of supporting, correcting, or complicating that other view (xiii)...Experienced writing instructors have long recognized that writing well means entering into a conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls upon writers not simply to express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said (xvi).

We seem to be zeroing in one important aspect of academic writing. I wonder if you can synthesize Harris' and Graff's points into a sentence or two. What makes writing "academic"?

Click here to submit an answer

This is an important starting point for understanding how to make our academic introductions more authentic and effective. Our introductions don't come "from nowhere". They come from the real world--real people and ideas that we wish to respond to.

Our first question to answer when preparing an academic introduction should be "Why am I writing this? What am I responding to?"

What academic writing ain't

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Sometimes it helps to look at counterexamples to understand what we're seeking. Let's contrast academic writing against other genres of writing, especially the popular press--magazines, fictions novels, etc.

I asked my English composition class what the following introductions were trying to "do." How would you describe the following introductions and their goals?

It all begins with some dreadful heaving and puffing as I struggle uphill, thigh-deep in snow, sweating in cumbersome clothing. An exquisite moment of anticipation makes it worth the effort as I face downhill on my toboggan, before pushing off. As I gather momentum, pine trees and mountains become a blur past my watering eyes. - From "The Descent of Man" by Brian Johnson

It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not only to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the last week (as though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why each and every one of them was the government’s fault. - From Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Click here to describe the introductions you just read.

Certainly, these are both introductions designed to entertain--and this makes sense, because we usually read in-flight magazines or fiction novels to relax or have fun. There's also very little keeping the audience glued to the text in front of them, so they use a common literary tool, the "hook" to spark readers' interest and draw them in. And all of this is perfectly fine for popular writing. The problem is that most academic writers have been taught to write literary or "artistic" introductions during middle school, high school, and even in college! It didn't take long for me to find classroom materials directing student writers in that direction, and I even found an lesson plan that encourages this approach for international English language learners, who don't have a lot of experience with English texts and might over-apply this technique in their history or political science classes. As an instructor of international students, I feel compelled to fix this!

Click here to see a "hook" lesson plan

Click here to see a "hook" lesson plan for English language learners

Why we need a new model for academic introductions - How we read academic texts

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If you are taking this course, you have likely read academic writing in college or graduate school. If your experience was anything like mine, you did a lot of your reading in preparation for writing--in other words, you were a researcher!

Try your best to think back to those dreadful nights in the library, paper stacks in disarray, coffee jug half-empty, time running out... How did you read the essays on your desk?

Keep in mind the obvious: academic writing is written for an academic audience--an audience of researchers who will do something specific with the text and, importantly, do not read for pleasure. They are trying to find answers to very specific questions, and there is only a minimal threat of them abandoning your text out of boredom. Therefore, any language designed to entertain or "hook" the reader is basically wasted space. Inefficiency is the enemy now, and your task is to state your essay's purpose and contribution concisely and clearly for the sake of your overworked and over-caffeinated audience.

Here's another counterexample to hopefully make my point clear. Imagine you are writing an academic essay about competitive video game players. You have a dozen different article printed on your desk, and you start reading this one:

A typical day for Danny Le: Wake up at 9:30 a.m. Breakfast. Exercise. Practice the world’s most popular PC video game, League of Legends, from 1 to 10 p.m., with a break for dinner. Analyze recorded matches from 6 to 11 p.m. Practice for a few more hours. Sleep. Repeat. -- From "The World of Competitive Gaming" by Chris Clayton

Or would you find this example more helpful if you were researching competitive gaming? (Full disclosure: I paraphrased and condensed this from a longer research article)

The effect of violent video games on aggression is a hot topic today as video games continue to increase in popularity. For instance, a large scale study in the United States found that 88% of youth aged 8 to 18 years play video games (Gentile, 2009). Some research has shown that playing violent video games produces higher levels of aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, and physiological arousal in the short-term (see Anderson, Gentile, & Buckley, 2007). However, no study has matched a violent and nonviolent video game against competitiveness, and consequently, it is unclear whether the violent content alone is responsible for elevated levels of aggression or whether competitiveness plays a role. Hence, the goal of the current study was to test whether a competitive video game produced more aggressive behavior than a less competitive video game...We found that video game competitiveness elevated aggressive behavior in the short-term, regardless of the level of violent content. -- Adapted from "The Effect of Video Game Competition..." by Paul Adachi and Teena Willoughby

OK, maybe it's obvious that the second example is a little more helpful than the first one. But we need to know why it's more helpful, what moves the paragraph is made from, and how we can communicate these patterns to students. We'll get into all of that in the next lesson.

Right now, remember the big questions we want to ask about our introductions: Why are we writing? What are we responding to? These contrasting examples can demonstrate how hook introductions fail to communicate answers to these important questions, as if they don't care what information you are seeking as a reader. They're written as if they are the only text you will be reading that afternoon.

Unfortunately, many of my students don't know any other way to introduce an essay, so if I tell them to avoid using them, they don't have any strategy left to rely on. What can I tell students to do if they can no longer use a hook? Take another look at the second example above and think about all you've learned in this lesson. Write your clearest, most concise answer to this common student question: "What are introductions for? What should a writer do in the introduction?"

Click here to submit your answer.

In Summary

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• Academic readers will use your writing as a tool to answer questions they have, not to entertain themselves or pass the time. They read your work because they have to read your work, in a sense.

• This is good news for students who struggle with "hooks" or clever introduction tricks, as well as any student who isn't familiar with our writing traditions, such as international students.

• You can best serve your reader by quickly and efficiently communicating the topic, what ideas or people you are responding to, and your main point.

Jump to the Next Lesson

References and Resources

• Harris, Joseph (2006). Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press.
• Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein (2010). They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W. W. Norton Press.
• Johnson, Brian (2011). "The Descent of Man." Traveller Magazine. Available online: http://www.traveller.com.au/the-descent-of-man-19yvf
• Rowling, J.K. (2005). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. London: Bloomsbury Publishers.
• Clayton, Chris (2015). "The World of Competitive Gaming." Sky Magazine. Available online: http://deltaskymag.delta.com/Sky-Extras/Favorites/Competitive-Gaming.aspx
• Adachi, Paul J. C. and Teena Willoughby (2011). "The Effect of Video Game Competition and Violence on Aggressive Behavior: Which Characteristic Has the Greatest Influence?" Psychology of Violence Journal, 1:4, pp. 259–274.