Academic skills, Research, Referencing, Academic writing styles and bibliographies

Learning academic writing skills has helped me establish an efficient way of writing, particularly with regards to college assignments and my personal link building and content marketing website (See here).

Academic writing is certainly important in higher educational studies as it ensures a message is conveyed succinctly.

This style of writing can be broken down into 3 cycle process which involves:

1. Planning
2. Thinking
3. Writing

The first stage - Planning - focuses on understanding the question at hand (with regards to assignments/ essays/ reports or proposals), then creating a list of tasks along with deadlines. The planning process helps with staying up-to-date and achieving targets, efficiently.

Stage 2 involves the 'Thinking' process which sets a clear structure to the question or problem at hand. For example, establishing a layout and checklist such as:

• An Essay title;
• Introduction;
• Main body; and 
• Conclusion
• References; and 
• Layout

The thinking process also includes deciphering the question at hand, looking for keywords, then presenting an argument (if any) to set the 'ball rolling'. This is where most reading, research occurs.

Once the Planning and Thinking process's are clearly defined, the final cycle is writing the material. My preference is writing early as that allows me to submit a rough draft to tutors in order to receive constructive feedback, revise and improve my work.

Once the 3 step cycle is complete, comes editing - proof read, write up references.... and finally submit the work, along with references.

There are, however, other academic writing models, such as the Blooms Taxonomy (See the triangle below) which Benjamin Bloom of the University of Chicago developed in 1956. It involves writing descriptively and being able to write critically; finding facts to come to general conclusions; finding supporting evidence to justify conclusions; as wells as being able to express other people's ideas in contrast with one's own.