8 votes

How to get better at academic writing quickly?

Posted by ocean-hai
Tags: philosophy, education.higher, ask.advice, universities, colleges, books, writing, academia

Working on my graduate degree and desperately need to get better at writing. I want to write and publish a lot but my grammar and general style is quite bad. The allure of AI is forever present but I resist it to maintain my own skill.

3 comments

  1. Gazook89
    Link
    You can ask an LLM to help you, with the explicit goal of teaching you to write better. Language is something LLMs are actually very good at. You can ask general questions about writing, or give...

    You can ask an LLM to help you, with the explicit goal of teaching you to write better. Language is something LLMs are actually very good at. You can ask general questions about writing, or give it your writing and ask about critiques and suggestions with whatever level of specificity you want, like “is the structure and order okay” or “do I have enough examples” or “is this point sufficiently supporting my thesis”. Don’t have it write your sentences, but you can treat it like a student advisor or writing coach.

    Of course, it does tempt overuse particularly when you get tired, the deadline draws near, or your overall thesis starts to feel weak and you want to plug holes in a sinking ship.

    6 votes
  2. adutchman
    Link
    You can post a snippet here or send a DM, I/we can take a look if you want. I didn't do university, but I do write as my job.

    You can post a snippet here or send a DM, I/we can take a look if you want. I didn't do university, but I do write as my job.

    2 votes
  3. Englerdy
    Link
    Recently wrapped a PhD, so I feel your struggle. I'm a fine writer, but struggled to find the right balance for writing concisely, but with meaningful detailed. I don't think I really mastered...
    • Exemplary

    Recently wrapped a PhD, so I feel your struggle. I'm a fine writer, but struggled to find the right balance for writing concisely, but with meaningful detailed.

    I don't think I really mastered academic writing by the end, but there are a few things that improved my writing.

    • It can be hard (it at least was for me), but have your peers/friends read sections of what you've written and give you feedback, and read and critique their writing. ESPECIALLY your drafts that you think are bad. Like anything worth doing, you have to practice and do it "bad" for a while in order to see progress towards improvement. Obviously identify people who are kind and who you know are providing feedback because they're your friend and so they want to see you succeed.
    • Look up to see if your university has a writing center and make an appointment. Just talk to them first about what you're struggling with. Then take FULL advantage of the writing center. In my experience they don't have nearly enough people coming in for help with writing, and are thrilled to help at any step of the writing process: organizing a lit review, creating an outline, providing feedback on a first draft of a paper. Writing centers are awesome and so underutilized!
    • Do your best to read more academic writing. I really struggled with this part. It feels hard to make time to read papers when you feel like you're drowning in a million other things.
      • When you do read a paper, don't just read it start to finish. Take some notes specifically about what catches your attention. Jump around from the abstract, to the conclusion, back to the intro, and then maybe the methods and results.
        • What about their writing do you find interesting or eye catching? (Phrasing, idea organization, explanations etc.) Make a note of these because they're things you will want to immitate.
        • What about their writing makes it hard for you to focus or understand what they're trying to say? These will be things to avoid in your own writing.
        • What types of detail do they include in their introduction?
        • What types of details do they focus on in their methodology?
      • It feels very awkward at first, but force yourself to write in active voice as much as possible. It really does make writing, especially academic, easier to understand. To keep is sounding "academic" and to avoid saying "I" or "we" (even though that's more commonly accepted these days in engineering writing, at least in the circles I run in), you can use phrases like "the analysis," "this study," "the data logging equipment," etc. as the "thing" doing the action.
        • For example, rather than saying "_____ is used to identify the cause of _____," you can use phrases like "This analysis uses ____ to identify the cause of ____."
        • You may butt heads with an advisor on this depending on their background. I had a very pro-active voice advisor, so I got pushed this direction. However I agree with them and think active voice scientific writing is much easier to understand.
      • LLM AIs can be extremely helpful (at least for my brain) to overcome writers block and get your initial "shitty first draft" of something your writing. Write out your unorganized thoughts about what you're trying to write use some bullet points to identify key ideas, and then instruct the LLM to create a first draft of the paper you're writing. Copy and paste that into your word processor, and then mold, carve, and sculpt that draft into your own. You have your own personal voice and way of phrasing things, so fix what the LLM gets wrong and doesn't sound like you. But by starting with it as a first draft, you at least work from an initial draft that should be grammatically decent.
        • Your revisions of the LLM draft will feel similar to doing peer review. Don't just accept what it wrote. Set out to make it sound better and more human.

    As someone else mentioned, feel free to DM me. I don't have time to review a whole paper, but I'd be happy to provide feedback on writing samples or provide advice if you feel like you're having a hard time explaining something.

    Best of luck with grad school!