Writing Skills
Blas MOLA-YUDEGO
Writing academic works
Guidelines, proper structure and contents are important parts of your assignments along the courses and your final thesis. In this text there is some reflections about academic writing to give some ideas and method on structuring text. Writing is not easy, for anybody, and needs lots of thinking and revision. There is the saying that “a good text is a bad text reviewed”. There is no need to be perfectionist to the utmost detail, but texts, as any work, needs of discipline and self-demand, and you should set your own thresholds. Guidelines and conventions look very arbitraty at times, and at times they are indeed. But they must be followed when a text is presented, as in many times imply more than a simple set of capricious rules. But obviously is not only about presentation and forms, contents are the ultimate core of your work. [continue reading]
Objectives
- To review and discuss the principles of clear writing
- To compare and analyse different types of academic abstracts
- To be able to write own abstract and to give constructive criticism to peers
- To review how to conduct assignments following the principles of good scientific practice (ethics & plagiarism)
Materials
Structuring a manuscript. Blas Mola (2025) [PDF]. In this presentation you will find some lecture notes about how to structure a manuscript. A well-structured manuscript: clear objective, reproducible methods, results before interpretation, and cautious, evidence-based conclusions, turns ideas into testable claims that others can verify. This discipline is essential as it enables rigorous peer scrutiny, accelerates cumulative knowledge, and converts debate into scientific progress.
On Academic Writing, lecture notes. Blas Mola (2025) [PDF]. In these lecture notes you will find some ideas concerning academic writing and how to produce scientific works. Academic writing demands clarity, evidence, and honesty: define a focused objective, cite accurately, report methods and uncertainty transparently, and write so others can replicate your work, and demand rigor to avoid possible problems. Find out why in the text.
Scientific writing 2.0: a reader and writer’s guide, Abstracts. Lebrun, J. L. (2011) [PDF]. In the chapter on abstracts in Scientific Writing 2.0 presents the abstract as a concise summary that communicates the essence of a paper. It stresses structure, clarity, and balance between context, methods, results, and conclusions, ensuring readers quickly grasp the study’s significance. The book is available at the UEF library, and it is highly recommended.
Academic Writing in English (Norris, 2016) [PDF]. The book introduces the conventions and strategies of clear, effective academic communication. It emphasises structure, coherence, and precision, and places special focus on the language and English conventions, helping students write texts that meet international scholarly standards. It was written by the Language Services of the University of Helsinki
Videos and materials [videos]
Tasks
Why are theses organised that way? Whats is your own writing style? What template would you follow when writing your first academic work? Structure your own thought on this. Have a look at these links:
Get familiar with the UEF Electronic plagiarism detection tool (Turnitin)
Read the UEF instructions on plagiarism
Wach the video: Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) -Helen Sword [Video]
Get a 9 steps’ guide to plagiarism with examples [here]
Final Note
About the [links], be warned that, for some reason, our IT designers and educational clerks keep changing the location of the pages on a regular basis, which means several times a year. The rationale for this remains completely unknown to me: perhaps it is a secret rithualistic way to keep us searching for knowledge. The practical result is that some of the links may not work, others may be misplaced, and some may have simply vanished into thin digital air. Maxima enim est hominum semper patientia virtus.