Academic Writing Links

Resources to help
with college writing

Especially for ESL / EFL / NNS Writing

I am still tweaking the html for the conversion from my old site. But here is a start, a work-in-progress. More to come.


Resource	Descriptions	Icon / Link
Academic Writing	Writing \| Paragraphs \| Citation \| Editing \| Top
Writing Machine	This is an overall guide to writing academic essays designed for non-native speakers of English.
Harvard’s Writing CenterStrategies for Essay Writing	Harvard University’s Writing Center offers useful advice on how to approach writing a college essay.
Diana Hacker Books	Diana Hacker has good English writing handbooks: Rules for Writers, A Writer’s Reference, and A Pocket Style Manual (as well as a Canadian handbook). A Writer’s Reference is a useful general guide.
Andy Gillete’s English for Academic Purposes	This is a good website, especially for English Academic Word Lists (United Kingdom English, so watch spellings for US journals).
Harvard’s Writing Center Writing Essays in Different Disciplines	Harvard University’s Writing Center provides brief guides to writing papers for different faculties, such as History, English, Philosophy, Psychology.
Drake University Writing Tutorial for Graduate Students	This is Drake University’s writing tutorial, designed for graduate students. It includes links to several other resources, both within Drake University and elsewhere on the web.
Writing Studio Duke University	Resources from Duke University, including links to material for specific disciplines.
Summary Street	Colorado University-Boulders Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) exercises on summary writing that compares your summary to the article–a sort of semantic application. They have others from their main menu.
Summary Writing Guide	English Grammar Online 4U offers a simple guide to writing summaries, plus links to other helpful resources, such as verb tense and vocabulary for summaries.
Purdue OWL Summary, Paraphrase, & Quoting	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to its information about using summary, paraphrase, and quotation when writing from sources.
Harvard’s Writing Center Stratgies for Essay Writing	Harvard University’s Writing Center offers useful advice on how to approach writing a college essay.
Christine Bauer-Ramazani Summary Guidelines	Writing Instructor Christine Bauer-Ramazani offers her useful thoughts on writing a summary, including vocabulary.
Guide to Reading and Analysing Academic Articles	Yukon College (Canada) guide to reading and analyzing academic articles, with writing guide and further resources.
Purdue OWL Evaluating	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to its information about evaluating sources.
ERIC Writing Research Reviews	Carla Piper, Ed.D., provides guidelines and links as part of Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Digest on writing (critique) reviews of research articles. Includes many useful links.
Renselaer Polytechnic Institut How to Write a Critique	Susan Katz and Jenny Skerl wrote a nice handout on writing a critique.
Purdue OWL Academic Arguments	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to its information about writing academic arguments.
Purdue OWL PowerPoint on the Rhetorical Situation	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to a page where you can download a PowerPoint presentation on the rhetorical situation in writing.
Purdue OWL Logic in Writing	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to its information about logic in writing.
Purdue OWL Appropriate Language for Academic Writing	Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL—started by Muriel “Mickey” Harris) offers many helpful resources. This link goes to its information about appropriate language for academic writing.
Writing about graphs, charts and tables	WriteFix.com offers help for a variety of writing and EFL writing situations. This specific link helps with a difficult writing task: writing about graphs, charts, and tables. The home page (click on logo to the right) offers links to other materials and other online resources.


Paragraphs	Writing \| Paragraphs \| Citation \| Editing \| Top
Constructing the Paragraph	A self-guided tutorial on English paragraph writing from English Online France, Université de France Compté.
Paragraph Unity	Richard Nordquist writes about paragraph unity for the About.Com: Grammar & Composition pages.
Coherence & signal words (transitions)	Richard Nordquist writes about paragraph coherence for the About.Com: Grammar & Composition pages. This includes lists of transition words important for academic English writing and paragraphs.
Cause and effect linking / signal words	Kenneth Beare writes about cause and effect linking words (transitions) for the About.Com: English as 2nd Language pages. These transition words are important for showing logical connections in academic English writing and paragraphs.
Coherence: vocabulary and methods for linking and developing ideas	Kenneth Beare writes about linking words (transitions) for the About.Com: English as 2nd Language pages. These transition words are important for academic English writing and paragraphs.
Academic Writing Module Paragraphs	Alison Hoffmann, Barbara Griffiths and Irina Elgort of Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, provide a web-based lesson on writing paragraphs (requires Java).


Citation	Writing \| Paragraphs \| Citation \| Editing \| Top
Purdue OWL Avoiding Plagiarism	Purdue’s OWL provides guidance in how to avoid plagiarism when writing academic essays in English.
APA Online Tutorial	This is the official American Psychological Association’s Frequently Asked Questions about APA Style, categorized helpfully as follows: General APA Style Questions, References, Punctuation, as well as Grammar and Writing Style. If this style is the standard for your field, consider purchasing the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition.
Purdue OWL APA Citation Style	This is the Purdue OWL guide to using the American Psychological Association citation style, with examples. APA is used in many of the Social Sciences.
Purdue OWL MLA Citation Style	This is the Purdue OWL guide to using the Modern Language citation style, with examples. MLA is used in most of the Humanities.
Purdue OWL Chicago Manual of Style	Book publishers in many academic fields require the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS, formerly Turabian). This link provides an overview of CMS from Purdue’s OWL. If you are writing or editing an English book for publication, you may wish to purchase this resource. It not only covers citation and format, but also editing issues, common “problem” words, style, and English grammar relevant to publication. Some journals also require this style.
Purdue OWL Ameircan Sociological Association Style	The American Sociological Association has its own style for essays / articles. Purdue’s OWL provides an overview here.

English Online France Links to Citation Resources	English Online France provides links to other online resources for citation style.


Editing	Writing \| Paragraphs \| Citation \| Editing \| Top
Purdue University’s OWL’s Proofreading Strategies	Purdue University’s OWL provides guidance on proofreading strategies and links to material on common errors for editing.
Grammar Girl	Grammar Girl is a well-liked website; she’s also on FaceBook, Twiiter, and Google+. Check out the site for hints and help with grammar. You can also sign up for her podcasts on iTunes.
Paul Brians’Common English Errors	Paul Brians, of Washington State University, has a very comprehensive list of common English errors, explanations, and corrections. The site lists errors alphabetically, but you can also use the search box to look for a particular term or word bookversion, Common Errors in English Usage, which might be a useful desk reference.
Purdue OWLTransitions and Transitional Devices	Transitions and transitional devices in English grammar may be covered as part of paragraphs; I’ve included this link here so that writers will review their transitions as part of their sentence-level editing process, as well.
English Online France Linking words	Linking words are another term or transitions. Again, this link is here to encourage writers to check their transitions as part of their editing process.
Purdue OWL Editing for Wordiness	Whether a sentence is wordy or not may be in the eyes of the reader / writer. However, often wordiness, sentence sprawl, and passive voice contribute to writing that is not clear to readers. Look at this module from Purdue’s OWL for help in editing
Junket Studies 11 Rules of Writing	These eleven “rules” don’t have very much explanation, but in combination with explanations from other resources here might be of use. The page is a service of Junket Studies, a New Jersey, US, based tutoring service.
University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 12 Common Errors An Editing Checklist	The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center is an excellent resource for its students. It also has online help, such as this link to a list of twelve common errors to use as an editing check list. Each error has a link to an example, with its correction.
Sentence connectors / conjunctions Opposition or disagreement with the prior information	About.com’s English as a Second Language Pages provides information about joining words (conjunctions / connectors) used in English when what is joined disagrees or is the opposite of what came before it. These are useful both for variety in your writing, and to make sure that you have used a word like “however” when you mean “in addition to.”
How to use a relative clause	Kenneth Beare provides useful information on relative clauses (which, that, who), with links to more detailed information worth exploring. Keep in mind that UK English and US English use different punctuation with dependent / independent clauses
English Online France English Grammar for Articles / Determiners (a / an, the)	English Online France provides an online tutorial on using determiners / articles in English. Review this material and check your article use when editing–articles often confuse writers, especially non-native speakers of English.
Grammar Interactive	English Corner offers several web pages of English and English Grammar assistance. The Grammar Interactive page takes you to information, exercises, and further resources related to English grammar help.
English Online France English as a Foreign Language Resources	English Online France provides a rich directory of free online EFL and ESL learning resources, categorized by type of resource (for examples: Academic English, Grammar Safaris, or Medical English). Explore the different links and bookmark those you find useful for your purposes.