Summary
Highlights
Teacher Yvette Elandiccio welcomes viewers to English for Academic and Professional Purposes (EAPP). The lesson focuses on understanding academic text and its structures, starting with a distinction between academic and non-academic writing. Non-academic texts are personal, emotional, and subjective, while academic texts are critical, objective, specialized, and use formal language based on facts.
Academic writing is formal, avoiding casual language and contractions (e.g., 'do not' instead of 'don't'). It is impersonal and objective, avoiding direct references to people or feelings, and is based on facts rather than opinions. Academic writing is also technical, using discipline-specific vocabulary. The speaker emphasizes the importance of understanding specific styles and structures for different academic disciplines (e.g., business, social studies, humanities, natural sciences), highlighting how words like 'virus' can have different meanings across fields.
The video provides examples of academic texts, including literary analysis (examining and evaluating literary works, going beyond summarization), research papers (using external information to support a thesis, often evaluative or analytical, drawing from data, primary, and secondary sources), and dissertations/theses (a detailed document submitted at the conclusion of a PhD program summarizing the candidate's research). Other examples mentioned include books, book reports, translations, conference papers, academic journals, abstracts, and explications.
The speaker likens academic writing to building a house, emphasizing that a solid structure is crucial for clarity and readability. A well-structured text allows the reader to follow the argument and navigate the content effectively. Two common structures for academic texts are introduced: the three-part essay structure and the IMRaD structure.
The three-part essay structure consists of an introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction (10-20% of the paper) provides background, outlines the topic, purpose, viewpoint, and structure. The body is the 'heart' of the essay, elaborating on the topic with definitions, classifications, explanations, contrasts, examples, and evidence. The conclusion mirrors the introduction, summarizing main points and relating the topic to a broader context, often including implications or recommendations. The IMRaD structure (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) is used for theses and dissertations. The introduction covers background and focus, methods describe data collection, instruments, and sample size, and results/discussion summarize key findings.
Academic text is a formal mode of writing, typically in the third person or objective voice, relying heavily on research, factual experimentation, evidence, and scholarly opinions rather than the author's own. Viewers are encouraged to remember these points and use the three-part essay or IMRaD structures for their academic writing. The video concludes with a prompt for viewers to share their learnings on social media using #lotd_eapp, and provides tips for preventing eye strain when studying for long hours.