Speaker 1: Would you like to improve your academic writing? It isn't as difficult as you may think. In this video, I'm going to show you five ways that will help you to improve your academic writing. One of the best ways to help improve your writing is to expand your vocabulary. So how do you improve your vocabulary? Well one way is to read good English writing. Read good English books, news articles, even some magazine articles will help you to improve your vocabulary level. As you read, look at what kinds of words are used to describe things that you would also like to use in your own writing. You need to use higher level vocabulary. So what do I mean by higher level vocabulary? For example, don't use the word got, but use higher level vocabulary such as obtained or received or acquired. There are many different ways to express the word got, which are better for academic writing. Also learn how to use different forms of a word. Here's an example. Abundance is the noun form of this word. Abundant is the adjective form and abundantly is the adverb form. I'll put these words into a sentence so you can see the difference and how you can use these. There was an abundance of fruit available. This is how you would use the noun form in a sentence. There was abundant fruit available. Here you're telling or describing how much of the fruit there is. Fruit was abundantly available. Here it's used as an adverb to explain how available they were. Using all of these different ways in your writing will help to improve your vocabulary. Another good thing to do is to learn synonyms for the words that you often use. For example, the word very. You can use extremely, especially, significantly, incredibly. All of these are different ways that you can use and say the word very. If the test was very difficult, you would be using higher level vocabulary if you say the test was extremely difficult. One more thing that I would suggest you do is to learn how to use a thesaurus. A thesaurus is a type of dictionary that you can find synonyms of other words that you want to use. There are book versions of a thesaurus, but you can also use the online sources such as thesaurus.com. Here's a snapshot of thesaurus.com and the words that they have for the word very. As you can see, there are many words that can be used for the word very. The second thing that you can do to help improve your academic writing is to use formal language. What do I mean by formal language? In academic writing, you should not use contractions. Do not write a sentence with the word can't. Be sure to write the two words can not in your writing. The same with don't. Be sure to write do not. Also in academic writing, we usually do not use the words I, we, or you in the essay. In formal writing, you also need to use more complex and longer sentences. Along with more complex or longer sentences, you also should vary the sentence structure in the sentences in your essay. Let's look at the various sentence patterns that can be used in English. The first is the simple sentence, which is very basic. For example, the sentence, the new product is expensive. This is a simple sentence. It has a subject, a verb, and an object. This is what we call an SVO sentence. The next type of sentence is called a compound sentence. In this type of sentence, we'll take a simple sentence like we had before, and then add another SVO, or simple sentence, after the comma. To write a compound sentence, we will also need to use the words and, but, and so. The new compound sentence could be something like this. The new product is expensive, so many people will not be able to afford it. Another way to write a compound sentence is like this. The new product is expensive. Not many people will be able to afford it. Here we have put a semicolon in place of the word so. This is another good type of compound sentence that you should write in your essays. One more type of sentence is the complex sentence. Not many people will be able to afford it because the new product is expensive. Now this phrase, because the new product is expensive, cannot be a sentence by itself. It must be connected to another complete sentence. So in your academic writing, you should use a variety of sentences including simple, compound, and complex sentences. If you want more help about how to write good academic level sentences, be sure to check out the video about basic English sentence structure. The fourth tip about how to improve your academic writing is to be sure to write clear introduction and conclusion paragraphs. In a clear introduction paragraph, the ideas expressed all go from general to specific. The first sentence should catch the reader's attention and point him in the direction of the main subject. It could contain a statistic or a quote. The thesis statement will be the last sentence in the introduction paragraph, and the thesis statement should contain the subtopics, which will be used as the paragraph topics in the body of the essay. You can watch this video about how to write a good clear introduction paragraph to get more ideas. The conclusion paragraph will usually contain three or four sentences that review the main points given in the essay. It should summarize what you've said in your thesis statement. So in your conclusion paragraph, you should restate your thesis statement, you should summarize your main points, and you should make it clear that you are finished with your essay. And the last tip for how to improve your academic writing is that you should know what your main argument is and back it up with evidence. Using evidence in your essays is an important part of academic writing. However, you must add the evidence in the correct way or you may be accused of plagiarizing. So if you use information from another source, there are ways that you need to include that in your writing. You may need to paraphrase the information or rewrite the information in your own words, or if you use a direct quote, the actual words used, be sure to use quotation marks. In both cases, do not forget to add the source from where you found the quote or information. There are certain phrases that can be used to introduce evidence in an essay. You can start your sentence by saying something like this, according to, and then you put your source and put a comma, and then write what they've said. Or you could say, so-and-so states that, and then give the information. Or so-and-so asserts that, and then give the information. These are some good ways to add evidence or introduce evidence into your academic writing. Another good way is to use the words, for example, followed by a comma, and then give your example. So we have looked at five ways that could help to improve your academic writing. Expand your vocabulary, use formal language, vary your sentence structure, write clear introduction and conclusion paragraphs, and know your main argument and back it up with evidence. Improving all of these things will help to make your academic writing level higher. I hope you found this video helpful. Happy writing.