EAP Foundation

The two most common forms of writing at university are reports and essays. This podcast describes academic reports, giving information on what a report is, outlines the main types of report you may need to write, and summarises the differences between reports and essays.

Academic writing is generally impersonal and objective in tone. This podcast considers what objective writing is, how objective academic writing is, then presents several ways to make your writing more objective, namely: using passive; focusing on the evidence (The findings show...); referring to sources (Newbold (2021) shows...); using impersonal constructions with It and There; using hedges and boosters to show strength of feeling, rather than emotive language; personifying the writing (This report shows...).

The writing objectively page on the website also includes an academic article, to show authentic examples of objective language, and a checklist, that you can use to check the objectivity of your own writing.

The Academic Formulas List (AFL) is a list of the most common formulaic sequences in academic English, i.e. recurring word sequences three to five words long. There are three separate lists: one for formulas that are common in both academic spoken and academic written language (the 'core' AFL), one for those which are special to academic spoken language, and one for those which are special to academic written language. This podcasts gives an overview of the AFL, as presents the 10 most frequent formulas in each of the three lists.

Hedging, also called caution or cautious language, is an important component of academic style. This podcast explains what hedging is, then looks at different ways to hedge, namely using introductory verbs, modal verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nouns, and some other ways such as adverbs of frequency and introductory phrases. On the website there is as an example passage so you can see each type of hedging in an authentic text, and a checklist so you can check your understanding.

This podcast describes the New Academic Word List (NAWL), giving information on what the NAWL is, as well as the 10 most frequent words in the NAWL.

This podcast describes the New General Service List (NGSL), giving information on what the NGSL is, as well as the first 10 words in the NGSL.

This podcast describes the Academic Collocation List (ACL), explaining what it is and giving some example collocations.

Academic writing is arguably the most important skill in academic contexts, since writing is the main method of academic communication. It is also the most difficult skill for most students to master. This podcast considers what academic writing is, looking in detail at the main features of academic writing, namely that it is structured, evidenced, critical, balanced, precise, objective, and formal. The podcast also suggests ways for you to develop your academic writing.

Although it is often assumed that idioms are too informal for use in academic English, two studies have identified idioms which occur fairly frequently in spoken and written academic English. This podcast describes idioms in academic English, giving information on what an idiom is, why academic idioms should be studied, as well as giving the 10 more common academic idioms for spoken and written English from a recent study of idioms (Miller, 2019). The podcast also gives the background to the creation of the list.

This podcast describes the Academic Word List (AWL), giving information on what the AWL is, as well as listing the first 60 headwords of the AWL.