1st Edition
Clarity and Coherence in Academic Writing Using Language as a Resource
This book presents a lively, rich, and concise introduction to the key concepts and tools for developing clarity and coherence in academic writing. Well-known authors and linguists David Nunan and Julie Choi argue that becoming an accomplished writer is a career-long endeavor. They describe and provide examples of the linguistic procedures that writers can draw on to enhance clarity and coherence for the reader. Although the focus is on academic writing, these procedures are relevant for all writing. This resource makes complex concepts accessible to the emergent writer and illustrates how these concepts can be applied to their own writing. The authors share examples from a wide range of academic and non-academic sources, from their own work, and from the writing of their students. In-text projects and tasks invite you, the reader, to experiment with principles and ideas in developing your identity and voice as a writer.
1. What Every Writer Should Know About Language 2. Only Connect 3. Product and Process Approaches to Writing 4. Audience and Purpose 5. Towards Active Voice 6. Using Figurative Language 7. Seeking and Providing Meaningful Feedback 8. The Power of Revising 9. In a Nutshell: Ten Thoughts to Take Away
Biography
David Nunan is Professor Emeritus of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong; and President Emeritus, Distinguished Research Professor, and Director of the David Nunan Institute, Anaheim University. He is also a former president of TESOL International. He is well-known internationally through his many academic and English Language Teaching textbook publications.
Julie Choi is Senior Lecturer of Education at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Australia. She is the author of Creating a Multilingual Self: Autoethnography as Method, and co-editor of Plurilingualism in Teaching and Learning and Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity.
'This volume, produced with the input of students, performs what it proclaims: clarity and coherence about academic writing. The authors demonstrate how academic writing works and how it can be acquired. The volume is also excellent in its serious treatment of the concept of ‘language as a resource’. The field of academic language studies has needed this book for a long time.'
Joseph Lo Bianco, Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia
'This book offers what every academic could wish for—an empathetic older brother and sister extending their helping hand to the struggling writer of academic English prose. Not just rules and advice, but concrete examples of revisions and rewrites. Not to relieve your guilt feelings, but to help you reach your intended audience in the most forceful way. Not recipes, but explorations of your writing process. Writing as a way of discovering what you really think—and who you really are. I wish I could have had such a book at the beginning of my writing career.'
Claire Kramsch, Professor Emerita University of California, Berkeley, USA
'The authors invite you as readers to engage with how academic texts are crafted, to consider how you tackle the process of writing, and to reflect on your own writing. The book is about being a writer, as much as it is about academic writing.'
From the Foreword by Debra Myhill, Professor, University of Exeter, UK
