Learning to become Academic Writer

If you are planning to attend graduate school, it is very essential to learn how to write an academic essay. Most professors require critiques of books and films, research papers, and formal reports related to the content of their courses. When I first started college after 4 years of the job, I was both nervous and excited about the new learnings and challenges I will face, pursuing the MBA program at Kings College. I am determined to improve my writing. To achieve this goal, I will focus on three points: the content of the essay, correct grammar, and vocabulary.

As soon as I started to write my first MBA academic essay, I realized that this type of writing was different from the writing I was used to doing. In my Engineering School, most of my writing dealt with subject-based technical writing. I wrote mainly about scientific theories, engineering analysis, and mathematical derivations. In contrast, MBA academic essay focused on a variety of issues that I was unfamiliar with, such as reacting to a piece of literature or reflecting on certain case studies. Thus, I have realized that the most important thing for me to write an awesome academic essay was to understand the assigned topic and generating core contents to support the assigned topic. In most cases, I will have to do research and read lots of journals and articles to collect enough facts to prove my point. I find that including examples, statistics, and direct quotations whenever possible to support my statement would make my essay strong and valid. However, It was important for me to improve my grammatical skills as well.

In order to write high grade scoring academic essay, I have to avoid any sort of grammatical errors in my writing. As in most engineering college, professors do not bother much on grammatical errors. This has certainly decreased my grammatical skill. Though, I was good with grammar during my schooling. Currently, grammar is not my strong point. As I was reviewing a few of my writings that I wrote recently, I found run-on sentences, sentence fragments, punctuation errors, word repetitions, clauses errors and structure error. I was more concerned with what I wanted to say than with how it was said. I know that my professors would not accept this type of writing. For now, I am happy that I have at least realized my areas of improvement. Therefore, I am determined to make grammar my second priority. In order to improve my grammar, I will review the basic grammatical structures such as subjects and verbs and check all my essays for verb tense consistency and punctuation. I am confident if I practice on a daily basis, I will eventually improve my writings.

Furthermore, as I was accustomed to writing business emails, letters and reports, I usually wrote in the straight forward language and simple structure. As I was writing my first academic essay, I realized that it would require a much more sophisticated vocabulary. Not surprisingly, improving my vocabulary is my third and final goal. In order to improve my vocabulary, I am planning to read at least one academic essay every day and make use of dictionary software to expand my knowledge.

As of now, I can say Academic writing requires critical thinking skills, creative analysis skills, an understanding of the topic, excellent vocabulary, and correct grammar. Having these skills is beneficial and empowering since it will make me a better communicator and academic writer.