Analytical Writing

University is about ideas and knowledge. Academic writing is such a critical skill because it is the language for wrestling with evidence, ideas, concepts, theories and arguments — and ultimately, for making claims to have advanced knowledge. The form this takes varies with the discipline, but there are some fundamental ‘moves’ that we find in almost all academic writing.

This is where AcaWriter comes in: it aims to teach you what those moves are, not by giving you abstract examples of someone else's writing, but by showing you whether you have learnt to makes these moves in your own writing.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure how to do this yet! All the evidence is that many people find it challenging to learn, and basically, it takes practice. Luckily, AcaWriter will give you feedback 24/7 without getting tired!

When we talk about academic writing, it is common to talk about ‘rhetorical moves’ — such as introducing an argument, providing evidence to support the argument, and developing a conclusion. You know them when you see them, but the question is, do you understand enough to use them?

Let’s see what they look like in different kinds of writing...

Essay

Rhetorical moves in essay

The following rhetorical moves are relevant for analytical, argumentative writing such as the persuasive essay.

S - Summarises or signals the author's goals

P - Perspective or stance

E - Emphasis to highlight key ideas

N - Novel improvements in ideas

C - Contrasting idea, tension or critical insight

B - Background information and previous work

S - Surprising or unexpected finding

Q - Question or gap in previous knowledge

T - Trend or tendency related to ideas

Here are some examples:

How AcaWriter can help

AcaWriter’s Analytical Report tab annotates your text, highlighting sentences which it thinks are playing the above roles. You can see this in the example below, in which there seems to be a strong opening sentence:

The middle Feedback Tab summarises which sentence types you seem to have used, and how you could improve the text because certain moves are missing, or in an odd order. See example below:

Finally, the Tips tab provides examples of each move (see the first image above). If you’re using AcaWriter as part of an assignment, this tab may also give examples specific to the topic, or tips from your academics about how these moves relate to the assessment criteria.

Research

Rhetorical moves in research

The Analytical (Abstract/Intro) genre highlights the document’s rhetorical moves according to Swales (1990) framework Creating a Research Space (CARS). The three moves that are highlighted are:

Move 1 - Establishing a research territory 

E - Emphasis of a significant or important idea 

B - Background information and reviewing previous work 

Move 2 - Establishing a niche

C - Contrasting idea, tension, disagreement or critical insight 

Q - Question or gap in previous knowledge 

Move 3 – Occupying the niche 

N - Novelty and value of your research 

S - Summary of the author's goal, nature of the research or structure of the paper

How AcaWriter can help

AcaWriter highlights parts of your text where it perceives you have made appropriate moves. This may help you evaluate your writing and improve successive drafts. Remember, AcaWriter does not really understand your writing the way people do. You may have written beautifully crafted nonsense - that's for you to decide! Moreover, writing is complex, and AcaWriter will get it wrong sometimes. If you think AcaWriter got it wrong, that's fine - now you're thinking about more than spelling, grammar, and plagiarism!

AcaWriter's feedback in research

There are three tabs providing details about the CARS framework and the three moves. Firstly, the three moves have been assigned a highlighter colour so they are easily identified. Moves are tagged at a sentence level and more than one tag may appear in a sentence. You can see this in the example below:

 

Secondly, feedback is given on your text when moves are missing and when moves are in the incorrect order. You can see this in the example below:

A Resources also tab provides more details about the CARS framework and the three moves.