The four main forms of academic writing are descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical.
In a lot of academic texts you will need to use one or more type. For instance, in an thesis that is empirical
- you can expect to use critical writing within the literature review to show where there is certainly a gap or opportunity in the existing research
- The methods section shall be mostly descriptive to summarise the methods used to gather and analyse information
- the results section will likely to be mostly descriptive and analytical you collected as you report on the data
- the discussion section is more analytical, while you propose your interpretations of the findings as you relate your findings back to your research questions, and also persuasive.
Descriptive
The simplest type of academic writing is descriptive. Its purpose would be to provide facts or information. An example would be a listing of a write-up or a written report for the total link between an experiment.
The kinds of instructions for a purely descriptive assignment include: identify, report, record, summarise and define.
Analytical
It’s rare for a text that is university-level be purely descriptive. Most academic writing is also analytical.
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