One of the most common questions I get from international students is how to help them with their academic writing.
In this post, I’m going to share with you some of the strategies I use to help international students with academic writing, and how you can use these strategies to help your international students too!
Before we get started, here are a few things you need to know about academic writing:
Academic writing is different from other types of writing. It’s different because it’s more formal, and it requires a different set of skills. Academic writing is also different from the writing you’re used to. For example, academic writing is more likely to use a lot of academic vocabulary, and academic writing tends to be more focused on the content of the paper, rather than on how it looks on the page. This means that academic writing can be very difficult for non-native English speakers to write, and for native English speakers who don’t have a strong command of the language, it can be difficult to write in a way that makes sense to a native English speaker. This is why it’ll be a lot easier for you to help an international student with their writing if you have a good command of English, and if you’re able to read their writing and understand what they’re trying to say. You’ll also need to be able to think about the academic writing process in a different way than you’d be used to thinking about writing in other contexts. Here are some things to keep in mind as you help your students write their papers:
1. You’ll need to teach your students how to use academic vocabulary correctly. This can be a difficult thing to do, but it’d be much easier if you had a good grasp of the English language. If you don’t, you’ll probably need to find someone who can help you understand the academic vocabulary your students are using, and who can teach you how to correctly use it. You can find a list of common academic vocabulary here.
2. You need to make sure your students understand the purpose of academic writing before they begin writing their papers. This will help them understand what’s expected of them, and why they need to write the way they do. It’s also a good idea to have a conversation with your students about what they want to accomplish with their papers, and what they expect to get out of the process. This conversation will help you and your students to understand each other’s expectations, which will make the writing process much easier for everyone.
3. Your students need to understand the structure of an academic paper before they start writing their paper. This includes understanding what an introduction is, what a conclusion is, and the difference between a thesis statement and a topic sentence. If your students aren’t familiar with these concepts, they’ll have a much harder time writing a paper that’s well-structured, and that makes their paper much less likely to be accepted by their professor.
4. You and your student need to agree on a structure for the paper before your student begins writing. This structure needs to include an introduction, a body, a conclusion, and a reference list. Your student needs to understand what each of these things is, so that they can write the paper in the way you’ve agreed on. If they’ve never written a paper like this before, they may not know how to do this, and they may need to get some help from someone who’s been through the process before. If this is the case, you may want to consider hiring a professional academic writing service to help you write your paper for you. There are a number of writing services out there that specialize in helping international students write academic papers. I’ve used these services in the past, and I’m happy to recommend them to you if you need help with your international student’s writing!
5. Once your student has written their introduction, body, conclusion and reference list, your student will need to proofread their paper, and make sure that it meets all of the requirements of the assignment. If it doesn’t meet all of these requirements, you can ask your student to make changes to the paper to make it meet the requirements, or you can have your student re-write the paper. Either way, this is an important step in the process, and one that’ll help your student get the most out of their writing experience, and help you get the best grade possible on their paper!
If you have any questions about academic writing, please feel free to leave a comment below, or send me an email at email protected I’d love to hear from you!