Academic-Phrasebank-Enhanced-Personal-2015-v4

TheAcademicPhrasebankisageneralresourceforacademicwriters.Itmakesexplicitthemorecommonphraseological‘nutsandbolts’ofacademicwriting.AcademicPhrasebankAcompendiumofcommonlyusedphrasalelementsinacademicEnglishinPDFformat2015benhancededitionPersonalCopyDrJohnMorley1|PagePDFDownloadversion©2015TheUniversityofManchester2|PagePrefaceTheAcademicPhrasebankisageneralresourceforacademicwriters.Itaimstoprovidethephraseological‘nutsandbolts’ofacademicwritingorganisedaccordingtothemainsectionsofaresearchpaperordissertation.Otherphrasesarelistedunderthemoregeneralcommunicativefunctionsofacademicwriting.Theresourcewasdesignedprimarilyforacademicandscientificwriterswhoarenon-nativespeakersofEnglish.However,nativewritersmaystillfindmuchofthematerialhelpful.Infact,recentdatasuggeststhatthemajorityofusersarenativespeakersofEnglish.Thephrases,andtheheadingsunderwhichtheyarelisted,canbeusedsimplytoassistyouinthinkingaboutthecontentandorganisationofyourownwriting,orthephrasescanbeincorporatedintoyourwritingwherethisisappropriate.Inmostcases,acertainamountofcreativityandadaptationwillbenecessarywhenaphraseisused.TheAcademicPhrasebankisnotdisciplinespecific.Nevertheless,itshouldbeparticularlyusefulforwriterswhoneedtoreporttheirempiricalstudies.Thephrasesarecontentneutralandgenericinnature;inusingthem,therefore,youarenotstealingotherpeople'sideasandthisdoesnotconstituteplagiarism.Mostofthephrasesinthiscompendiumhavebeenorganisedaccordingtothemainsectionsofaresearchreport.However,itisanover-simplificationtoassociatethephrasesonlywiththesectioninwhichtheyhavebeenplacedhere.Inreality,forexample,manyofphrasesusedforreferringtootherstudiesmaybefoundthroughoutaresearchreport.InthecurrentPDFversion,additionalmaterial,whichisnotphraseological,hasbeenincorporated.Theseadditionalsectionsshouldbehelpfultoyouasawriter.3|PageContentsAboutAcademicPhrasebank……………………………………………..……..…..................4MajorSectionsIntroducingwork……………………………………………..………....................7Referringtoliterature……………………………………………..………….................26Describingmethods……………………………………………..………....................38Reportingresults……………………………………………..………....................45Discussingfindings……………………………………………..………....................51Writingconclusions……………………………………………..………....................58GeneralFunctionsBeingcritical……………………………………………..………....................68Beingcautious……………………………………………..………....................78Classifyingandlisting……………………………………………..………....................82Compareandcontrast……………………………………………..………....................85Definingterms……………………………………..………..………..................88Describingtrends………………………………………..……..………..................92Describingquantities…………………………………………..…..………..................93Explainingcausality……………………………………………....………..................95Givingexamplesassupport……………………………………………….………..................99Signallingtransition……………………………………………..…..……..................101Writingaboutthepast……………………………………………..……..…..................104Writingabstracts……………………………………………..………....................106NotesonAcademicWritingAcademicstyle……………………………………..………..………..................110Commonlyconfusedwords………………………………………..……..………..................113BritishandUSspelling…………………………………………..…..………..................115Punctuation……………………………………………....………..................116Usingarticles……………………………………………….………..................117Sentencestructure……………………………………………..…..……..................119Paragraphstructure……………………………………………..……..…..................121Helpfultipsforwriters……………………………………………..………....................1224|PageAboutAcademicPhrasebankTheoreticalInfluencesTheAcademicPhrasebanklargelydrawsonanapproachtoanalysingacademictextsoriginallypioneeredbyJohnSwalesinthe1980s.Utilisingagenreanalysisapproachtoidentifyrhetoricalpatternsintheintroductionstoresearcharticles,Swalesdefineda‘move’asasectionoftextthatservesaspecificcommunicativefunction(Swales,1981,1990).Thisunitofrhetoricalanalysisisusedasoneofthemainorganisingsub-categoriesoftheAcademicPhrasebank.Swalesnotonlyidentifiedcommonly-usedmovesinarticleintroductions,buthewasinterestedinshowingthekindoflanguagewhichwasusedtoachievethecommunicativepurposeofeachmove.Muchofthislanguagewasphraseologicalinnature.Theresourcealsodrawsuponpsycholinguisticinsightsintohowlanguageislearntandproduced.Itisnowacceptedthatmuchofthelanguageweuseisphraseological;thatitisacquired,storedandretrievedaspre-formulatedconstructions(Bolinger,1976;PawleyandSyder,1983).TheseinsightsbegantobesupportedempiricallyascomputertechnologypermittedtheidentificationofrecurrentphraseologicalpatternsinverylargecorporaofspokenandwrittenEnglishusingspecialisedsoftware(e.g.Sinclair,1991).Phrasebankrecognisesthatthereisanimportantphraseologicaldimensiontoacademiclanguageandattemptstomakeexamplesofthisexplicit.SourcesofthephrasesThevastmajorityofphrasesinthisresourcehavebeentakenfromauthenticacademicsources.Theoriginalcorpusfromwhichthephraseswere‘harvested’consistedof100postgraduatedissertationscompletedattheUniversityofManchester.Howev