There are many forms and styles of writing, such as book reviews, abstracts, research and the like. The style used in each piece of writing can be determined by the technique used by the writer, the tone and word choice.  While in college, students are taught many of these styles, but there is a strong focus on academic writing.  Due to this, students are required to produce different types of academic writings that focus on analyzing, summarizing, presenting an argument and many others.   

In the article “What Is ‘Academic’ Writing?” L. Lennie Irvin describes academic writing as “a form of evaluation that asks you to demonstrate knowledge and show proficiency with certain disciplinary skills of thinking, interpreting, and presenting.”  This means that the focus of academic writing is on the ability to establish an idea or point of view and present a stance with some level of expertise.  The article, “Why Is Academic Writing So Academic?” by Joshua Rothman, explains the purpose of academic writing.  He states that academic writing is for educational purposes for within the classroom or niche based academic groups, not for the entertainment or consumption of the masses.  In other words, academic writing is a study or research done in writing in a variety of genres for educational purposes for a group people.  

Irving further explains that “Your success with academic writing depends upon how well you understand what you are doing as you write and then how you approach the writing task.”     

He provides a list of elements necessary for a successful piece of academic writing such as “Knowledge of Research Skills” where “You’ll need to know how to find information in the library, especially what is available from online databases which contain scholarly articles.” Another element is “The Ability to Read Complex Texts” which he explains is “your ability to write well…based upon the quality of your reading. In addition to the labor of close reading, you’ll need to think critically as you read. That means separating fact from opinion, recognizing biases and assumptions, and making inferences.”

During previous college course, I have had the opportunity to create some academic writings of my own in the form of course assignments.  I found academic writing to be somewhat challenging since I would have to research several articles and/or books before forming a conclusion or general idea in order to be able to begin writing about any given subject.   As stated by L. Lennie Irvin, in order to write a successful piece of academic writing, I had to have a very good understanding of the subject at hand, and only then, was I able to piece my stance or points of view together.   I was able to successfully find multiple articles and from my research, but my biggest challenge was the ability to understand or process some of the complex texts in order to form my thesis.

Last semester most of my academic writings were about racism and white privilege in the United States, a topic that relates to all of us as we experience it in different ways.  I used other articles and rhetorical context to demonstrate my point of view.   Although I could have made many arguments from a Pathos and/or Ethos standpoint, Logos or reason were my main methods of persuasion.  The reason for this was that through my academic research to find whether white privilege existed, I found that when comparing minorities to whites in subjects like education, job opportunities or financial savings, the numbers are so shockingly drastic that, in my opinion, causes an emotional impact to the reader.  For example, in my article about white privilege I stated:

“…according to the 2011 US Census, ‘the median white household had $111,146 in wealth holdings in 2011, compared to $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household.’ (All figures come from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and Program Participation.)  This means that people of color have 6-8 percent of the typical white household.  These figures make the gap between whites and people of color obvious in terms of economic growth and social mobility.”

As you can see, the statistics show that the disproportion between the financial savings of white household and that of a black or Latino family is just too large to disregard or not shock the reader causing an emotional response.

Aside from financial savings, without doing much research, one can find disparity in many places between minorities and whites.  Another example I pointed out in my white privilege article was that “We can also see this inequality when we look at the races of people in positions of power like a CEO or even the presidents of the United States; the majority is white. “  Without presenting statistics or additional findings, one can briefly search the top CEOs in the United States or just look at the list of US presidents and find that the majority is white.   

Despite researching different topics and writing articles for my course assignments, I don’t consider myself a good academic writer.  As I mentioned before, piecing all the evidence to form a stance for an article is very challenging for me.  I find that it is more of an educational tool for me to better understand certain subjects than it will be for those reading it for their own educational appetite or research.   However, after re-reading my article on white privilege, I feel that I provided great back up information and evidence that does make it academically strong.  Perhaps with practice I will become comfortable with producing my own academic writings in order to feel as if I am informing the reader well enough to consider it “academic writing.”