 My name is Demera Hayes and I'm from the Air Force Research Institute at Air University. Welcome to our video series, Academic Writing for Airmen. This is a series of short videos that will introduce you to the principles of good academic writing. It will provide methods for completing academic writing tasks. We'll show you some examples of what to do and maybe just as importantly what not to do. And we'll also review some key grammar and style issues. Though many of the principles that I discuss in these videos can be applied to all kinds of writing, the videos are aimed primarily at Airmen and other military members who are writing in a scholarly or academic context, whether they are enrolled in a school such as Air University or hoping to publish their work in an academic journal such as Strategic Studies Quarterly or maybe going back to graduate school at a civilian institution. This video series grew out of a series of lectures and workshops that I gave at Air University trying to help students be more successful writing in that context. Because academic writing follows different norms from the daily staff writing that most military members do, the Air Force Research Institute perceived the need to provide this resource for AU students and others around the Air Force. Now you may want to watch these videos sequentially or you may find topics that are of interest to you and go straight to them. And if you don't see a video on a writing topic that could be useful to you, let us know and we may be able to produce that. Before we start talking about writing, let me just tell you a couple of things about me, about my background. I'm an editor at the Air Force Research Institute. I've also taught writing classes at institutions such as Kennesaw State University and the University of Kentucky and other schools. And I've worked one-on-one with many writing students in university writing centers and also at the Air War College. So enough about me, let's talk about writing. Writing is a tool through which you communicate your ideas. You think critically about your subject matter and then maybe you conduct research to learn more about the topic and then you write to create change or to share knowledge about the topic. If you write well, then your ideas become a part of the conversation about that topic and you help others to think critically and to learn more about the subject. But writing and critical thinking and learning aren't really separate activities. When I was a graduate student in English literature, I often found that I only really began to understand the text when I started to write about it. You'll make new connections when you write. You'll have new ideas and writing really helps you clarify your thinking about a subject matter. So think of these activities, writing and critical thinking and research as really one process that's working together. So what do I mean by academic writing? I'm talking primarily about the kinds of essays that you write in graduate school or to publish in a scholarly setting. An academic essay makes an argument. How does it do that? Well, it defines a limited thesis about a relevant topic and then it supports that thesis with evidence and it considers objections to the thesis and to the evidence. Now, the evidence includes the author's own analysis and knowledge, but it's also based on extensive research using credible, relevant sources. The essay presents the argument and the evidence in an orderly way with an introduction, a thesis near the beginning, a body that discusses each aspect of the argument, a conclusion and citations that show where the evidence came from. So the academic essay will be the focus of this video series. Now, as I said, many of the principles can be applied to other kinds of writing. For example, a memo that you write to your commander may make an argument and follow some of the principles discussed here, but our primary focus is the persuasive, researched essay. So as a launching point, I want to introduce you to some of the characteristics that all good academic essays should conform to and future videos will explore each of these characteristics in greater depth. Number one at the top of the list is that good academic writing has something important to say. It addresses a significant topic and it advances the conversation about that topic. Every essay has one thesis or main idea. Your thesis is your argument. Now, the thesis should be relevant to your audience and it should be defined very precisely and very manageable within the page requirement. If your thesis is too narrow, then you'll end up filling up your paper with repetition and irrelevant information. But if your thesis is too broad, then you won't be able to support it adequately within the page requirement. Third, your essay must say enough to explain and support every aspect of the thesis, but not say anything irrelevant. Good academic writing is tightly focused and it doesn't follow tangents. Good academic writing is well researched and it provides compelling evidence. If you choose a topic that's important, then most likely you're going to be entering a conversation that's already underway, either in academic journals or out in the operational environment. So in this context, your writing really can't be considered good unless you take that conversation into account and root your essay thoroughly in the relevant research. Fifth, a good academic essay always considers alternatives to the thesis or counter arguments against the thesis and addresses those within the body of the essay. Addressing alternative points of view or objections to your thesis really increases your credibility as a writer because it shows that you've thought through the implications of your argument. Six, the good essay is logically organized. The order of ideas makes sense to the reader and you lead the reader along through the essay. The good essay shows connections between ideas. And seven, it uses organization to guide the reader. I'm talking about things like previewing the structure of your essay in the introduction so that the reader sees from the outset where you're going, using transition sentences to show how the different parts of your essay fit together, and maybe using headings to show what the main ideas are and strategies like that. Number eight, now getting your reader interested is different for an academic essay than it would be if you were writing an article for a popular magazine where your purpose really might be to entertain your reader. But in academic writing, your purpose is not to entertain. So primarily the way that you get your reader interested is to show why your topic is important or how your argument affects real-world operations, why your reader should care about your argument. The advice that you do this is your introduction. Number nine, good academic writing uses clear language. Now I want to be careful here because I don't mean that you use simple or simplistic language necessarily. You may be writing about complex topics and you should use the vocabulary that's appropriate to that field. But you never choose to inflate your language just to try to impress your audience. That always makes your writing sound worse, not better. Good academic writing always expresses its ideas in the clearest way possible while still communicating the meaning. Number ten, good academic writing has a style that's suitable or appropriate to the task. For example, good academic writing would never be glib or sarcastic. You want to have a serious tone but one that's not pompous and we'll talk about writing style in several of the videos. And number eleven, we're going to look at some of the ways that people mess up with standard English grammar. It should go without saying, I think, that good academic writing always conforms to standard English grammar. So I hope that you'll join us for the next episode as we dive in. We'll introduce the five stages of the writing process and talk about how to begin a writing assignment and move through the stages to a good finished product. As always, we would love to hear from you. Please use the email address on the screen to let us know how these videos are helping you or to suggest improvements or to request additional writing topics. Again, thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time.