 Hello again. Welcome to this ELC video. This video is all about academic writing style. You'll need appropriate academic writing style in many subjects at university, not only ELC subjects. And you often need it for assessments. So listen and watch carefully. So what is academic style? It's about using appropriate language to demonstrate the kind of writing for academic work and also expressing ideas and views intensive rather than assertive language. OK, so what is appropriate language to demonstrate academic style? One way is to use more formal language. This will make your essay more suitable for university studies. Tentative rather than assertive? Well, what does that mean? It's being less certain in your writing. This will be covered in more detail in a later video. One thing you should watch is a video about academic style by one of our former colleagues called Geoff. It's a short video and very useful. You can find the link in the description of this video. OK, here's a sample text, but unfortunately it's not very effective academic style. So what are the problems with it? For example, the first line. How often do PolyU students use their mobile phones in the classroom? Pause the video on a piece of paper, write down the problems with these lines. So why is it not very good academic style? OK, well here are problems that I've identified. There are several problems. So in the first line there's a question. How often do PolyU students use their mobile phones in the classroom? In secondary school often you are told to use questions to attract interest. Now you're writing at university, generally you don't use questions in this way. The next line starts with and and the one after with because. That's a little bit informal, so try not to use and and because to start a sentence in an academic essay. Using think as a reporting verb is also not very formal. Bad and good are very simple everyday words. Which more precise vocabulary can you use instead? Find out is a phrasal verb. Which single word verb can you use instead? I think it's crystal clear. I is using the first person pronoun. It's better not to use the first person pronoun too much in academic English. Crystal clear is what is called a cliché. These are phrases that are overused in English. It's best to avoid them in academic writing. So all these words in red, how could we change them? Or how could we change the sentence? Again pause the video, have a think about it. Right, so this is the answer I have. The first part was a question I've changed it into a statement. This essay investigates etc. And and because are not used to start sentences, more precise vocabulary is used and contractions and clichés are removed. Let's summarize these changes. We change questions to statements. Instead of starting a sentence with the cause or and, we use more formal sentence starters. Informal reporting verbs are changed to more academic reporting verbs. Clichés are removed. Use of the first person pronoun is changed to passive voice. Phrasal verbs like find out, change to single word verbs. Simple verbs like do, change into more precise vocabulary. Okay, these are just some of the examples. Right, that's the basics of academic style. Join the classroom session for more input and a lot more practice. And remember, continue with IndieWork. Join the ELC face-to-face initiatives. SAP, WAP, workshops and EES. Join sessions and get IndieWork points. Most importantly, make the most of your time at university. Thanks for listening, bye bye for now.