Supervisor comment: 'elegant use of English'
Academic writing normally requires formal vocabulary and should not be too conversational in tone. Complete the table below by formalising some of the words and phrases used in the exemplar essays.
If you find this activity challenging you may find it useful to refer to a thesaurus to search for individual words and phrases. A selection of online resources are available here: University of Manchester Academic Phrasebank ; Online thesaurus.co.uk; Bibliodata (All accessed 13.08.2009)
| Informal word/phrase | Suggested formal alternatives |
| 'xxxx is different' | |
| 'leads to the fact' | e.g., subsequently |
| 'this is because' | |
| 'this said' | |
| 'it is now known' | |
| 'shows' | |
| 'take in nutrients' |
Now click here to access the supervisor's feedback on the language used above.