COM 101

Lecture Notes Compilation

LEARNING MATERIAL
FOR WEEK NUMBER:
14-15

I. TITLE: COMMUNICATION FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

II. OBJECTIVE:

At the end of lecture handout 11, you are expected to:

1. know the characteristics of academic writing
2. understand the principles and methods of research in the twenty-first century
3. evaluate and select sources of information on a relevant topic
4. organize bibliographic information from a variety of sources into a simple reference list

III. INRODUCTION:

Understanding The Meaning Of Academic Writing

In its broadest sense, “academic writing” is any writing done to fulfill a requirement of college
or a university…, which may also be used for publications that are read by teachers and researchers or
presented at conferences,” such as essays, book reports, abstracts, translations, research and term papers,
academic journals, theses, and dissertations (“Writing for Education, 2018).

A more narrow meaning specifies that academic writing is any formal written work produced
in an academic setting by students, professors, and researchers in every discipline to convey ideas, make
arguments, and engage in scholarly conversations; its most common forms are literary analyses, research
papers, and theses and dissertations ( Valdez, 2018)

Academic writing produces or analyzes knowledge; while writing, you learn how to analyze
knowledge and take up a position or stance appropriate to your degree program
(“What Is Academic Writing, 2007). The type of writing you are expected to work on differs from that of
a student in another degree program because academic writing varies from discipline to discipline.

Different areas of knowledge have different traditions, conventions, as well as way of thinking
and doing things; therefore, to be effective in your chosen field, you need to know not only its language but
also its value, rules, and terms – things that are important to actively and competently perform and
participate in the academic discourse and college writing of your academic discipline (“What Is Academic
Writing?”2007;2008)
Answer the following questions briefly and concisely.

1. Think about the kinds of academic writing you have done in Grades 11 and 12. Can you identify the
types?

2. Which of them did you have difficulties in writing? Why?

3. Which did you find easy to do? What makes you say so?

4. Why do you think difficulties and ease were when you were writing?

Characteristic of an Academic Paper

1. An academic writing should not sound pompous. Pompous language obscure meaning, as
given in this examples: scintillate, globule aurific, carbonaceous gem. Academic writing
should not be difficult to read because academic knowledge is meant to be shared with
others. Students should aim for precise and appropriate language.

2. Academic writing must follow the rules of Standard English or avoid usages that are
considered ungrammatical or non-standard. Avoid using language used in colloquial or
conversational and informal contexts.

Informal/ Non-Standard Versus More Formal/ Precise Equivalents

• can’t, won’t, didn’t (conversational speech cannot, will not, did not
based contractions)

• gonna, gotta (conversational speech/ going to, have to

speech-based shortcuts)

• I got here late. I arrived here late.

• He got a call. He received a call.

• ASAP, BTW, SOP (acronyms that as soon as possible, by the way,

may not be universally known) standard operating procedure
 • alright, alot, cope up with all right, a lot, cope with

• lol, afk, nrm, #feels (informal internet or text laugh out loud, away from keyboard,
messaging language) no reply necessary, a wave of emotions

• UP, ADMU, DLSU (acronyms for institutions) University of the Philippines

Ateneo de Manila University

3. Academic writing is also characterized by a bias-free language, which was discussed at

length in previous module.
Biased Bias-free
• stewardess flight attendant
• woman doctor doctor
• manpower labor force/personnel
• manning staffing
• man hours workers hours/ hours
• lady president president

4. Academic writing should not be stiff or stilted and somber in tone. In academic writing, this
means doing away with emotive punctuation marks like exclamation points whether single(!)
or multiple (!!!), and dramatic ellipses(…) used as a way of trailing off. Emoticons and emojis
which in the Internet speak and text messaging are meant to convey facial expressions, do
not have a place in academic writing.

KNOWING HOW ACADEMIC WRITING IS DONE

Although the academic output varies from discipline to discipline, the same process of writing
is followed for all degree programs. Here some guidelines that need to be considered
(Bullock & Weinberg, 2009)

1. Choose a topic. Look for any topic that interests you. The topic should be appropriate to the kind of text
assigned and to the specified, required time of completion.

2. Consider the rhetorical elements. These are (a) purpose for writing, (b) expected audience, (c)
stance—whether serious, objective, critical, opinionated, curious, passionate, indifferent and tone –whether
funny, ironic, reasonable, thoughtful, angry, or gentle, (d) genre that calls for either formal or informal
language—such as memo, letter, report, abstract, research, personal essay, narrative, review, and proposal,
(e) medium—print, spoken, or electronic,and (f) design—format, typefaces, illustrations, and audio-visual
materials.
3. Generate ideas and text. Aim to find the best information from credible sources. Self-
publishing media, such as websites, should be evaluated—if managed by an expert or a
group of experts, or by layperson and amateurs.

4. Organize your ideas. The organization needed depends on rhetorical elements, like purpose
audience, stance, and tone, genre, and medium

5. Write out a draft. Consider your genre, medium, and design when deciding on register and
style of writing

6. Revise, edit, and proofread. Pay special attention to correctness of language (grammar,
style, mechanics)

7. Evaluate your work. Answer the following questions.

a. How well did you convey the information? Is it complete enough for your
audience’s needs?
b. What strategies did you rely on, and how did they help you achieve your purpose?
c. How well did you organize your ideas?
d. Are the data properly documented? Are the sources of information credible?
e. Did you use any tables, graphs, diagrams, photographs, illustrations, or some
graphics effectively?
f. What did you do especially well?
g. What could still be improved?

Activity: Answer the following questions

1. What should be your basic considerations in selecting your topic?

2. Which among the guidelines in writing academic paper did you find most challenging to follow
when you prepared and submitted your academic writing projects in Grades 11 and 12? Why?

3. For each of the following items that follow, list one topic that are particularly interesting and relevant for
you as: (Comm. For Society by Uychoco and Santos, p. 80)

a. a daughter/son
b. Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim
c. a citizen of the Philippines
d. a member of the global community
DOCUMENTED ESSAY

The term “academic” suggests more than just the style and tone of writing. An essential aspect
of an academic paper is its credibility and its contribution to scholarly studies. “Documented essay” is
another term for “academic paper”; here the term documented emphasizes that any kind of scholarly or
academic writing requires the writer to (1) read and gather information from a variety of relevant sources
on a chosen topic (2) clearly acknowledge these supporting sources, and (3) add to scholarship by selecting,
arranging, commenting on, or debunking the information from the sources.

Documented Essay versus Standard Essay

Both standard essay and documented essay consist of an introduction with an explicitly stated
central argument or thesis, three or more supporting paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, while in a
standard essay, generally known facts and personal experiences of the writer are sufficient to support the
thesis, the documented essay requires concrete supporting information from relevant sources. Moreover, in
this type of essay, when these sources or any material quoted, paraphrased or summarized from them are
mentioned, there is an explicit acknowledgment or citation of these sources. Failure to properly cite a source
results in the deadliest of academic sins: plagiarism.

Plagiarism along with its various forms and implications, is explained in an illuminating and
entertaining essay entitled “What is Plagiarism?” written by Teresita Gimenez Maceda, a professor of
Philippine Studies and Philippine Literature at the University of the Philippines. As she gives examples of
plagiarism cases, the author also explains why plagiarism is considered a deadly sin.

An Example of a Documented Essay

What Is Plagiarism?
Tesresita Gimenez Maceda

Every semester at the start of every class, whether undergraduate or graduate, I emphasize one
rule: DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. Then, I go on to give a lecture on the “crime” of plagiarism.

Simply explained, plagiarism is when you borrow someone else’s words and make these appear
as your own. But there are several ways of plagiarizing as there are several ways of detecting the deed.

The first and most obvious kind of plagiarism is when a person copies word-for-word a
sentence, a paragraph, a whole article, a section of a book, or different sections of a long article or book
written by another author and does not enclose the copied words in quotation marks. Even if the copier
acknowledges in her/his bibliography the source for the copied words, the lack of quotation marks within
her/his own writing constitutes plagiarism. “I forgot to put the quotation marks” is no excuse.

The second kind of plagiarism is when a person borrows someone else’s ideas, rewords them
to make the ideas seem like her/his own. This becomes apparent when there is no attribution to the original
author. This means the person borrowing did not mark the reworded ideas of another writer with a footnote
or an endnote to acknowledge from whom she/he borrowed the idea/s. “I was in such a hurry that I forgot
to put the footnote or endnote,” is not an acceptable reason. We live in an era of information technology.
Putting in a footnote or and endnote has been made easier through word processing software like Microsoft
Word, Mac Pages, or Ubuntu and Linux Open Office. It should be automatic for anyone to immediately
insert the footnote or endnote.

The third kind of plagiarism is when a person translates to Filipino or other Philippine languages
someone else’s ideas that were expressed in English or other foreign languages and fails to enclose the
translated material in quotation marks. “But the Filipino words are mine,” the translator might claim. But
the question still is, whose idea/s did the person translate?

Even when a person frames the ideas of a writer in another way or in a different language, and
conveniently forgets to acknowledge the source of the idea/s, that still constitutes plagiarism.

There is nothing wrong with borrowing an author’s idea. We encourage students to research the
wealth of materials available in books or the internet to expand their knowledge and help bolster their own
critical positions. We are often inspired by the writing style, a conceptual framework, a powerful idea. We
may even imitate the style or use the conceptual framework, or build on the powerful idea of other writers
and theorists. But we never should forget or fail to give recognition to who inspired us, whose conceptual
framework we found applicable to our own research, or whose powerful idea stirred us to develop our own.
That is how knowledge grows. We may start to borrow (with paper acknowledgment), but eventually,
because we are creative individuals, we develop our own style, our own expressions, and way of thinking.

I summarize my lecture on plagiarism with one Filipino word: KATAPATAN, it means

honesty, truthfulness, and integrity.

I liken plagiarism to a mother who borrows a ganta of rice from a neighbor and forgets that
what saved her family for the day was the kindness of the neighbor. I think of plagiarism as lacking the
Filipino value of “utang na loob.” Who helped you gain the knowledge you have today? Who aided you in
becoming a better person by offering a different way of viewing things?

Telltale signs of plagiarism

A plagiarist always leaves behind a trail of telltale signs. And the teacher then becomes a
detective following the clues and gathering the evidence.
 Sometimes, the trail begins with just a turn of a phrase without the quotation marks. The teacher
then becomes suspicious, especially if the student has never exhibited a clever use of words during the
semester. The turn of phrase may remind the teacher of a particular author’s writing style. Then the
plagiarism is sure to be discovered, for an author’s wring style is like a fingerprint. So, too, is the way an
author develops her/his ideas. As human beings, we may think alike, but we develop and express our ideas
in our own individual styles.

At other times, the student may have become desperate (especially toward the end of the
semester) and so surfs for an article in the internet in the website she/he thinks is obscure enough. The
student then translates the whole article to Filipino without the creativity of using her own examples. I
encountered such a case in my Philippine Literary Criticism class that I teach in Filipino. Would a
sophomore majoring in Filipino be familiar with John Milton’s Paradise Lost? Or Andy Warhol’s Campbell
Soup? Using these are clues, I, too, surfed the Internet and discovered an article entitled, “Seven Easy Steps
to Deconstruct”. The title itself should already have warned the student that this was meant to be a parody
of deconstruction. I called the student, made a colleague witness my conversation with her, and her why
she copied another author’s work. She cried, admitted her guilt, and asked for forgiveness. She had no
malicious intent, she said. She did not know that what she did constituted plagiarism. I gave her a failing
mark and told her ever commit the same crime. She has never done it again.

We would like to think that graduate students would already have attained sufficient maturity
and independence of thinking and would likely not commit plagiarism. That is not so. Three years ago, I
caused two Ph.D students of mine in Philippine studies to be removed from the program because of
plagiarism. One of them copied a paragraph from my own book but did not enclose it in quotation marks
or attribute to me the paragraph. I found myself staring at words that seemed so familiar, they could have
been written by me. As if that were not enough, he submitted another paper that extracted excerpts from
just one work, pages from the beginning, the middle and toward the end and wove them together, submitting
this as his paper. The telltale sign again was a again the writing style. The other Ph.D. student did exactly
the same thing, passing off as his own, extracts from different sections of the book. How could graduate
students think their teacher would not be able to discern their plagiarism?

Ill. Effects of Plagiarism

Why do students copy? It begins with the way students in elementary and high school are
trained. For lack of textbooks, teachers find themselves having to require students to copy from the only
textbook available in their school. But what is often neglected is that in copying, students should always
write down the source of their notes.

For undergraduate students, I believe that their plagiarism is borne more out of desperation than
malicious intent. But even without malicious intent, I consider plagiarism a bane and so for those cases of
which I have discovered evidence of plagiarism, I give a failing. mark and tell the student never to
plagiarize again. I cannot emphasize it enough. Like, liars, plagiarists are always found out because they
leave a trail of clues.
 Why do I trail against plagiarism? It is because claiming another one’s words is dishonest. The
original author must have spent much time developing her/ his thoughts and expressing these in a style
uniquely her/his own. If the author discovers that someone else has copied her/his idea, she/he can sue the
plagiarist under the intellectual property rights. If a plagiarist is not found out, it will become a habit and it
will be easy for her/him to lie, cheat, and be corrupt. When a plagiarist is finally found out her/his
professional life, she/he can lose a job. But worse, a plagiarist who eventually becomes corrupt will have
lost her/his soul.

KATAPATAN is all that is required of us to keep out integrity and dignity intact.

Guide Questions:

1. Explain in your own words the three main types of plagiarism described by the author.

2. According to the author, why do students plagiarize? Can you think of any other reasons for student
plagiarism or for plagiarism outside the academe?

3. Why is plagiarism given such a heavy weight in the discussion of academic writing?
4. Give three ways of avoiding plagiarizing and explain it briefly.

V. REFERENCES: Uychoco, Marikit Tara A. and Maria Lorena Santos., Communication for
Society Purposive Communication, 1st Edition, 2018, Rex Book Store, CM
Recto Ave. Manila, Philippines

Barrot, Jessie S., Speak Successfully, A Guide to Effective Speaking for

College Students, 2011, Rex Printing Company Incorporated, Quezon City
, Philippines

Padilla, Mely M. and Lourdes A.Dagdag et.al , Communicate and Connect,

2018, Mutya Publishing House Inc., Malabon City , Philippines,

VI. ASSESSMENT TASK:

Graded recitation
Writing a Documented Essay and Avoiding Plagiarism

1. Students need to be aware at the purpose and style of the documented essay

2. Students need to keep in mind that all borrowed have to be documented

3. At the end of the paper, students must list all the sources that have been cited or mentioned