The ‘I’ in academic writing

Writing in the first person is often discouraged in academic writing. This chapter discusses how to write in the third person and help students build an academic writing style more easily, An important part of synthesizing text for students writing is deciding how much they might agree (or disagree) with the claims other authors make. Students need to indicate their position even as they quote, summarize, or paraphrase third part sources, as this positions a student writing in the ongoing scholarly conversation. The chapter outlines the value or using a range of attributive verbs for different purposes and using hedging language that indicates different levels of certainty or agreement with particular views, claims or statements. It is important for students not to lose their voice when answering questions and attributive verbs and hedging languages as described in the chapter are useful tools to deploy to prevent this.