As E.B. White puts it, “The best writing is rewriting”.
The underlying meaning of the statement is that the first draft of a writing piece is never a fine version. The first draft is written to be edited, so to speak.
Specifically, students who primarily write for academic purposes would relate to the statement even more as they make common mistakes in their academic papers.
But for academic writing, you must maintain the writing standards and features by the book. The common writing flaws that students perhaps unknowingly ignore can ruin a paper no matter how beautiful the concept or explanations are.
Due to the reliance on AI, students tend to ignore the flaws in writing more than before.
However, as E.B. White mentioned, by rewriting and editing the first draft, you can definitely bring out the best version of the paper.
For that, you must know about prevalent mistakes students make,
Common Writing Mistakes
When it comes to academic writing, there are endless opportunities to make mistakes and typographical errors, as academic writing is supposed to be refined and accurate.
But the following practices and mistakes are the most common mistakes students tend to make.
Overreliance On AI And Secondary Sources
As students have free access to online materials, they can study and research secondary sources, which is good for them. But most of the time, students inhale too much content from them, and their own explanations get influenced by them or look similar to them.
Since AI writing tools were introduced, students have become overly dependent on them, so much so that they seek help from chatbots first, even before noting down their own explanations and thoughts.
There are tools like a plagiarism identifier or reliable AI checker for students to use and get away with it. But both practices affect their writing habits, making them reluctant to utilize their own creative abilities.
Writing Without A Clear Statement
A clear thesis statement and concrete research questions are the foundation of a well-written and well-constructed academic paper. If the thesis statement is clear enough and research questions are innovative, half of your worries are gone.
But most students start writing without clearly fixing the research statement or research questions, leading them to fail to answer properly. Often, they are not clear to themselves about what questions they are answering in their papers.
As their research statement is not vivid enough, they struggle to build strong arguments and supporting statements, which makes them fail to deliver the purpose of their paper and convince their readers as well.
Repetition
Repetition in academic writing is a frustrating mistake that students frequently make. Even if your research statement and research questions are strong enough, repetition of explanations, interpretations, and keywords makes it look shallow.
First of all, repetition of words shows your lack of vocabulary skills. Secondly, it lessens the quality and gravity of your paper, distracting readers from your main point.
All in all, you will sound like Joey Tribbiani if you write with the same vocabulary in each section of your paper or repeat the same argument.
Informal Tone
In academic writing, the tone of language is strictly required to be formal and accurate. However, using informal language or oral language has become quite a frequent practice these days.
A study has found that the tendency to apply an informal tone in academic papers is higher in native speakers than in non-native speakers.
For native speakers, it helps more to build “comfortable and friendly rapport,” while non-native English speakers focus more on academic rules and formula writing.
However, it ultimately affects the credibility and effectiveness of an academic paper, hampering their grades in the end.
Using Unnecessary Jargons
An academic discourse likely involves subject-specific terminologies and jargon that other people may not be familiar with. So, overusing those theoretical terms and jargon is a bad practice that students, and even scholars, ignore.
Rather, students should try to explain the jargon and theoretical terms in their paper and use easier synonyms or commonly used words that are closest to that jargon.
Overusing Lengthy And Complex Sentences
Writing lengthy and complex sentences in academic discourses is another frequent tendency of students that causes the paper to sound vague and difficult to understand in totality. So, this is another common mistake that students must try to avoid in their writing.
Digressing From The Main Point
Digressing from the main point is similar to dodging the questions, which students might be doing without even knowing.
However, as students read multiple textbooks and research a lot before writing a paper, going off the main point is normal. Students often go far from answering their research questions as they are simultaneously thinking about a lot of explanations from different resources.
But digressions in a scholarly article make it useless, making the purpose of the paper fade away. It may sometimes annoy your readers when they do not get the answers they were expecting to find.
So, digressing from the primary thesis statement can be a grave mistake that ruins your papers.
Grammar And Typing Mistakes
We are already aware of grammar and typing mistakes. So to speak, it is the most common mistake that students, scholars, bloggers, and other writers almost always make. Still, somehow we repeat this one every time, more or less.
Most of the time, the grammar mistakes do not come from a lack of knowledge or language skills. Rather, it is the silly grammar mistakes like misalignment in subject-verb agreement or errors in plural or singular words.
So, making grammatical and typographical mistakes is a matter of habit that you need to change.
How To Avoid The Mistakes?
Though the list of mistakes is quite long, you can unlearn the mistakes by cultivating a few habits with perseverance.
Build A Structure
Always create a proper structure first before starting to write a paper. The structure works as a skeleton of your paper. Write short notes or keywords under each section about what arguments you want to discuss.
This structure will ensure that the research statement remains clear and concise. It will also prevent you from dancing around your main argument and repeating the same arguments.
Note Down Your Own Ideas First
Before reading the secondary resources or asking AI for ideas, write down your own ideas first. No matter how bizarre your own ideas will sound, give them priority over other resources.
It will keep your own creativity unaffected and raw while preventing your paper from looking similar to other papers.
Write Ten Pages Every Day
To build the habit of writing without making grammatical and typographical mistakes, or at least lessen the mistakes, try to write ten pages per day where you will focus on scaling your linguistic skills.
Proofreading
Proofreading is the most important practice to avoid all kinds of mistakes and errors. The more you read your paper, the more errors you will find in it.
Also, while you are proofreading to find mistakes, you should also read through the perspective of your readers. That will give you a scope for making your paper more reader-friendly.
Remove Unnecessary Texts
After you are done with proofreading, you will find all the unnecessary texts that are either repetitive or do not support the main research statement. You must remove those texts or edit them to make it a fine and clean paper.
Instead of the unnecessary sections and texts, if possible, try to provide new information or bring another alternative dynamic that enriches your thesis or research.
Final Thought
Common writing mistakes can be casual and ignored in other professions. But as a student, you can not afford to have these mistakes in a research paper or scholarly discourse.
The list of mistakes may seem too long and may overwhelm you initially. But with perseverance and determination, you can certainly avoid them.
Above everything, try to enjoy writing and think about the result you will get for a finely written academic paper. If you can enjoy this, it will not seem that difficult to unlearn the mistakes.
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