Features of academic writing

Academic writing is intended for a particular reader to get some important information from it, and not for entertainment. Therefore an academic text follows certain strict rules, which a writer in this genre should hold, in order to persuade the readers.

In order to be convincing the writer should be factual. It means that an academic text should be based on real facts. The writer should not use his personal opinion to judge certain things.

The writer should be precise. Everything that is written should be proved and taken from a reliable source. Each source that is used should be mentioned, so that the reader does not doubt in plausibility of information.

The text will be more understandable for a reader if the writer selects words carefully. So, an academic text should be written in a formal vocabulary. Colloquial words and expressions, abbreviations should be avoided.

As an academic text uses formal vocabulary, it should be written in passive voice. Pronouns I, You, We, They should be missed, as they are used more often in informal speech. However passive voice also should not be overused.

Another feature of academic writing is objectivity. The text should be focused on the main theme and offer information about it, without the writer being involved in a personal manner. Therefore an academic text includes more nouns, than verbs and adverbs.

A logical and coherent structure is another important key to writing a clear and convincing academic text. There should definitely be one central topic which is developed with supporting ideas. An academic text should contain introduction, from which the reader understands the subject and the purpose of the writing. Then follows the body, where the subject is developed and all the ideas are proved. And it ends with conclusion where the writer sums up all the ideas.

It is also important that each new idea should start with a new paragraph.

Thus, following all these rules, will help to write a coherent, logical and, that is the most important, a convincing text.

                                      Benefits and Challenges of an Internship (2)

           Every student, every future specialist in any field goes through an important and worrying period in his/her studies, which is called internship. During an internship students of 3^rd or 4^th year of study apply acquired knowledge in practice and get some experience in their profession.

The internship has a lot of benefits on the one hand, and challenges on the other. Namely benefits and challenges of an internship will be discussed further.

Probably, the greatest benefit of an internship is that after it students become more confident in themselves and their future profession. Studying at University one can doubt if he/she made the right choice, or think that he/she could not cope with chosen profession. But little by little, practicing day by day and trying to do all their best students finally realize that there is nothing frightening and lose fear of failure.

Moreover there are people who can help. Interns work with more experienced people who share their experience and peculiarities of the profession. They point out the mistakes, so that interns do not repeat them in future. Thanks to their instructions and pieces of advice interns improve their skills in chosen profession.

Besides improving the skills interns learn how to act when an unforeseen situation occurs. There are things that simply cannot be taught at University during theoretical classes and which you can learn only from your own experience.

To all the enumerated benefits I can add that an internship is students’ time to demonstrate all their abilities, their potential and strength. And not to others, but in the first instance, to demonstrate all these to themselves.

Unfortunately, there are not only benefits in the internship. As a rule, every student meets some challenges, too. First one is that some interns are forced to do some other job, which is not connected with profession. Some leaders of organization, where interns do the internship solve their own problems. They ask interns to go somewhere, to bring or to buy something. So, they make students do things which they are not supposed to do and thus, students do not manage to get enough experience.

Another challenge which probably bothers most of the interns is that they can hardly apply for a job in the place where the internship was done. It would be better if there were a chance to get a job in the organization where you practiced. But the truth is that it is almost impossible.

In conclusion I can say that in spite of some disadvantages of an internship every student should use the chance to do it, because  this is the perfect time  to decide whether the chosen profession is his /her vocation or not.