ACADEMIC TEXT AND TEXT STRUCTURES

Academic and Non-Academic Texts

Differences Between Academic vs. Non-Academic Texts

Definition: Critical, objective, and specialized texts written by professionals or experts in a specific field.
Characteristics:
- Written in formal language and style.
- Based on factual information and evidence.
- Free from repetition, exaggeration, rhetorical questions, and contractions.
- Always written in the third person.
- Aim to debate or provide answers to specific questions in a field.
- Enhance the reader’s understanding of a specific field.

Book Review: Descriptive, critical, or evaluative account of a book.
Reaction Paper: Provides a personal opinion regarding a given piece of work.
Thesis/Research Paper: Explains findings from an in-depth exploration of a topic.
Literary Analysis: Presents a critical evaluation of a literary work.
Movie/Film Analysis: Analyzes films in terms of semiotics, narrative structure, cultural context, and mise-en-scène.

Three-part Essay Structure:
- Introduction, Body, Conclusion.
- The introduction and conclusion should be shorter than the body.
IMRaD Structure:
- Introduction: Describes the problem, current research state, gap, and the research solution.
- Methods: Explains how the study was conducted, including population, sample, methods, and equipment.
- Results: Presents findings without commentary.
- Discussion: Summarizes findings, connects them to other research, discusses limitations, and suggests future research.

Business: Accounting, economics, finance, management, marketing.
Humanities: Art, history, languages, literature, music, philosophy, religion, theater.
Natural and Applied Sciences: Biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geology, mathematics, physics, medicine.
Social Sciences: Anthropology, education, geography, law, political science, psychology, sociology.

Definition: Personal, emotional, impressionistic, or subjective texts.
Characteristics:
- Informal tone.
- Reliance on emotional appeal or the author's opinions.