Academic Phrasebank 2016版.pdf

The Academic Phrasebank is a

general resource for academic

writers. It makes explicit the more

common phraseological ‘nuts and

bolts’ of academic writing.

Academic

Phrasebank

A compendium of commonly

used phrasal elements in

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Preface

The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide the

phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of academic writing organised according to the main sections of a

research paper or dissertation. Other phrases are listed under the more general communicative

functions of academic writing.

The resource was designed primarily for academic and scientific writers who are non-native speakers

of English. However, native writers may still find much of the material helpful. In fact, recent data

suggest that the majority of users are native speakers of English.

writers who need to report their empirical studies. The phrases are content neutral and generic in

nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people's ideas and this does not

constitute plagiarism.

Most of the phrases in this compendium have been organised according to the main sections of a

research report. However, it is an over-simplification to associate the phrases only with the section in

which they have been placed here. In reality, for example, many of phrases used for referring to

other studies may be found throughout a research report.

In the current PDF version, additional material, which is not phraseological, has been incorporated.

Theoretical Influences

The Academic Phrasebank largely draws on an approach to analysing academic texts originally

pioneered by John Swales in the 1980s. Utilising a genre analysis approach to identify rhetorical

patterns in the introductions to research articles, Swales defined a ‘move’ as a section of text that

serves a specific communicative function (Swales, 1981,1990). This unit of rhetorical analysis is used

as one of the main organising sub-categories of the Academic Phrasebank. Swales not only identified

commonly-used moves in article introductions, but he was interested in showing the kind of

language which was used to achieve the communicative purpose of each move. Much of this

language was phraseological in nature.

software (e.g. Sinclair, 1991). Phrasebank recognises that there is an important phraseological

dimension to academic language and attempts to make examples of this explicit.

Sources of the phrases

The vast majority of phrases in this resource have been taken from authentic academic sources. The

original corpus from which the phrases were ‘harvested’ consisted of 100 postgraduate dissertations

completed at the University of Manchester. However, phrases from academic articles drawn from a

broad spectrum of disciplines have also been, and continue to be, incorporated. In most cases, the

phrases have been simplified and where necessary they have been ‘sifted’ from their particularised

academic content. Where content words have been included for exemplificatory purposes, these are

• does the combination ‘sound natural' to a native speaker or writer of English?

When is it acceptable to reuse phrases in academic writing?

In a recent study (Davis and Morley, 2015), 45 academics from two British universities were surveyed

to determine whether reusing phrases was a legitimate activity for academic writers, and if so, what

kind of phrases could be reused. From the survey and later from in-depth interviews, the following

characteristics for acceptability emerged. A reused phrase:

• should not have a unique or original construction;

• should not express a clear point of view of another writer;

included for illustrative purposes. These words should be substituted when the phrases are used. In

the phrases below, for example, the content words in bold should be substituted: