Academic English: Phraseological “Nuts and Bolts”

The best research might not get published if it is communicated in broken English. Recently, I discovered the Academic Phrasebank of the University of Manchester, a resource that was designed for scientific and academic writers who are non-native speakers of English. I believe that it is really useful, as it contains “examples of some of the phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation”. This includes examples that are related to introducing your work, referring to sources, describing methods, reporting results, discussing findings, and writing conclusions. In addition, it lists phrases “under the more general communicative functions of academic writing” such as “compare and contrast”, “describing trends”, and “defining terms”. This resource might also be helpful for native speakers who want to improve their academic writing skills. Also check out my previous posts about academic English on the sentence level and paragraph level.