Academic writing may seem difficult to grasp. As you become familiar with the language of your discipline, patterns will emerge in the way sentences are put together. Like everything, practise will make a difference to your level of comfort with academic writing.
Try these sample sentence beginnings to get you started.
Some additional points need to be considered…
This approach raises some important questions…
It might seem as if…
The main concern of this assignment is…
Some writers have suggested…
Various people have emphasised…
Numerous studies ( ) have been conducted…
Most of the evidence indicates…
It must be acknowledged that…
In the main, the findings suggest that…
This is clearly at odds with…
Further support can be found in the work of…
A recurring theme in the report is…
These authors imply that…
On the issue of…
Writing in the Australian content…
There is consistent evidence that…
In line with predictions…
It is worth noting that…
Contrary to expectations…
On the basis of the first experiment…
On the basis of this, it can be inferred that…
With the exception of (… ), there has been little published work aimed at…
Insufficient information exists about…
Researchers have employed different methods, thus it is not surprising that results have tended to be equivocal…
Research has yielded some interesting, albeit seemingly contradictory, results…
These findings are particularly intriguing given the extensive literature on…
By logical extension, it can be argued that…
Similar inferences can be drawn from…
(Sourced from previous Charles Sturt University website; now the CSU guide for HSC students)
Download our helpsheet, University Speak, for more samples of writing with an ‘academic flavour’.
If you use Chicago citation style, here is your version of it: University Speak – Footnotes.