The Academic Phrasebank

     Part of the work of a coach or editor is to be an anti-gatekeeper. Academia has its own codes for writing, which are bound to be opaque to all beginners. Academese can be especially murky to people without the white, middle-class, English-speaking life experience that academic discourse takes as its standard. When I find a resource that helps to organize the messy toolbox of academic language into clearly-labeled drawers, I’m sharing it. 

     The Academic Phrasebank from Manchester University provides common phrases in categories such as “Defining terms,” “Signaling transition,” “Giving examples,” and my favorite, “Explaining causality.” The phrases in this directory are the gears of academic English across various disciplines, so plugging them into your writing doesn’t constitute plagiarism. As you learn to manipulate these phrases, you learn how to reach your particular academic audience. Next time you’re digging through your memory banks for the ideal transition or sentence structure, try the Academic Phrasebank, and let me know how it goes!