English for Writing Research Papers

Publishing your research in an international journal is key to your success in academia. This guide is based on a study of referees' reports and letters from journal editors on reasons why papers written by non-native researchers are rejected due to problems with English usage. It draws on English-related errors from around 5000 papers written by non-native authors, 500 abstracts by PhD students, and over 1000 hours of teaching researchers how to write and present research papers.

With easy-to-follow rules and tips, and with examples taken from published and unpublished papers, you will learn how to:

• prepare and structure a manuscript
• increase readability and reduce the number of mistakes you make in English by writing concisely, with no redundancy and no ambiguity
• plan and organize your paper, and structure each paragraph and each sentence so that the reader can easily follow the logical build-up towards various conclusions
• write a title and an abstract that will attract attention and be read
• decide what to include in the various parts of the paper (Introduction, Methodology, Discussion etc)
• select from over 700 useful phrases
• highlight your claims and contribution
• avoid plagiarism and make it 100% clear whether you are referring to your own work or someone else’s
• choose the correct tenses and style (active or passive)

 Other books in the series:

English for Presentations at International Conferences

English for Academic Correspondence and Socializing

English for Research: Usage, Style, and Grammar

English for Academic Research: Grammar / Vocabulary / Writing Exercises

Adrian Wallwork is the author of more than 20 ELT and EAP textbooks. He has trained several thousand PhD students and academics from 35 countries to prepare and give presentations. Since 1984 he has been revising research papers,and in 2009 he set up englishforacademics.com – a proofreading and editing service specifically for researchers.

From the reviews:

“The 308 pages are divided into 20 parts and each part is then further divided into sub chapters each of which is titled with a question or simple statement … . Most chapters therefore are short and to the point and effectively deal with an extremely finite aspect of writing … . This would be a useful book for those starting out on the research trail and for those struggling to get their work published.” (ICS News, Vol. 7 (2), July, 2011)

“This book is that it focuses not just on how to write each section of a paper … but also on how to write clear, concise, unambiguous English … . It tells the students all kind of things that I have not found in other books on this topic … . I really recommend this book not just to students but also to EAP teachers … . written in a way that can be understood by students with an upper intermediate level of English.” (Louise Sutherland, Amazon, May, 2011)

Adrian Wallwork is the author of more than 20 ELT and EAP textbooks. He has trained several thousand PhD students and academics from 35 countries to prepare and give presentations. Since 1984 he has been revising research papers, and in 2009 he set up englishforacademics.com – a proofreading and editing service specifically for researchers.