Resource of the Week #169: Academic Phrasebank

Hello again. When writing about your research, do you ever have trouble thinking of suitable phrases to use? A resource that can help is called Academic Phrasebank. I am pleased to feature this website as our Resource of the Week.

The top of the Academic Phrasebank homepage includes tabs relating largely to usual parts of a journal article. These tabs are labeled ‘Introducing work’, ‘Referring to sources’, ‘Describing methods’, ‘Reporting results’, ‘Discussing findings’, and ‘Reporting conclusions’.

Each tab connects to a list of phrases to consider using when doing the stated item. The lists have sections. For example, the list for ‘Discussing findings’ contains 11 sections (such as ‘Unexpected outcome’, ‘Reference to previous research: support’, ‘Reference to previous research: contrast’, and ‘Noting implications’).

On the left of the homepage are tabs regarding ‘General language functions’. Among the listed functions are ‘Being critical’, ‘Defining terms’, and ‘Giving examples’. Here too the tabs lead to lists of examples.

As noted on the homepage, the phrases in Academic Phrasebank are common wordings and do not regard specific content. Therefore using them is not plagiarism.

I encourage you to look at this resource. Our thanks to Dr. John Morley of the University of Manchester for creating it!

Until the next post—

Barbara