AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland

AWA can help you understand more about writing at university and write better assignments. Here are some ways to use AWA:

1. Browse by Subject to find papers written in the subject you are studying. This helps you become more familiar with the ideas, theories and types of evidence used in that subject, and the ways writers build arguments, express ideas and use technical terms. It also helps you see the kind of questions asked and the kind of writing required at different levels in that subject.

Papers are organised into seven broad areas: Arts, Business, Creative Arts and Industries, Education & Social Work, Law, Medical & Health Sciences, and Science. Within each area, you can select papers for subjects (e.g. within Science, there is Bioscience, Marine Science, Physics etc). Some of these subjects are further divided into more specific subjects. A breakdown of the subjects represented in AWA can be found here.

 

2. Browse by Paper type to find examples of different types of writing. There are 13 paper types in AWA. These vary in purpose, audience and structure. Most of these paper types are required in most university subjects, and some assignments are a combination of two or more of these paper types. More information about each type and sub-type can be found here.

 

3. Browse by Year level to see how writing and assignment requirements develop as students progress through university. You can also organise papers by year level by clicking the ‘Year’ column in the 'Browse by subject' and 'Paper type' pages. 

 

4. Custom browse allows you to select a specific subject and paper type. SEARCH PAPERS (top right  of screen) allows you to search for specific content.

 

5. Writing features are comments added to papers to highlight strong features of the writing. Papers with these comments are indicated by . University assignments are graded based on areas such as content (eg. development of a position, strength of argument, support with evidence), clear structure, and appropriate expression. The Writing features reflect these areas, focusing on: Response to topic, Structure, Idea development, Sources, Referencing, Coherence, and Expression and style.

 

6. Use AWA to help you learn vocabulary, especially academic and technical vocabulary. AWA allows you to see words being used in sentences which make the meaning clear. It also shows you which words commonly go together (or ‘collocate’) with that word. In the Search box, type a word you want to learn more about, for example, ‘compatible’. This will show you all the sentences with that word being used from different papers. To find the word in one of the papers, open the paper, and use the Find function (Crtl + F on a PC; Command + F on a Mac) to highlight the word in the paper. If you are unsure of the difference in meaning between two words, for example ‘respectfully’ and ‘respectively’, you can do the same thing to see how the words are used differently.  

 

7. All the papers in AWA received A- or higher in their course. A  symbol indicates a particularly good example.