Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse

Academic writing is often taught as a collection of rules: use formal language, cite sources, write a thesis, avoid unsupported claims, and organize the paper clearly. Those instructions are useful, but they do not fully explain how academic discourse works. Students also need to understand the recurring rhetorical moves that scholars use to enter an existing conversation, establish why their work matters, qualify claims, build authority, use disciplinary language, and present evidence. Teresa Thonney’s influential article Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse, published in Teaching English in the Two-Year College in 2011, offers a practical framework for teaching those moves. Thonney examined 24 research articles—four articles from each of six disciplines: psychology, sports medicine, biology, marketing, literature, and engineering. She found six broad conventions that appeared across the sample, even though their exact form differed by discipline.

The article remains useful because it avoids two common mistakes. The first is assuming that every academic discipline writes in exactly the same way. The second is assuming that disciplines have nothing in common. Current writing-across-the-curriculum guidance from universities such as Purdue similarly emphasizes that academic writing shares broad expectations—clarity, organization, evidence, citation, and audience awareness—while specific conventions vary among fields.

What Is Academic Discourse?

Academic discourse is the language and communication practices used within scholarly communities. It includes more than grammar or formal vocabulary. Academic discourse concerns how writers make claims, use evidence, respond to previous research, organize reasoning, signal uncertainty, cite sources, present data, and establish a credible voice. A biology research article, literary-analysis essay, engineering report, and marketing paper may all be “academic,” but they do not necessarily use the same structure or rhetorical style. A laboratory report may foreground methods and results. A literature paper may develop an interpretive argument through textual evidence. An engineering paper may depend heavily on diagrams and quantitative evidence. Students therefore need two kinds of knowledge:

• general academic conventions that transfer across many fields; and
• discipline-specific conventions that must be learned from the community in which they are writing.

Thonney’s six conventions are most useful when treated as recurring academic moves rather than rigid rules.

What Teresa Thonney Studied

The original study examined a small but deliberately varied sample of published research articles. Thonney selected 24 articles from six disciplines commonly encountered by college students: psychology, sports medicine, biology, marketing, literature, and engineering. Her goal was not to prove that all scholarly writing follows one template. Instead, she wanted to identify moves that instructors could teach explicitly to students who were still learning how college-level academic writing differs from general school writing. She identified six recurring conventions:

1. writers respond to what others have said;
2. writers state the value of their work and announce their plan;
3. writers acknowledge that others may disagree;
4. writers adopt a voice of authority;
5. writers use academic and discipline-specific vocabulary;
6. writers emphasize evidence.

Each convention addresses a problem novice academic writers face. Students often think an essay begins with their own opinion, that certainty sounds more intelligent than qualification, that authority requires complicated vocabulary, or that a citation automatically counts as evidence. Academic discourse asks for something more sophisticated.

Convention 1: Academic Writers Respond to What Others Have Said

Academic writing is fundamentally conversational. A research paper rarely begins from nothing. Scholars respond to previous studies, theories, arguments, evidence, methods, or unresolved questions. That means students need to learn how to represent another writer’s position accurately before responding to it. Good academic source use involves several related skills:

• summarizing the central claim of a source;
• distinguishing a source’s evidence from its interpretation;
• synthesizing several sources rather than listing them separately;
• identifying agreement, disagreement, or gaps;
• explaining why the source matters to the student’s own argument.

A weak research paragraph often looks like this: Source A says one thing. Source B says another. Source C says something else. The student has gathered information but has not yet created a scholarly conversation. A stronger paragraph connects the sources: two studies may agree about an outcome but use different methods; another may challenge the assumption behind both; the student can then explain what that disagreement means for the present question. Teach Source Integration as a Rhetorical Choice: Students should not be taught simply to “add citations.” They need to decide what role each source plays. A source may:

• provide background;
• define a concept;
• offer evidence;
• represent a competing interpretation;
• support a method;
• establish a research gap;
• provide a case or example.

Teaching the purpose behind citation helps students avoid decorative referencing, where a citation is placed at the end of a sentence without any explanation of how it supports the claim. Our guide to analyzing primary sources provides a related example of why evidence must be interpreted in context rather than merely quoted.

Convention 2: Writers State the Value of Their Work and Announce a Plan

Academic readers want to know why a paper deserves attention. Strong academic writing therefore establishes a purpose early. Depending on the discipline and genre, a writer may identify:

• a research problem;
• a gap in existing scholarship;
• an unresolved debate;
• a practical problem;
• a new interpretation;
• a methodological limitation;
• a question that previous work has not answered adequately.

The paper then announces what it will do about that problem. In a student essay, this may appear as a thesis statement. In an empirical article, it may appear as a research question, hypothesis, objective, or statement of purpose. Signposting Helps Readers Follow the Argument: Academic writers often use signposting to explain the structure of an argument. Phrases such as “This study examines…,” “The following section compares…,” or “I argue that…” help readers understand where the paper is going. Signposting is particularly useful in long or conceptually demanding work. It should not become mechanical repetition, but strategic guidance reduces unnecessary cognitive effort for the reader. Teach Students to Answer “So What?”: A useful classroom exercise is to ask students to write one sentence answering each of these questions:

1. What problem is this paper addressing?
2. Why does that problem matter?
3. What will this paper contribute?

If a student cannot answer those questions, the argument may still be too vague.

Convention 3: Academic Writers Acknowledge That Others May Disagree

Academic claims are rarely presented as unquestionable truth. Scholars signal the strength and limits of their evidence through qualification and hedging. Words such as may, suggests, likely, appears, in this sample, under these conditions, and one interpretation is allow writers to make claims proportionate to their evidence. This does not make the writing weak. In many contexts, qualification makes a claim more credible because it shows the writer understands the limits of what can actually be concluded. Compare Overclaiming With Appropriate Qualification: Overclaim: “Social media causes depression in teenagers.” Qualified claim: “Some studies have found associations between particular patterns of social-media use and depressive symptoms among adolescents, although causation and the direction of the relationship remain difficult to establish.” The second statement is longer, but it is more academically responsible because it distinguishes association from causation and acknowledges uncertainty.

Counterarguments Strengthen Academic Reasoning: Acknowledging disagreement can also involve presenting a reasonable counterargument. Students sometimes fear that mentioning contrary evidence will weaken their paper. In fact, a carefully addressed counterargument often strengthens credibility. The key is not to include opposition as a ritual paragraph. The writer should identify the strongest relevant alternative and explain why the available evidence still supports the paper’s conclusion—or why the conclusion needs to be modified. This habit connects closely with critical thinking: strong reasoning requires testing one’s preferred explanation against plausible alternatives.

Convention 4: Academic Writers Adopt a Voice of Authority

Academic authority does not mean sounding arrogant. It means presenting claims in a way that shows the writer understands the evidence, disciplinary expectations, and limits of the argument. Novice writers sometimes weaken themselves unnecessarily with phrases such as “I am not an expert, but…” or “I think maybe…” even after presenting strong evidence. Others move in the opposite direction and state uncertain claims as unquestionable facts. Authority comes from accuracy, evidence, organization, and precise language—not from pretending certainty. First Person Is Not Universally Forbidden: One of the most persistent academic-writing myths is that writers must never use I or we. Thonney’s cross-disciplinary comparison showed that practices differ among fields and genres.

Current disciplinary-writing guidance makes the same point. First person may be appropriate when a writer needs to state an argument, describe a methodological decision, clarify responsibility, or explain the structure of a paper. Other contexts may prefer impersonal phrasing. The right question is not “Is first person academic?” but “Is first person appropriate for this discipline, genre, audience, and rhetorical purpose?” Active and Passive Voice Are Both Tools: The same principle applies to active and passive voice. Students are sometimes told never to use passive voice, while older academic advice sometimes encouraged passive constructions everywhere. Neither extreme is helpful.

Active voice is often clearer when the actor matters: “Researchers measured blood pressure at three intervals.” Passive voice can be useful when the process or object matters more than the actor: “Blood pressure was measured at three intervals.” Different fields prefer different balances, and those preferences can change over time.

Convention 5: Writers Use Academic and Discipline-Specific Vocabulary

Academic writing uses specialized vocabulary because specialized ideas require precise language. However, precision is different from unnecessary complexity. A student does not make a paper more academic by replacing every simple word with a longer synonym. In fact, awkward attempts to “sound scholarly” can make meaning less clear. General Academic Vocabulary: Some words and phrases appear across many disciplines because they perform recurring functions. Examples include language for comparison, cause, limitation, interpretation, evidence, implication, and contrast. Academic writers also use recurring phrase patterns—sometimes called lexical bundles—to organize arguments and signal relationships among ideas.

Discipline-Specific Vocabulary: Each field also develops specialized terminology. In psychology, terms such as working memory or effect size carry specific meanings. In literature, terms such as narrative voice or metafiction may be necessary. In engineering, a technical term may name a process or property that cannot be explained efficiently through everyday vocabulary. Students should learn terminology through authentic disciplinary reading, not simply from lists of impressive words. Corpus and Noticing Activities: Thonney suggests that students benefit from observing how published writers use recurring vocabulary. A modern version of this activity can use a small corpus of articles from the student’s field. Students can search for:

• how writers introduce claims;
• how often first person appears;
• phrases used to acknowledge limitations;
• verbs used to report sources;
• common transitions;
• technical vocabulary and its context.

This turns academic style into something students can investigate rather than a mysterious set of teacher preferences.

Convention 6: Academic Writers Emphasize Evidence

Evidence is the foundation of academic credibility, but evidence looks different across disciplines. A historian may work with letters, archival documents, government records, photographs, or oral histories. A psychologist may use experimental or survey data. A literary critic may analyze passages from a text. An engineer may present measurements, equations, simulations, diagrams, and performance tests. Students need to learn what counts as strong evidence in the field they are entering.

Tables, Figures, Graphs, and Images Are Arguments Too: Thonney emphasizes that academic evidence often appears in visual forms. Students therefore need more than prose-writing skills. They need multimodal literacy: the ability to interpret and create tables, graphs, diagrams, figures, and other visual evidence. A graph should not be inserted merely because the assignment requires one. The writer should explain what the reader should notice, why the pattern matters, and how the visual supports the argument. Evidence Must Be Interpreted: A quotation, statistic, or chart does not explain itself. Academic writing requires the writer to connect evidence to a claim. A useful paragraph often follows a pattern such as:

1. make a claim;
2. present relevant evidence;
3. explain what the evidence shows;
4. connect the interpretation back to the larger argument.

Students who skip step three often produce papers full of sources but little analysis. Shared Conventions Do Not Mean One Universal Academic Style: The strongest lesson from Thonney’s framework is not that every paper should look the same. The six moves are broad enough to travel across disciplines, while their implementation changes according to field. Purdue’s current multilingual and disciplinary-writing resources emphasize the same principle. Strong academic work generally values clear organization, sufficient evidence, correct source handling, and communication appropriate to purpose and audience. However, disciplinary communities differ in what they count as evidence, how they organize papers, how much first person they use, how they cite, and how directly they state claims. A laboratory report and a literary-analysis essay should not be forced into the same template.

Students can see this contrast in practice by comparing a rhetorical analysis essay with a scientific or historical research report. Both may make claims and use evidence, but their evidence, organization, terminology, and expectations differ.

How Teachers Can Teach Academic Discourse More Effectively

Academic conventions become easier to learn when instructors make them visible. Telling students simply to “write academically” assumes they already know what that means. 1. Use Authentic Mentor Texts: Give students published examples from the discipline or genre they are expected to write in. Ask them to identify what the writers actually do rather than beginning with a list of abstract rules. Questions might include:

• Where does the author establish the research problem?
• How are sources introduced?
• Where is uncertainty acknowledged?
• How does the writer refer to themselves?
• What evidence appears visually?
• How are sections organized?

2. Compare the Same Move Across Disciplines: Give students an introduction from biology, psychology, engineering, and literature. Ask how each author establishes significance. Students quickly see that the purpose is similar while the language differs. 3. Teach Summary and Synthesis Separately: Students need to summarize accurately before they can synthesize. Once they can identify individual source claims, teach them to group sources by agreement, method, theme, chronology, or disagreement.

4. Make Hedging Visible: Ask students to highlight words that qualify claims in published research. Then remove the hedges and discuss how the meaning changes. This demonstrates that phrases such as “the findings suggest” are not filler. They communicate epistemic responsibility. 5. Teach Citation as Attribution and Positioning: Students should learn not only citation mechanics but also why a writer cites at a particular moment. Citation identifies intellectual ownership, allows verification, establishes context, and positions the current argument in relation to previous work.

6. Use Reverse Outlining: After drafting, ask students to write one sentence beside each paragraph explaining what the paragraph does. If several paragraphs perform the same function or one paragraph has no clear role, the structure needs revision. 7. Include Multimodal Assignments: Students should practice interpreting and creating charts, tables, figures, or other forms of evidence where appropriate. This is particularly important because academic and professional communication increasingly combines prose with visual information. 8. Teach Assignment-Specific Conventions Explicitly: If an instructor expects a literature review, lab report, policy memo, case study, or research proposal, the genre should be taught rather than merely named.

Show students examples, explain the purpose of each section, identify acceptable evidence, and make the evaluation criteria visible.

Supporting Multilingual Writers

Academic discourse can be especially challenging for multilingual students because they may be learning disciplinary expectations and English-language conventions at the same time. Purdue’s multilingual-writing guidance encourages instructors to distinguish between global concerns—such as argument, organization, evidence, and source use—and local language concerns such as grammar or word choice. Teachers should avoid treating every language difference as evidence that the student cannot reason academically. Feedback is more useful when it identifies which issues interfere with meaning or violate important genre expectations. Explicit models are particularly helpful. Hidden conventions create unnecessary barriers for students who have not previously encountered the assumptions of U.S. academic writing.

Common Mistakes When Teaching Academic Writing

Treating the Five-Paragraph Essay as a Universal Model: The five-paragraph essay can teach basic organization, but advanced academic arguments often need more flexible structures. Students should learn how structure responds to purpose rather than assuming every argument requires three body paragraphs. Banning First Person in Every Assignment: Different disciplines and genres use first person differently. A universal ban prevents students from learning the actual conventions of their fields. Telling Students to “Sound More Academic”: This vague instruction often leads to inflated vocabulary and unnecessarily long sentences. Teachers should identify the actual problem: imprecision, informality inappropriate to the genre, missing evidence, weak organization, or unsupported claims. Teaching Citation as Formatting Only: Knowing APA, MLA, Chicago, or another style matters, but citation is also rhetorical. Students need to know how to integrate, interpret, and position sources.

Equating Evidence With Quotation: Quotations are useful in some fields and less common in others. Data, observations, primary sources, experiments, models, and textual analysis can all function as evidence. Ignoring Disciplinary Variation: A rule that works in psychology may not transfer directly to literature or engineering. Students should be encouraged to investigate the conventions of the community they are joining. A Practical Academic-Discourse Checklist for Students: Before submitting an academic paper, students can ask:

• Have I shown what conversation or problem this paper enters?
• Have I represented other writers accurately?
• Is the purpose or thesis clear?
• Have I explained why the topic or contribution matters?
• Are my claims proportional to the strength of my evidence?
• Have I acknowledged important limitations or counterarguments?
• Does my voice sound confident without overstating certainty?
• Am I following the conventions of this specific discipline and genre?
• Is specialized vocabulary necessary and used accurately?
• Does every quotation, statistic, table, or figure have a clear purpose?
• Have I explained the evidence rather than merely inserted it?
• Are citations complete and consistent?
• Can a reader follow the structure without guessing how sections connect?

Why These Conventions Matter in the Age of Generative AI: Generative AI makes the underlying principles of academic discourse even more important. A system can produce grammatical prose, formal vocabulary, citations that look plausible, and conventional paragraph structures. Those surface features do not guarantee academic quality. Students still need to judge:

• whether a source actually exists;
• whether evidence supports the claim;
• whether a summary accurately represents the source;
• whether uncertainty is being communicated honestly;
• whether the argument contributes something meaningful;
• whether the assignment permits AI assistance and how that assistance must be disclosed.

In other words, academic discourse is not merely a style that can be imitated. It is a set of practices for participating responsibly in a knowledge community. Key institutional and research material used in this discussion includes ERIC — Teresa Thonney, “Teaching the Conventions of Academic Discourse”; National Council of Teachers of English — Article DOI Record; Purdue OWL — Multilingual Faculty Guide; Purdue OWL — Writing Is Discipline Specific; Writing Across the Curriculum — Academic Discourse Communities.

Conclusion

Teresa Thonney’s six conventions remain a useful teaching framework because they reveal what experienced academic writers repeatedly do: respond to existing scholarship, establish why their work matters, recognize uncertainty and disagreement, create a credible authorial voice, use the language of their field, and support claims with appropriate evidence. The framework should not become another rigid template. Academic writing varies by discipline, genre, audience, and purpose. The most effective instruction therefore combines explicit teaching of transferable rhetorical moves with close observation of authentic writing from the student’s own field. When teachers make these conventions visible, academic writing becomes less mysterious. Students can begin to see scholarly prose not as an unnatural language they must imitate, but as a series of purposeful choices about conversation, evidence, authority, precision, and audience.