Dance Monkey
This type of tone avoids slang, contractions, and casual expressions.
What is a formal tone?
Objective writing focuses on facts rather than this.
What are opinions?
This word means “exact and specific.”
What is precise?
Short, well‑structured sentences help improve this quality.
What is clarity?
Hedging language is used to make claims sound less ____.
What is absolute/certain?
This phrase would be least appropriate in formal writing: “a lot of,” “numerous,” or “a considerable number of.”
What is “a lot of”?
Objective writing avoids this type of language that shows personal feelings.
What is emotive language?
Replacing vague words like “things” and “stuff” improves this aspect of writing.
What is precision and accuracy?
Clear and concise writing avoids this unnecessary addition of words.
What is redundancy?
Words like may, might, and could are examples of this writing technique.
What is hedging?
Formal writing usually avoids this type of language, often found in everyday conversation.
What is colloquial/informal language?
This point of view is commonly avoided in objective writing.
What is first person (“I” or “we”)?
This word describes language that is unclear or imprecise.
What is vague?
“This is due to the fact that” can be concisely replaced with this word
What is “because”?
Rewrite the sentence using appropriate hedging to avoid an absolute claim:
This policy proves that banning vapes will eliminate youth smoking.
This policy suggests that banning vapes may reduce youth smoking
Rewrite the sentence below so that it uses an appropriate formal academic tone, removing conversational language:
You can experience culture shock at the start of your work placement.
Interns may experience culture shock at the commencement of a work placement.
Rewrite the sentence to maintain objectivity:
What can be done about the current environmental situation?
This issue raises questions regarding the current environmental situation
Rewrite the sentence using more precise and academically appropriate vocabulary:
An incredible number of children are not cared for properly at school.
A significant number of children are not adequately cared for at school.
Identify the unnecessary wording and rewrite the sentence more concisely:
This is due to the fact that students are unable to complete the task.
This is because students are unable to complete the task.
Rewrite the sentence below so that it uses appropriate hedging and avoids an absolute or overly certain claim:
Children who are not cared for properly at school will suffer long‑term academic failure.
Children who are not adequately cared for at school may experience long‑term academic difficulties.
Which feature of academic writing is violated twice in the following sentence, and how should it be corrected?
You can’t really know what’s going on unless you’re actually there.
It lacks formal tone and precision; it should avoid contractions and vague language (e.g., “cannot” and more specific phrasing)
Identify two reasons why the following sentence is not objective, and suggest one improvement:
This situation is absolutely disastrous and proves that the education system has failed.
It uses emotive language (“absolutely disastrous”) and makes an absolute claim (“proves”); replacing with neutral language such as “suggests” would improve objectivity
Which word choice most improves precision in this sentence, and explain why?
A lot of students have issues with learning at school.
Replacing “a lot of” with “a significant proportion” or a specific statistic improves precision and clarity.
The sentence below is clear but not concise. Rewrite it without changing the meaning:
It is important to note that there are many different factors that contribute to this issue.
Many factors contribute to this issue.
Rewrite the following sentence to improve academic appropriateness, using hedging, concision, and objectivity:
We must ban the sale of vapes in all outlets for the entire human population in this country and we must not allow for any exceptions for any reason, while we do research to find out about the insidious and undisclosed implications and the detrimental effects of this bad habit.
Further research is required to examine the potential health impacts of vaping before its widespread availability in Australia is permitted