Improving your academic English

Few residents of the United States speak academic English in all situations every day. Most people regularly speak an informal variety: They speak in sentence fragments Definition for sentence fragments, opens in dialog , they use slang Definition for slang, opens in dialog , and they use regional forms Definition for regional forms, opens in dialog . However, everyone is expected to use academic English to reach audiences in more formal situations, particularly in college or the business world.

As you aim to improve your performance in academic English, you might need to broaden the range of strategies you use. You might try some of the following:

• Reading or listening activities

• Doing grammar exercises

• Using a dictionary or a thesaurus

• Becoming familiar with the Academic Word List

• Learning prefixes and suffixes

• Keeing a vocabulary notebook or an editing log

• Targeting specific areas for improvement

Such strategies provide practice that can help you gain familiarity with academic English.