Academic Writing for Military Personnel

Adam Chapnick, Craig Stone

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN:
  9780776618852
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Study Guides

Academic Writing for Military Personnel is written for members of the military who are either new to or re-entering the academic community and who need to familiarize themselves with academic writing. The authors, an experienced writing instructor and a retired military officer, show how persuasive academic writing enhances officers' effectiveness in their regular duties, especially as they reach more senior levels of service. They explain the differences between staff writing and academic writing, and outline some of the common errors military personnel make when transitioning from one to the other. The book's chapters outline the value of strong written communication skills, the research process, the writing process, academic referencing, and frequent grammatical and syntactical errors. Specific examples chosen with a military audience in mind are integrated throughout the book to provide the reader with relevant and practical guidance. The book concludes with a discussion on how officers can use the knowledge they have acquired through their professional experiences in their academic work. As the only comprehensive guide to effective academic writing designed specifically for military personnel, this book will be a crucial addition to the libraries of junior and senior officers in militaries worldwide.

1
Academic Writing: What Is It?
And What Makes It Good?

Contents:

• What isn’t academic writing

• The difference between narrative, expository, and academic essays

• Characteristics of a good persuasive essay

• Determining the quality of a persuasive essay

• Citation and formatting

Key Terms:

• Academic writing

• Narrative essay

• Expository essay

• Academic essay

• Primary evidence

• Secondary research

• Endnote

• Footnote

• Name-page number (internal citation)

• Name-date (internal citation)

Figures:

• Figure 1.1: Citations and formatting

• Figure 1.2: Chicago Manual of Style, footnotes

• Figure 1.3: Chicago Manual of Style, endnotes

• Figure 1.4: Council of Science Editors (CSE), citation-sequence

• Figure 1.5: Modern Language Association (MLA), name-page number (internal citation)

• Figure 1.6: American Psychological Association (APA), name-date (internal citation)

Our purpose in this chapter is twofold. First, we will provide you with a sense of the major differences between academic and nonacademic writing. Second, we will describe and provide examples of a number of the key characteristics of a good academic paper.

I. What Isn’t Academic Writing

Although we acknowledge, and indeed support, non-traditional writing assignments and creative approaches to evaluation at staff colleges and elsewhere, for our purposes in this book, academic writing will refer specifically to the composition of a research essay. (We will deal with other forms of writing briefly in Chapter 7.) It is therefore something notably different from typical staff work, speech writing, investigative journalism, or other potentially more creative forms of artistic and intellectual expression.

Generally speaking, there are three types of essays, only the last of which we will consider academic. A narrative essay aims to tell a story. One of Canada’s greatest military historians, the late C. P. Stacey, begins his classic history of Canadian external relations as follows:

Since the Second World War, Canada’s relations with the external world have interested both Canadian parliamentarians and the people they represent more than they ever did before. The subject has lately become important in the universities, and much valuable research has been done and is being done on special aspects of it. Yet it is a good many years since a serious attempt was made to write a general history of Canadian external policies.… Experience in teaching the subject has made me aware of the need for a new history, and has encouraged me to make an effort to meet it. I hope the book now presented will serve both the student and the general reader.¹

Note here that Stacey’s primary purpose is to present the history of the period, not to catalogue a series of Canadian foreign policy accomplishments, nor to make a specific argument evaluating the impact of Canadian actions on the world stage.

An expository essay is predominately descriptive. Its aim is to describe or “expose” the full extent of an issue or idea to the reader without necessarily passing judgment on it. In addition to using this book as an example, consider the purpose of Lieutenant-General George Macdonald’s article on national missile defence (NMD):

This article will address the various issues concerning NMD from a perspective that will seek to be logical and understandable to those who have little or no knowledge of the subject. While the outcome of the US program has yet to be determined, it is important that Canadians understand the consequences of deployment and the implications for our defence partnership. Only through a good understanding of the issues can an informed decision on our approach to NMD be possible—and one that reflects our national interests.²

Macdonald is not recounting the history of the debate over missile defence, nor is he aiming primarily to convince his readers to support or oppose Canadian policy towards it. Rather, the intent of his paper is to catalogue the issues and ideas that are relevant to a productive assessment of NMD’s merits.

Unlike narratives and expositories, academic essays are explicitly and deliberately persuasive. Authors of persuasive essays make a specific point in an attempt to convince their readers to agree with their opinions on a given issue. These essays evaluate ideas in an effort to prove their authors right. When asked to write an academic research essay, you are essentially being challenged to develop a comprehensive, persuasive argument. When Canadian Forces officer Colonel Pierre Lessard writes, “Is there a fault line between strategy and operational art, and, if so, is it made worse by inadequate campaign design? The thesis of this article is that there is,”³ his opinion is clear. The rest of his paper sets out to prove that the fault line exists.

II. Characteristics of a Good Persuasive Essay

A good persuasive essay answers a worthwhile question effectively. It is written clearly, coherently, and directly. It is accessible to its intended audience. It is well researched, documented properly, and presented professionally. In this manner, it makes an original contribution to the reader’s understanding of a topical issue.

Why original? Because reviewers have better things to do than read something that they have already seen elsewhere. Original essays add to our understanding of an idea or issue by increasing the amount of new knowledge and thinking available about it. Upon entering the academic environment, it is critical to accept that there might not be a “right answer” to your research question. There also might be more than just one way to arrive at a plausible conclusion.

Academic writing asks that you make the strongest case possible based on the evidence available. In this context, it is possible, and at times even likely, that new evidence that has yet to be made available will eventually reveal flaws in your argument that you could not have anticipated. When retired infantry officer John A. English published The Canadian Army and the Normandy Campaign in 1991, he did not condemn previous analyses of the military’s contribution to the Second World War as poorly researched. The suggestion that Canada’s struggles at Normandy were caused by the troops’ inexperience (particularly in comparison to its well-trained German enemies) made sense based on the information available to historians at the time. Rather, his access to previously unseen correspondence, such as that between Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery and Lieutenant-General H. D. G. Crerar, allowed him to conclude that Canada’s performance at Normandy was held back by failures within the military’s high command.⁴

When reviewers evaluate persuasive essays (either for grades in an academic institution or for publication), they typically consider the paper’s effectiveness based on four broad criteria:

1. Argument

The focus here is on quality. More specifically, a good paper must establish a clear research question that the author will go on to answer in a convincing manner. English’s book, he notes, is meant to “explain Canadian Army operations in Normandy during the Second World War against a backdrop of organization, training, and fighting style developed before actual battle.” Once he has added the sentence, “it will be demonstrated that high command shortcomings seriously impaired Canadian fighting performance,” there can be no doubt as to what the book intends to do.⁵

In addition to being clear, the research question must be relevant to its intended audience. An essay at a staff college, for example, should relate to the themes of the course or program. An article intended for an academic journal should deal with a topic that is of interest to that journal’s readership. Colonel Lessard’s article on campaign design and operational art was published in Parameters, the professional journal of the United States Army War College. The War College’s curriculum includes modules on campaign design and operational art, making the essay suitable to both the journal’s general readership and to current students and alumni more specifically.

A good research question is answerable within the word constraints of the given assignment. In other words, asking whether Canada’s participation in the War on Terror is the proper use of the Canadian Forces is not appropriate for a 2000 word essay. On the other hand, evaluating the Canadian Army’s initial campaign design for participation as a member of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan probably does not merit booklength treatment.

Assuming that the research question is worthwhile, the reviewer will go on to assess whether the answer—or thesis— is convincing. To be convincing, the thesis is typically presented as a statement. There are two legitimate ways to do this. An explicit thesis statement is the most direct, often beginning with words to the effect of “This paper argues that…” Colonel Les...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Why Read this Book?
• 1: Academic Writing: What is it? And What Makes it Good?
• 2: The Academic Research Process
• 3: The Academic Writing Process: A Structure
• 4: Notes and Quotes
• 5: Common Problems in Academic Writing
• 6: Evaluating an Academic Essay for Credit
• 7: Other Academic Writing Assignments
• 8: Conclusion
• Glossary
• Index