university of manchester essay bank

Essay writing guide

Introduction.

The subject of how to write a good essay is covered on many other sites and students are encouraged to read a sample of guides for a full understanding.

Recommended reading

• How to write an essay , University of Manchester, Faculty of Humanities Study Skills
• 3rd year project technical writing advice , University of Manchester, School of Computer Science
• William Strunk's elements of style

Examples of additional reading

• Essay writing & report writing , University of Wollongong
• Essay writing , Edinburgh Napier University

Academic essays and articles usually contain 'references'. These can range from a generalised bibliography or list for "further reading" to specific references for particular points in the text. In this last category references are normally indexed either by the first author's name and publication date, e.g. "[Smith97]" or simply numerically "[5]".

• Read how to reference properly and avoid plagiarism

Advice on the subject of plagiarism can be found under the assessments section of this website.

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Academic Phrasebank

Defining terms.

• GENERAL LANGUAGE FUNCTIONS
• Being cautious
• Being critical
• Classifying and listing
• Compare and contrast
• Describing trends
• Describing quantities
• Explaining causality
• Giving examples
• Signalling transition
• Writing about the past

In academic work students are often expected to give definitions of key words and phrases in order to demonstrate to their tutors that they understand these terms clearly. More generally, however, academic writers define terms so that their readers understand exactly what is meant when certain key terms are used. When important words are not clearly understood misinterpretation may result. In fact, many disagreements (academic, legal, diplomatic, personal) arise as a result of different interpretations of the same term. In academic writing, teachers and their students often have to explore these differing interpretations before moving on to study a topic.

Introductory phrases

The term ‘X’ was first used by … The term ‘X’ can be traced back to … Previous studies mostly defined X as … The term ‘X’ was introduced by Smith in her … Historically, the term ‘X’ has been used to describe … It is necessary here to clarify exactly what is meant by … This shows a need to be explicit about exactly what is meant by the word ‘X’.

Simple three-part definitions

General meanings or application of meanings.

X can broadly be defined as … X can be loosely described as … X can be defined as … It encompasses … In the literature, the term tends to be used to refer to … In broad terms, X can be defined as any stimulus that is … Whereas X refers to the operations of …, Y refers to the … The broad use of the term ‘X’ is sometimes equated with … The term ‘disease’ refers to a biological event characterised by … Defined as …, X is now considered a worldwide problem and is associated with …

Indicating varying definitions

The definition of X has evolved. There are multiple definitions of X. Several definitions of X have been proposed. In the field of X, various definitions of X are found. The term ‘X’ embodies a multitude of concepts which … This term has two overlapping, even slightly confusing meanings. Widely varying definitions of X have emerged (Smith and Jones, 1999). Despite its common usage, X is used in different disciplines to mean different things. Since the definition of X varies among researchers, it is important to clarify how the term is …

Indicating difficulties in defining a term

X is a contested term. X is a rather nebulous term … X is challenging to define because … A precise definition of X has proved elusive. A generally accepted definition of X is lacking. Unfortunately, X remains a poorly defined term. There is no agreed definition on what constitutes … There is little consensus about what X actually means. There is a degree of uncertainty around the terminology in … These terms are often used interchangeably and without precision. Numerous terms are used to describe X, the most common of which are …. The definition of X varies in the literature and there is terminological confusion. Smith (2001) identified four abilities that might be subsumed under the term ‘X’: a) … ‘X’ is a term frequently used in the literature, but to date there is no consensus about … X is a commonly-used notion in psychology and yet it is a concept difficult to define precisely. Although differences of opinion still exist, there appears to be some agreement that X refers to …

Specifying terms that are used in an essay or thesis

The term ‘X’ is used here to refer to … In the present study, X is defined as … The term ‘X’ will be used solely when referring to … In this essay, the term ‘X’ will be used in its broadest sense to refer to all … In this paper, the term that will be used to describe this phenomenon is ‘X’. In this dissertation, the terms ‘X’ and ‘Y’ are used interchangeably to mean … Throughout this thesis, the term ‘X’ is used to refer to informal systems as well as … While a variety of definitions of the term ‘X’ have been suggested, this paper will use the definition first suggested by Smith (1968) who saw it as …

Referring to people’s definitions: author prominent

For Smith (2001), X means … Smith (2001) uses the term ‘X’ to refer to … Smith (1954) was apparently the first to use the term … In 1987, psychologist John Smith popularized the term ‘X’ to describe … According to a definition provided by Smith (2001:23), X is ‘the maximally … This definition is close to those of Smith (2012) and Jones (2013) who define X as … Smith, has shown that, as late as 1920, Jones was using the term ‘X’ to refer to particular … One of the first people to define nursing was Florence Nightingale (1860), who wrote: ‘… …’ Chomsky writes that a grammar is a ‘device of some sort for producing the ….’ (1957, p.11). Aristotle defines the imagination as ‘the movement which results upon an actual sensation.’ Smith  et al . (2002) have provided a new definition of health: ‘health is a state of being with …

Referring to people’s definitions: author non-prominent

X is defined by Smith (2003: 119) as ‘… …’ The term ‘X’ is used by Smith (2001) to refer to … X is, for Smith (2012), the situation which occurs when … A further definition of X is given by Smith (1982) who describes … The term ‘X’ is used by Aristotle in four overlapping senses. First, it is the underlying … X is the degree to which an assessment process or device measures … (Smith  et al ., 1986).

Commenting on a definition

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Study resources

Get the most out of studying Philosophy at Manchester.

Access online philosophy resources, get help with writing essays and other study skills, and join relevant societies and groups.

Study guides

See Blackboard Programme Hub

Online resources

A vast number of philosophical texts are available online. Once you know where to look and how to access them, they are an amazing resource for finding out more about a topic, locating journal articles that you need for your tutorials or essays or exams, seeing how a particular debate has played out in the literature, etc. This page gives you some information about how to use the internet for these purposes effectively.

Internet for Philosophy tutorial

Go to the  University Library's Philosophy LibGuide . Click on the tabs along the top for lots of information about online journals and books, links to databases, etc. (You can also get to this site from the library home page by clicking on 'A-Z of subjects' under 'Academic Support' and searching for 'philosophy'. And you can download the guide onto your phone if you have a camera and bar code reader app.)

Now you've done both of those, you know pretty much everything you need to know about accessing philosophy resources on the internet! However, here are a few additional handy hints.

Accessing online philosophy articles

Library catalogue/Google Scholar

The vast majority of journal articles in philosophy can be accessed online through the University Library's subscriptions. The University Library's online catalogue includes journal articles, so you can search for a given article that way (you'll probably need to use 'advanced search' or you'll get too many hits). 

A third option is to use Google Scholar. Just type the name of the journal article (in double quotation marks) and hit 'search'. If the article is available anywhere online, it should be first in the list of hits. Note that there will often be 'cited by' and 'related articles' links as well; if you click on these you'll be able to follow up the ensuing debate.

How do I log in to the publisher's website?

Some articles are freely available (often from the author's own homepage). However, normally they are only available through the journal publisher's website, and are accessible only to institutions that subscribe to the journal. UoM has a very extensive portfolio of subscriptions, so it's very likely that we have one. If you're going through the University Library's A-Z list of e-journals, you should be able to get straight through to the pdf of the article. If you're using Google Scholar, click on the link to the article or look for a 'Find it at UML' link on the right; again, you should be able to get to the pdf.

However if you're not using a campus computer you may find that your only apparent option is to buy the article. If this happens, look for the 'institutional login' button (there should be one somewhere on the page). Click on this and search for 'University of Manchester'. You should then be able to login using your normal UoM username and password, and be taken back to the journal site. (Annoyingly, it might not have remembered what it was you were looking for, so you might have to search the site for it.) If you can't find an 'institutional login' button, look for the link to login options. If there is a 'log in via Shibboleth' option, that will work too.

Or, even easier …

Set your off-campus computer/laptop up so that it can connect to the UoM 'Virtual Private Network' (VPN), by following  the instructions . It's very easy! Once you've installed the VPN software, if you connect to the VPN your computer will act just like a campus computer, so you will automatically be logged in to publishers' journal sites and won't have to follow the institutional login procedure.

Top four online resources!

Well, it's a matter of subjective preference, but we can recommend:

• Philosophy Compass:  This is an online journal that publishes high-quality survey articles on philosophical topics, aimed at non-specialists.  Philosophy Compass  articles are a great way of finding your way around a particular debate and locating relevant texts to follow up.
• PhilPapers:  This is a huge database of philosophy books and journal articles. You can search for a particular item, browse the categories and sub-categories, and even make a personalised reading list or bibliography.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : This is a really comprehensive online encyclopedia written by internationally recognised experts. It isn't written with undergraduates in particular in mind, but even if you don't understand everything you should be able to get a sense of the overall shape of the debate you're interested in, and there are lots of references for you to follow up. Please note that if you cite a SEP article in an essay, you need to cite and list it in your bibliography properly! Click on 'author and citation info' at the top of the article to find out how to cite it.
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:  UoM library now has access to this encyclopedia, which has over 2,700 philosophy articles. It includes comprehensive cross-referencing and is fully searchable. Off-campus, you will need to access it through the  VPN .

Study skills and essay writing

Want to know how to write the perfect essay, how to deal with exam stress, or how to manage your study time more effectively? Then this is the page you need.

Philosophy study guide

You should already have this, but have you read it recently? It contains lots of useful and detailed information about how to write a good essay, how to prepare for exams, how to construct your bibliography and cite your sources, and lots of other things. A high proportion of students would get considerably better marks in their essays if they simply checked whether they were abiding by the Study Guide’s advice, so make sure you’re not one of them!

• Download the Philosophy study guide

In addition, you might buy or get from the library one or more of the following:

• Doing Philosophy , by C. Saunders, D. Lamb, D. Mossley and G. Macdonald Ross (ISBN 9781441173041, £14.99 or less; also available from the University Library) is a very helpful read, especially for new students. It’s a comprehensive guide to studying philosophy at university.
• The Basics of Essay Writing , by Nigel Warburton. This is a general guide to writing university-level essays, but it's written by a philosopher.

Bibliography and referencing guidance

From 2014-15, all students should consult  only  the guidelines contained in the Philosophy Study Guide when writing philosophy essays. In addition, we have adopted an official policy concerning how many marks should be deducted for various levels of failure to follow the guidelines. Read the student guidance on this policy .

More on essay writing

There's lots of additional advice online about how to write a good philosophy essay. Of course, philosophers across the planet don’t all agree with each other about exactly what makes for the perfect essay, and if you come across any advice that directly conflicts with the Study Guide, you should go with the Study Guide. But by and large we’re all looking for roughly the same thing, and one or more of these guides might be more helpful to you personally than our own Study Guide.

• Harvard Writing Centre’s  A Guide to Philosophical Writing
• Richard Price’s Tips on How to Write a Philosophy Essay
• Jim Pryor’s Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper
• Peter Lipton's advice on writing philosophy
• And last, but by no means least, there's  Jimmy Lenman's 'How to Write a Crap Philosophy Essay'

There are loads more as well; just do a Google search for ‘how to write a philosophy essay’!

Advice on exams

Again, there's lots in the Philosophy Study Guide, but here's a spot of online advice:

• David Bain's exam revision tips
• Nigel Warburton's 5 tips on preparing for philosophy exams .

One-to-one help with your written English

The University Centre for Academic English offers a one-to-one tutorial service aimed at improving your written English. You can submit a sample of work in advance and will then have a meeting of up to an hour to discuss how to improve. If you're an overseas student, you can make an appointment yourself. If you're a home (UK) student you have to be referred, so please speak to your academic advisor. Find out more .

Using internet resources

Having trouble locating philosophy texts online? See the  online resources section .

My Learning Essentials

The Library's award-winning skills programme contains lots of generic advice about managing your time, reflecting on your academic development, coping with exam stress, and so on. 

• My Learning Essentials - The University of Manchester Library

In response to student feedback, we are making available some past essays to help you get a better sense of the kinds of things that we're looking for when we mark them.

To start with, there are two essays from last year's first-year Philosophy & Social Science course; but we'll be adding to these in due course. Please note, however, that what we're looking for is pretty much the same across all courses and levels (except, of course, that the higher the level, the higher the standard required). So you should find these useful even if you're not taking that particular course, and indeed even if you are a 2nd- or 3rd-year.

Included in each pdf is a short summary of the philosophical topic, a bunch of in-text comments, a summary of the essay's main strengths and weaknesses, and an indicative mark. Do please note that there is a lot more feedback on these essays than you can expect on the essays you submit! Our hope is that by providing very extensive feedback on a small sample of essays, you will be able to see how similar considerations might apply to your own work. Don't forget that if you want more feedback on an essay than the marker has provided on the essay itself, you can always go and see them in their office hours to ask for more advice on how to improve.

• 1st year sample essay 1 (Philosophy & Social Science) .
• 1st year sample essay 2 (Philosophy & Social Science) .

Societies and events

• The British Undergraduate Philosophy Society (BUPS)  runs an annual conference and an online journal –  The British Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy  – both aimed at and run by philosophy undergraduates. If you’ve written a stormingly good essay you might think about submitting a version of it to the journal, or presenting it at the annual conference. Or you might think about getting involved in the society. These will help you improve at philosophy and look great on your CV!
• The University of Manchester Philosophy Society  runs various events. Visit their  Facebook group page .
• Philosophy@Manchester  is the Facebook group for the Discipline Area. Take a look, and join up if you haven’t already!

University Centre for Academic English

Useful links

Explore the following websites for additional resources to aid in your learning.

JCU Study Skills Online

This site takes you through the process of writing from analysing a question to final editing. It also provides very useful sample essays with criteria for assessment and lecturers' comments.

• How to write essay guides  

The Royal Literary Fund

Essay Writing: A Guide for Undergraduates. A useful and comprehensive guide to many different aspects of academic writing at this level.

• Writing Essays: A Guide

Victoria University of Wellington

A series of interactive exercises that focus on paragraph structure in academic writing.

• Writing exercises for self-directed study

Using English for Academic Purposes: A Guide for International Students

Comprehensive advice, materials and exercises on the four skills. Produced by Andy Gillett, Department of Modern Languages, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.

• View the guide

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This link to the Honk Kong Polytechnic University takes you firstly to a list of skills and functions associated with 'Essay Writing'. These include Explanation of Functions, Describing Trends, Cause and Effect for Developing Academic Writing Skills, and more. There are further useful categories such as Participating in Academic Discussions and Giving Oral Presentations. Follow this exercises link if you want to do some practice work on many of these.

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Randall's Cyber Listening Lab

Go down the page and try some of the "Listening Quizzes for Academic Purposes."

• Listening Quizzes

Manchester Academic Phrasebank

The freely available online Academic Phrasebank contains hundreds of sentence templates for the rhetorical moves typically used in academic dissertations and research papers. (A ‘rhetorical move’ is realized in a section of text serving a specific communicative function, such as convincing the reader of the importance of the ideas being propounded, indicating caution, explaining causality etc.) Originating in a corpus of some hundred postgraduate dissertations completed at the University of Manchester, Academic Phrasebank continues to enlarge its stock of generic language, expanding its corpus to include academic articles from a range of disciplines. The social sciences figure prominently among them [Davis & Morley, Fig. 3, p.4].

Another factor inspiring the creation of Academic Phrasebank by John Morley, Director of University-wide Language Programmes at Manchester University, is the finding of psycholinguistics that much language is learnt in phrases, being ‘acquired, stored and retrieved as pre-formulated constructions.’

The functional approach to academic writing and the phraseological approach to language learning of Academic Phrasebank is shared by Graff and Birkenstein’s book “They say/ I say” , written primarily for US high school and college students, aiming to “demystify academic writing” and equip students with the “moves that matter” in engaging in the dialogue and debate that take place in academic texts. Academic Phrasebank is used by university graduates and researchers – both native and non-native speakers of English – for familiarizing oneself with and exercising the various communicative functions typical of academic texts in Anglo-Saxon style, given in the form of generic English language templates. When writing one’s own text (as communicative act in the “academic conversation” going on in your field) the relevant rhetorical and language tools are more likely to be found at hand by having internalized the moves schematized and instantiated in Academic Phrasebank. As stated on the homepage, “The items in the Academic Phrasebank are mostly content-neutral and generic in nature; in using them, therefore, you are not stealing other people’s ideas and this does not constitute plagiarism.”

The sentence templates of Academic Phrasebank may be navigated according to functions specific to academic research articles:

• Introducing Work
• Referring to Sources
• Describing Methods
• Reporting Results
• Discussing Findings
• Writing Conclusions

Or they may be navigated according to general language functions typical in academic writing:

• Being Cautious
• Being Critical
• Classifying and Listing
• Compare and Contrast
• Defining Terms
• Describing Trends
• Describing Quantities
• Explaining Causality
• Giving Examples
• Signalling Transition
• Writing about the Past

Swales’ pioneering CaRS model has been influential in codifying the rhetorical moves made in introductions to academic research articles:

• Establishing the territory (establishing importance of the topic, reviewing previous work)
• Identifying a niche (indicating a gap in knowledge)
• Occupying the niche (listing purpose of new research, listing questions, stating the value the work, indicating the structure of the writing)

The section Introducing Work of Academic Phrasebank devoted to introductions accordingly gives phrases useful for the primary functions of

• establishing the context, background and/or importance of the topic
• presenting an issue, problem, or controversy in the field of study
• defining the topic and/or key terms used in the paper
• stating the purpose of the paper
• providing an overview of the coverage and/or structure of the writing.

For each of these functions numerous examples of generic language are listed. Users need only to “fill in the gaps” with the content of their work.

Five exercises using Academic Phrasebank are offered by Davis and Morley (2018). The first is as follows and may be used to construct a “toy example” of an introduction (try it!):

Choose one of the following sentence stems for the function indicated and continue the sentence for your own introduction (you may find it useful to substitute some elements):

Establishing the importance of the topic: One of the most significant current discussions in X is… It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the …

Highlighting a knowledge gap in the field of study: However, far too little attention has been paid to … A search of the literature revealed few studies which …

Focus and aim: This report seeks to address the following questions … The aim of this study is to determine/examine …

Outline of structure: This paper has been divided into four parts. The first part deals with … The first section of this paper will examine …

Explaining keywords: While a variety of definitions of the term X have been suggested, this paper will use the definition proposed by Y who saw it as … Throughout this paper the term X will be used to refer to …

The other exercises are (Activity 2) to identify generic language in a text extract in the form of “reusable academic phrases”; (Activity 3) to describe the purpose or function of a given set of phrases, for example in signalling transition ; (Activity 4) recognizing what counts as generic language – and hence reusable as a template, and what counts as a particular turn of phrase – copying of which would therefore constitute plagiarism; (Activity 5) slotting in evaluative adjectives into generic phrases in order to comment critically .

While Academic Phrasebank may serve as a phrasebook of generic language to draw on when writing a paper in anger, it is perhaps more profitably used for becoming more conscious of the communicative functions involved in writing academic texts for English-speaking audiences, and for learning the associated English language used to realize these functions. The activities offered by Davis and Morley may be found helpful in make active use of Academic Phrasebank as a language-learning tool.

A freely downloadable print version of Academic Phrasebank contains at the end a supplement to the online material, with notes on (1) academic style, (2) commonly confused words, (3) British and US spelling, (4) punctuation, (5) article use, (6) sentence structure, (7) paragraph structure, and (8) the writing process. While the brevity of these notes has the advantage of giving overviews that are digestible in a single reading, occasionally they simplify to the point of being misleading. For example, in the notes on commonly confused words it is stated that affect ( meaning to make a difference or to touch emotionally) is a verb and effect (meaning a change resulting from some cause) is a noun, skating over the fact that affect also sees use as a noun (in psychology meaning emotion in its subjective, behavioural aspect, or a manifestation of the same) and that effect is often used as a verb (meaning to cause or bring about).

An expanded version of the Academic Phrasebank is available as a navigable pdf for a modest fee.

Davis, M. and Morley J. (2018) Facilitating learning about academic phraseology: teaching activities for student writers , Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, Special Edition: October 2018 ALDinHE Conference

Swales, J. and Feak, C. (2012) Academic writing for graduate students. 3rd ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Michigan University Press

Graff, G. and Birkenstein, C. (2014), “They say / I say”: the Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, 3 rd ed., New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd.

Andrew Goodall

4 replies to “manchester academic phrasebank”.

Academic Phrasebank – The University of Manchester website seems to be down. https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk Do you know how I can contact the web developers so that they can fix this? Perhaps the website has moved? Thanks for you help 🙂

It appears they have been quick to fix it – the link works now!

What is the content or purpose of the Manchester Academic Phrasebank mentioned in the article?

I refer you to the home page https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/ which explains well both content and purpose.

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SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

How to write an academic essay, CEEBL, The University of Manchester, http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/resources/guides/.

• Manchester Institute of Education

Research output : Working paper

T1 - How to write an academic essay, CEEBL, The University of Manchester, http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/resources/guides/.

AU - Baratta, A.

M3 - Working paper

BT - How to write an academic essay, CEEBL, The University of Manchester, http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/ceebl/resources/guides/.

• Academic writing
• Key words in Assignment Briefs
• Punctuation
• Abbreviations, Capital Letters and Dates
• Paraphrasing

Manchester University Academic Phrasebank

• Study skills
• A selection of books available for Academic writing

Phrasebank has been developed by the University of Manchester and is an excellent resource to support your academic writing. It is a repository of the most commonly-used phrases in published academic work, organised according to purpose and function. Explore the Phrasebank for ideas on how to express yourself using established academic language.

https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk

• << Previous: Paraphrasing
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• Last Updated: Jun 27, 2023 2:35 PM
• URL: https://libguides.wigan-leigh.ac.uk/c.php?g=709094

Enterprise Inquiry

Share your requirements with us and our team will respond to you promptly., trinka’s academic phrasebank.

Find phrases or sentences to best express your intent or avoid repetition

E.g. "This represents an important topic to study because"

Information available here is free to use for academic purposes. For commercial use, please contact us .

AI to Find the Right Phrase

Our specially trained AI model saves you time finding the right phrase to write confidently from our large academic phrasebank in just seconds.

Large Academic Database

Our academic phrasebank curates phrases from millions of academic publications to help you easily express your intent while meeting academic conventions.

Easy to Search and Use

Save time and write confidently using our academic phrasebank powered by AI technology that makes finding the right phrases quick and easy.

About Trinka’s Academic Phrasebank

Trinka's academic phrasebank is a large database of phrases or sentences in English that lets you find the right phrase or sentence to use to express a specific intent while meeting academic writing conventions and style.

Trinka's academic phrasebank includes phrases/sentences that have been used in scientific journal papers and other academic publications. Our database is specially curated by a team of expert academics and editors.

Our unique AI technology delivers highly relevant results and saves your time in drafting your academic content.

How Does Trinka’s Academic Phrasebank Work?

Using Trinka’s academic phrasebank , you can find the right phrases or sentences to communicate your message effectively in two easy ways.

Searching for phrases similar to ones you have. Type or paste the phrase to see all similar phrases. Trinka's AI understands the meaning of the phrase and shows you all the relevant phrases. Copy the suggestion of your choice with a click to use it.

Navigating the academic phrasebank using the sections. Say you need phrases to introduce previous work to establish the importance of your topic in the introduction section. Just click on the section “Introducing your work” and then the subsection “Establishing the importance of the topic” in the categorized academic phrasebank navigation. You get all the relevant suggestions that you can copy with a click!

Trinka’s Phrasebank vs. Manchester Phrasebank

The Manchester academic phrasebank was compiled by Dr. John Morley at the University of Manchester. The Manchester academic phrasebank can be downloaded as a pdf file or accessed on their website.

Trinka's academic phrasebank is a fully searchable and navigable academic phrasebank for authors. It provides a significantly larger database than the Manchester academic phrasebank and includes phrases from millions of published articles, making it a highly comprehensive academic phrasebank.

Furthermore, Trinka’s academic phrasebank uses AI technology to help you easily find relevant phrases with a simple search. Trinka’s categorized academic phrasebank lets you browse through the database and find the right phrase easily.

Large Curated Academic Database

Trinka’s academic phrasebank uses a large academic database containing content from millions of published papers from reputed journals across disciplines.

AI Powered Search

Trinka’s academic phrasebank uses AI to help you find the right phrase with a simple search so you can save time while drafting your manuscript.

Easy to Navigate

Trinka's academic phrasebank is categorized in logical sections so you can easily find the right phrase to communicate intended message for every section of your paper.

Trusted by Researchers Worldwide

Trinka AI is preferred by researchers worldwide for their writing and publication needs. In addition to Trinka's academic phrasebank, technical writers and academics around the globe rely heavily on its grammar corrections and language enhancements. Unlike most other tools, Trinka goes beyond grammar to ensure holistic language improvements for increased publication success.

Academic Phrasebank FAQ’s

Writing an academic manuscript is challenging, as it not only requires grammatical accuracy but also requires adhering to several writing conventions while ensuring impactful communication. Trinka’s academic phrasebank helps you prepare your manuscript faster by allowing you to use phrases from standard academic publications without the need for searching and reading several papers to identify the right phrases. Using Trinka’s academic phrasebank hence helps you save time and prepare your manuscript more confidently.

Trinka’s academic phrasebank aims to help academic authors and students write effectively. It is completely free to use, without limitations.

Trinka’s academic phrasebank provides you with phrases aimed to achieve a specific communication objective. Once you use a phrase from Trinka’s academic phrasebank, you will need to expand on it to complete communicating your message, making the final content your own unique version. Therefore, using Trinka’s academic phrasebank will not constitute to plagiarizing.

Trinka’s academic phrasebank includes standard phrases from millions of publications across all scientific disciplines and hence can be used for any subject.

METU NCC Writing Center

Academic phrasebank from the university of manchester.

The Academic Phrasebank is a general resource for academic writers. It aims to provide you with examples of some of the phraseological ‘nuts and bolts’ of writing organised according to the main sections of a research paper or dissertation

Academic Phrasebank Enhanced Version

Navigable PDF – 2023 Edition

The Academic Phrasebank is an essential writing resource for researchers, academics, and students. You can download the enhanced version of the Academic Phrasebank as a 158 page navigable PDF file here:

You can view sample pages of the enhanced PDF version by clicking on the icon below:

Enhanced PDF includes:

Hundreds more phrases, additional sections on:, writing abstracts, indicating shared knowledge, writing acknowledgements, written academic style, using gender-neutral language, british and us spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, paragraph structure, commonly confused words, phrases used to connect ideas, commonly used verbs.

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Training videos   |   Faqs

Academic Phrasebank – The Largest Collection of Academic Phrases

• Importance of topic
• About research domain or topic
• Active research area
• Well studied issue or topic
• Considerable interest in community
• New or Emerging techniques
• Recent advancements
• Future expectations and predictions
• Rise to prominence
• Generally accepted findings and facts
• Importance of understanding
• Conventional approach
• Problem definition
• Known problems or issues
• Problems cited in literature
• Solving a problem
• Possible solutions
• Current solutions
• Your solution
• Partial solution
• Unconventional approach or solution
• Problem review
• Complexity of the problem
• Efforts in the research community
• Research difficulties
• Difficulties and challenges
• Difficulty peforming an action
• Difficulty in making decision
• Limiting factors or issues
• Intro to literature review
• Well studied topic in literature
• Many studies in literature
• Methods and solutions in literature
• Drawbacks of previous studies
• Recent literature
• Seminal or pioneering work
• Similar works in literature
• Comparative studies
• Derivative work
• Agreements and Disagreements in literature
• Debated or controversial issues
• Questionable studies
• Referencing literature
• Drawing inspiraton from literature
• Summary of previous literature
• More information on the topic
• Evidence from previous studies
• Evidence from previous clinical studies
• Evidence from literature review
• Supporting evidence in literature
• Strong evidence in literature
• Mixed evidence
• Limited or lack of evidence
• Disputed evidence
• Evidence of association
• Evidence of risk factor
• Evidence of prevalance
• Limited previous studies
• Unexplored research area
• Research questions
• Lack of solution
• Need for research
• Need for a better method
• Need for a better understanding
• Need for more studies
• Aims and objectives
• Specific objectives or focus
• Secondary objectives
• Developing a new approach or method
• Breakdown of your work
• Study design
• Motivation of your work
• Benefits of your research
• Extending previous work
• Previous findings by you
• Scope and remit of work
• Overview of current methods
• Intro to methods section
• Paper or section breakdown
• Scope of discussion
• Summary of section
• Referring to other sections
• Further details
• About the method
• Method implementation
• Experimental setup
• Simple method
• Fast method
• Standard method
• Popular method
• Alternative methods
• Controversial method
• Comparing methods
• Lack of methods
• Combining methods
• Origins of the method
• Adapting or extending a method
• Uniqueness of your method
• Many methods available
• Advantages and features of methods
• Advantages and disadvantages of methods
• Drawback and limitations of methods
• Using previously published methods
• Previous usage of the method
• Pilot or preliminary studies
• Lack of validation
• Validation of the methods
• Testing and evaluation
• Measurement procedure
• Multiple measurements
• Consistency in measurements
• Difficulty performing measurements
• Using previously published data
• Reason for choice
• Inappropriate choice
• Adequate for the experiment
• Inadequate for the experiment
• Conditions, constraints and criteria
• Assumptions and approximations
• No assumptions
• Incorrect assumptions
• Validity of assumption
• Starting point
• Initialization
• Simplification
• Prerequisites
• Requirements
• Neglected or ignored aspects
• Important aspects
• Taking things into account
• Careful consideration
• Drawing attention
• Prior knowledge
• Practical issues
• Improving accuracy or performance
• Making modifications or improvements
• Lack of information
• Steps and Stages
• Special cases
• Guidance and recommendations
• Lessons from previous studies
• Raising concerns
• Data source
• Data collection methods
• About the study population
• About the study group
• Confidentality
• Ethical approval
• Inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Participants characteristics
• Participants behavior
• Participant recruitment
• Leaflets and information sheets
• Questionnaire
• Focus groups
• Effect or influence
• Increase or decrease
• Influencing factors
• Comparisions
• Over and under estimation
• Range and limits
• Association or relationship
• Variations or change
• Observations and behaviour
• Trend or pattern
• Reporting data
• Statistical tests
• Statistical significance
• Significance level
• Data distribution
• Correlations
• Making statistical adjustments
• Source of errors
• Small discrepancies or errors
• Large discrepancies or errors
• Reducing errors
• Error trend
• Results intro
• Analysis methods
• Analysis software
• General findings
• Positive findings
• Negative findings
• Neutral findings
• Key findings
• Interesting findings
• Expected findings
• Unexpected findings
• Inconclusive results
• Difficulty in analysis
• Additional analysis
• Comparing results with previous work
• Results in good aggreement with previous work
• Results in disaggreement with previous work
• Interpret with caution
• Generalising findings
• Future improvements
• Future work
• Further studies
• Applications
• Follow-up studies
• Implications of your findings
• Limitations of your study
• Inadequate or limited data
• Strengths of your work
• Lesson for future studies
• Novelty of your work
• Contributions
• Conclusions
• Reason or cause
• Speculations and doubts
• No explanation
• Reasons cited in literature
• Classifications
• Optimization
• Properties and characteristics
• Incidence or prevalance
• Risk factors
• Action - reasons
• Action - consequences
• Disadvantages or drawbacks
• Limitations
• Implications
• Thanking people
• Thank supervisor
• Thank colleagues
• Thank reviewers
• Financial support
• Declaration
• Partnership
• Clarifications
• Time consuming
• Reducing computation time
• Cost effective
• Publications

Phrase Templates

REF-N-WRITE is proud to announce the launch of the academic phrasebank. The phrasebank is now available as part of the Word AddIn. New buttons and options have been added to the AddIn for the users to access the academic phrasebank and search through academic phrases. A selection of academic phrases from the phrasebank has been made available above for demonstration purposes. The search results are limited to five academic phrases in the demo version.

1. Academic Phrasebank

Academic phrasebank refers to a library containing a collection of English phrases that can be readily used in scientific papers and academic reports. The REF-N-WRITE team has painstakingly created a phrasebank of 20,000 academic writing phrases for use by students and researchers writing research papers. These academic phrases were extracted from high-quality scientific journal articles by a team of academic experts. Only very small chunks of generic text were extracted from previous papers, and hence the use of these academic phrases in new papers will not constitute plagiarism. The academic phrases in the phrasebank are organized in the order in which you will be required to use in a scientific paper. The academic phrases can be accessed by simply clicking on each category.

The academic writing phrases are organized into following sections (1) Introduction; (2) Problem, Solution & Difficulties; (3) Literature Review; (4) Previous Evidence and Findings; (5) Research Gap; (6) Your Work; (7) Section Intro and Scope; (8) Materials and Methods; (9) Measurements and Calculations; (10) Technical Statements; (11) Data Collection and Processing; (12) Data Analysis & Presentation; (13) Statistics; (14) Errors and Discrepancies; (15) Results; (16) Discussion and (17) Acknowledgements. In addition to this, there are some general categories of academic phrases which include: (1) Reasons, Causes & Explanations; (2) Figures, Plots and Tables; (3) Explain or Describe; (4) General Statements and (5) Others.

The various categories available within the academic phrasebank is illustrated below in the following figure.

2. Getting Writing Ideas

You can search the academic phrasebank for writing themes and ideas by simply selecting a piece of text in MS Word and then clicking the ‘Writing Ideas’ button. The tool will perform an analysis on the selected text and bring up relevant categories from the academic phrasebank. Then the academic phrases belonging to the categories can be accessed by simply clicking on the category name. The screenshot below demonstrates how you can search for categories relevant to your writing in the academic phrasebank.

3. Getting Paraphrasing Ideas

REF-N-WRITE AddIn comes with a paraphrasing tool that allows users to search for rephrasing ideas from the academic phrasebank. The user has to select a sentence in MS Word document that they would like to rephrase or reword and click the ‘Paraphrasing Tool’ button in the REF-N-WRITE button panel. The tool will search through the academic phrases and bring up phrase templates relevant to the selected text. The user can use this collection of phrases to get paraphrasing ideas for the text. Furthermore, the user can bring up more similar phrases by clicking on the more button(…) that is shown next to each phrase template in the search results panel. The figure below illustrates how to get paraphrasing ideas from the academic phrasebank.

4. Ref-N-Write Phrasebank vs. Manchester Phrasebank

The Manchester academic phrasebank is the most popular resource of academic writing phrases and was put together by Dr John Morley at The University of Manchester. The academic phrase bank is available in different forms, it is accessible through their website and is also available to purchase as an e-book . One of the motivations behind REF-N-WRITE Phrasebank is to create a fully searchable library of academic phrases that students and researchers can search on-the-fly while writing their papers. The REF-N-WRITE phrase bank is available as a part of the REF-N-WRITE Word AddIn, it means that the users can search through the library and lookup for academic writing phrase ideas within Microsoft Word.

By combining both REF-N-WRITE and Manchester phrasebanks together it is possible to generate high-quality scientific articles. REF-N-WRITE offers import facility which allows users to import documents in PDF and word formats into MS Word and then search through them during the writing process. Since Manchester Phrasebank is available in PDF version, the user using REF-N-WRITE can import the Manchester Phrasebank PDF into REF-N-WRITE and access the phrases from both Manchester Phrasebank and REF-N-WRITE Phrasebank simultaneously. The figure below illustrates phrases from the Manchester phrasebank being accessed within REF-N-WRITE Word AddIn.

5. Importance of using Academic phrases and Scientific words in Research Papers

Academic writing is different from normal every day writing in the sense that most words and terms used in general writing will be considered colloquial if used in research papers. One of the requirements of academic writing is that it requires the use of formal language in writing. We define formal language as the use of well-accepted scientific terms and phrases widely used by your peers in your subject area. In other words, the language you use in your academic essay or paper should be broadly in line with the one used by your academic or research community.

Such a skill is not easy to acquire, it takes time. Typically, your academic supervisor will provide guidance in this regard. When you are writing a research paper, your academic supervisor will review the paper first and provide you with suggestions to improve the language. The benefit of using a good academic phrasebank is that you can start perfecting the writing right from the start as you will be able to lookup for academic phrases and scientific words as you write your first draft. This will reduce the need for multiple revisions as your first version will be in a state that is academically acceptable.

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