Academic writing is a challenging task for university students not only because of the unfamiliarity with the genre and the use of academic language, but also because of the expression of critical thoughts with appropriate word choices. Academic writing courses emphasising on employing an objective tone may have possibly hindered students from having a critical stance towards the subjects they investigate. A recent study of the MA students in the Department showed the concern over academic writing, motivating the development of this website to support students' academic writing.

This website looks at successful MA research-based papers with the lexical choices evoking evaluation of the topics and persuasion to align readers with writers' arguments. To begin with, we will take a look at the structure of a research paper, and then the framework that analyse evaluation in research papers.

The examples on this website were collected through:

1. Research paper corpora: 14 effective and 12 less effective research papers from an assignment of the same course related to second language teaching were collected to compile the corpora to examine the distribution of lexico-grammatical evaluative resources at each generic stage
2. Case studies: an A+ paper and a D paper were chosen to investigate the patterning of the evaluative lexis

As an academic writing support resource, this website aims to achieve the following:

1. Interpreting what it means by "critical" in academic writing through the word choice that express evaluation and persuasion
2. Providing examples from authentic students' texts to make requirements for a high-rated essays explicit and clear
3. Considering pedagogic implications for developing materials to support academic literacy
4. Attempting to define "critical thinking" in postgraduate context