Writing for an American Academic Audience

If you come to an American university from another country, you will find that your instructors’ writing expectations can often be difficult to understand. Many instructors are unaware of the differences in the approach to writing that other nationalities and cultures have, and even if they were aware, ESL students would still be expected to write academic essays in an "American" fashion. This handout touches on some of the basic qualities of an academic essay written in the United States.

State Your Thesis
American academic essays are usually "thesis-driven." This means that you as the writer must explain the main point of your essay at the start. A thesis statement is a sentence or two that

(1) shows the purpose of the essay

(2) indicates the basic components of the essay

(3) offers the unique perspective of the writer

The thesis-driven essay may be different from non-American writing forms, in which the thesis is often implied, delayed, or delivered at the end of the essay. Consider the thesis statement a concise version of the entire essay, which usually appears in the introductory section of an essay.

Here’s an example of a thesis for an informative essay:
The experiment failed because of the presence of helium in the vat; the helium tainted the purity of the environment and caused the data to be irrevocably skewed.

**Notice that this thesis is short but reveals the most important ideas.**

Here’s an example of a thesis for an argument essay:
Purdue University should offer more scholarships to international students because they have a greater desire to succeed in college, tend to work harder, and graduate more quickly and with greater frequency than American students.