Introduction Levels of Formality

There are different degrees of formality, but these descriptions should help you find the right level for academic writing. Academic writing can be technical, especially when the audience and situation require specialized knowledge. Formal academic writing is usually less technical because the audience and/or level of knowledge may be more general. Personal writing, however, can range from informal to colloquial, depending on the relationship the writer has with the reader and the situation. The closer the relationship between the writer and the audience, the more relaxed the language is. Therefore, the most informal discourse is colloquial (conversational).

The range of formality Technical → Formal → Informal → Colloquial

	Technical / Formal (Academic)	Informal / Colloquial (Personal)
Audience	professors	close friends and family
Tone	formal, objective, serious	informal, intimate, friendly
Vocabulary	academic, a wide range, concise, accurate	slang, idioms, contracted forms
Style	complex (subordination), sentence variety	may content frequent simple or compound sentences
Language	few, if any, errors	may content fragments, run-on sentences, misspellings, punctuation errors
Content	depth of though, unified, tight, succinct	conversational, may be repetitive
Organization	clear, coherent, well planed	may be less structured then formal writing

Ex. 9. Use the previous text to answer the following questions.

1. What are different levels of formality?

2. Why is formal academic writing less technical?

3. Is personal writing colloquial or formal? Why?

4. Can you give some examples of technical academic writing?

5. Why is it so important to know about different levels of formality?

6. What are the characteristics of formal writing (audience, tone, vocabulary, etc. …)?

7. What are the characteristics of informal writing (audience, tone, vocabulary, etc. …)?

Ex. 10. Determine appropriate levels of formality.

1. What level of formality should be used in each of these writing tasks? Is it technical, formal, informal, or colloquial?

2. Use the chart "Levels of Formality" to help you decide.

Examples

Your brother writes to you about his experiences as a college freshman. colloquial

You need to write a note for your professor, saying you had stopped by her office and want to make an appointment. formal

1. You need to write a seminar report for colleagues in your major field (other educators, other engineers, other sociologists).

2. Your friend needs to write a letter to his father, who fairly understands and with whom he is fairly close, explaining his poor grades.

3. You need to write a letter to your sponsor, explaining your poor grades and asking for more.

4. It is summer vacation, and you are writing a letter to your American roommate, who has not traveled much, persuading him or her to come to visit you in your country.

6. Your roommate is completing a term paper (a lengthy paper which usually takes several weeks and library research to complete) for a lower-level economics class.

7. You are writing comments on a peer review form for a classmate.

8. Your professor is writing an article on historical linguistics for The TESOL Journal.

9. You are writing about how to build a suspension bridge for an upper-level civil engineering course.

Ex. 11. Analyze the use of audience and tone.

Imagine you are teaching a composition course for native speakers. You have just finished a unit in which you studied Robert Kaplan’s research on the cultural differences in writing.

• Read the following Essay Test Question and the three Essay Test Answers that follow.

• On a separate sheet of paper, analyze each Essay Test Answer for audience, tone, vocabulary, style, language content, and organization. Use the chart "Levels of Formality" as a guide.

Example Audience: Other American students (we ... us).