Text Types

This video introduces four of the most common written text types at university:

  1. essay
  2. report
  3. literature review
  4. annotated bibliography

and gives you some general tips on approaching these different text types.

The text types you write at university will depend on what subject you’re studying and also on whether you are an undergraduate, postgraduate or research student. Of course every text type has many variations so we can only give general information here. Always consider your lecturer or supervisor’s exact instructions and preferences.

Let’s look briefly at the most common text types.

Essays

‘Essays’ (or ‘papers’ in American English) are possibly the most common type of writing at university, especially in humanities and the social sciences. There are many types of essays for different purposes but the typical structure of an academic essay contains an introduction, a body and a conclusion, followed by a reference list with all the sources you have cited. Headings are not commonly used and dot points and note form is usually not acceptable.

Reports

‘Reports’ are also very common at university, especially in business, science, and technology subjects. Like essays, there are many different report types but they are often used to display the results of an experiment, investigation or inquiry and may contain images or graphs. Though other structures are possible, the traditional format of a report is known as “IMRAD”; that is, Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion.  Reports may contain elements that are not usually acceptable in essays, such as headings, a table of contents, or an executive summary. Bullet or dot points may also be acceptable in reports.

Literature review

‘Literature reviews’ are also very common - at all levels of study from undergraduate to doctorates. ‘Literature’ means written by experts and published in books, journal articles, dissertations, conference proceedings, reports, records or databases. The review may be a piece of writing by itself or a section in a longer piece of writing like a thesis or dissertation. Before you can write a literature review, you must source, read, and then select key information so that you can synthesise (or bring together) the important information. Literature reviews can be organised in different ways, such as by theme or topic, or chronologically (that is, by the date of the publication). A good literature review shows that you have read and understood what is known in the field. Literature reviews may also be used to identify a knowledge ‘gap’ and to justify the focus of your own research.

Annotated bibliography

Now let’s turn to annotated bibliographies. These contain two elements:

  1. an academic source, presented using a consistent referencing style similar to a reference list entry, and
  2. a brief description of that source.

The description is usually a short paragraph which summarises and critically evaluates its usefulness, accuracy and quality. The length of the description can vary and you should check the task carefully. An annotated bibliography may be used as a first step to writing a literature review. Here is an example using APA:

Finally, we give some general tips:

  • As a general rule, avoid using the first person “I” (unless instructed to do so) because different text types and academic staff have different views on whether this is acceptable
  • Ask your lecturer or tutor to explain the text type? What conventions do they expect to see?
  • Ask the lecturer to show you an example or model
  • Read as many examples of the text type from your discipline as you can

We also recommend:

  • watching the video on The Writing Process
  • using the Griffith Study Smart tutorial especially the section “Putting it together”
  • attending workshops and training offered by Learning Services in the library.

This video has looked at four of the most common text types at university and provided useful tips for writing academic text types.