Academic writing is writing that is produced in college. It is usually writing that responds to ideas or controversies that you read about.

High school teachers teach a five paragraph essay as being the basic way to set up an essay

Less feedback is given to students in high school when it comes to writing

In college, the professors are more likely to assign writing, respond in detail to student writing, and give prompts that cannot be dealt with easily in a fixed-form essay

College writing is also different from high school writing because writing that was learned in high school may be completely different from college

Summarize: to restate in your own words the point of another's work

Define: to describe, explore, or characterize a keyword, idea, or phenomenon

Compare and contrast: to explore similarities or differences in two or more subjects

Analyze: break something into parts and explain how those parts work together

Argue: to state a claim and support it with reason and evidence

Synthesize: put together various ideas from two or more sources