Academic writing: NTs find my papers hard to read

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Hello I am relatively new here. I am a biology graduate student in the US, and recently I am writing my proposal, a plan for later research which include a review of past literature. English is my second language. When I finished my first edition and started editing, I asked for advices from my colleagues (presumably NTs). They say that aside from grammar errors, I have problems in paragraph structure, and they think my review is boring and hard to read because I pile the summaries of past papers together. It seems that I have to intertwine the summaries and order them into problem-solution-problem2-solution-problem3 kind of structure, also have to compare papers, to make it "user friendly". I find it hard to understand, and I tried to read my paragraphs, but I felt that it is good, "normal" and not so hard to follow. I do not know if it is because of my low writing skill (from lack of experience), or Aspergers made my way of organization of information in papers different from NTs? I worry that I do not know the correct way of writing an academic paper, or even I know I do not know how to apply. I think I need some advices. Thank you everyone!

Have you tried reading other biology papers? What does your adviser say? Ask the person you are studying under for a complete break down of how they write a paper. Ask for a step by step explanation.

I had issues with my lab reports. I was an undergraduate chemistry major. I finally asked a professor exactly how to write a lab report. She explained the way she writes a paper step by step. I finally understood the process.

Good luck.

I think it might relate to language differences. Different languages have their own conventions for how to structure information. I suppose it's possible that aspies might structure papers differently but either way I think you'll get better with practice.

Academic writing is HARD. It is a completely different style to what you would have learnt in high school etc.

If you're writing a biology lit review, read other people's ones, or ask if you can. just to see the style of it.

Though from your post, are you writing: paper one says blah blah. paper two says this. paper 3 says that. paper 4 says something else? You want to compare and contrast different papers, showing that you have an understanding of the key points of each one rather than just summarising them. (ie saying group A and group B used different techniques and agree. group C used same technique as A but found something different. Group D did something completely different again and proposed x is more in depth than saying 'group A did this, B did this, C did this, D did this')

edit: your supervisor (or whatever they call them in the US) should be helping you with these things, or at least pointing you in the right direction...

I have yet to meet someone who is good at it when they start. In the first lit review I wrote, all my sentences were way too long my first paper is in the draft stage too right now and I know its going to come back soaked in red ink. takes a lot of practise.

See if you can distil a "schematic" from other papers. Step by step (as others have mentioned) can work but alternatively a flowchart or mock-up version of the document can be useful.