In academic writing, you will often make references to the research of others, or secondary sources and will integrate their ideas into your own text. In order to integrate secondary sources coherently into the texts, reporting verbs are used to create a professional writing text. Furthermore, using appropriate reporting verbs can help the writer to achieve the following:
USING APPROPRIATE REPORTING VERBS
Essentially, reporting verbs can show your belief of others’ ideas. Your viewpoint of others’ ideas can be divided into three types:
The following table contains some of the common reporting verbs that you can use to express your belief about the literature in your academic writing text.
Purpose |
Weaker Position
|
Neutral Position |
Stronger Position |
addition |
|
adds
|
|
advice |
|
advises |
|
agreement |
admits, concedes |
accepts, acknowledges, agrees, concurs, confirms, recognises
|
applauds, praises, supports |
argument/persuasion |
apologises |
assures, encourages, interprets, justifies, reasons |
alerts, argues, contends, convinces, emphasises, exhorts, forbids, insists, proves, promises, persuades, threatens, warns
|
belief |
guesses, hopes, imagines |
believes, claims, expresses, feels, holds, knows, maintains, professes
|
asserts, guarantees, insists, upholds |
conclusion |
|
concludes, discovers, finds, infers, realises
|
|
disagreement |
doubts, questions |
challenges, debates, disagrees, questions, requests, wonders |
accuses, attacks, complains, contradicts, criticises, denies, discards, disclaims, dismisses, disputes, disregards, negates, opposes, refutes, rejects
|
discussion |
comments |
discusses, explores
|
reasons |
Source: https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/Reporting%20Verbs%20Reference%20Sheet.pdf
Updated:: 04/01/2021 [n_farrid]
Centre for the Advancement of Language Competence
Universiti Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM Serdang
Selangor Darul Ehsan