WordBank

During academic writing, authors always require a variety of words and phrases in order to avoid repetition and overuse. Having a variety of words in any piece of academic writing adds flow, strength, readability, professionalism and makes the work easy to comprehend and follow.

This smartphone application offers authors a large variety of words to choose from. It opens with a paragraph model and displays the four stages that constitute a typical paragraph. Tapping each one of these stages offers a list of words and phrases relevant to that stage. Each of these, in turn, when tapped provide a list of examples of their use.

The key element in its design lies in its simplicity, convenience and ease of use. There are no requirements to register or log in and neither does it require any other details of the user.

It has been designed by academics with several years of experience in pedagogical practice as it was felt that overuse of certain words and phrases leads to poor and sub-standard work. The design is based on an established, successful and widely used model of paragraph writing.

It is free to use with no intrusive ads and given that it is not subject or region-specific, it will find wide global appeal.

Acknowledgments

This application draws inspiration from a number of sources. The paragraph model on which it is based has been developed by Sally Mitchell and Mike Riddle. The various functions and associated processes that emanate from this model are based on the work by Nottingham Trent University and Learnhigher.ac.uk. The examples of the use of various words and phrases have been contributed by the writing mentors based at Liverpool Hope University Library and a number of academics from the University of Manchester and Liverpool Hope University. The logo was designed by Steve Millard of Brand Harmonics Ltd. (www.brandharmonics.co.uk)Â