Language Proficiency and Coherent Argumentation are core concepts in the academic world, especially when writing an assignment, essay, research paper, or thesis. Therefore, every student has to develop these skills. But with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, (almost) all of us are turning to ChatGPT for some assistance in these areas. But, standard prompting quickly fills up your text with phrases or words like “enhance“, “delve“, “dive into“, and “in the digital landscape“, making your text read ChatGPTish. So, how can you prevent this from happening? This article has you covered.
A rule to remember: Asking ChatGPT to improve your text will edit both your writing style and content.
In this article, we will provide prompts to help you write in “academic” English, meaning that we will provide prompts that will make your text sound more natural English, correct for punctuation and grammar mistakes, and check your argumentation structure.
Remember, if you want ChatGPT to write your text, it will always have a ChatGPTish tone, as it is not a person. Therefore, prompts that start with “rewrite” or “improve” often walk a thin line. Luckily, ChatGPT can do much more, and we will show you how.
So, let’s DIVE INTO it (no, this was not ChatGPT ;)).
Let ChatGPT “Proofread Your Work”
A prompt does not need to be extensive to be very useful. For example with the following prompt:
Proofread the following text without changing its structure: [YOUR TEXT BETWEEN BRACKETS]
Behind the scenes, ChatGPT will:
- Correct spelling errors.
- Fix grammatical mistakes.
- Check and fix punctuation errors.
- Correct any typographical errors
- Check for consistency in capitalization.
While it will not change your text’s overall structure, meaning, or format.
Therefore this simple prompt gives your text an extensive spelling, grammar, and punctuation makeover without affecting your unique writing style or adding “ChatGPT words.”
Optionally but recommended, you can add: State afterwards what you have changed. This will give you an overview of what ChatGPT has modified in your text.
Let ChatGPT “Improve your academic writing style”
For most readers of this article, English is a second language, making it more challenging to write naturally and be fully academically correct. ChatGPT can help with this step for step with a more detailed prompt.
First, we prompt for an academic tone: act as an academic. Then, we specify our academic task: review the text and make it more natural and academic. Next, we specify where our academic can find the text to be reviewed: the text delimited by three backticks. Why are we precisely specifying delimited by three backticks? The answer is in this article.
While this would have everything needed for a good prompt, we will tune our prompt further. As we won’t want ChatGPT to take over our text, but rather assist with improving it.
The prompt answer must stay close to the original text, as it is your text, and not ChatGPT’s. Therefore you can constrain the model: Make changes, however, preserve the original tone. Finally, it is important to remain critical (you are an academic after all) of the changes. so we want to assess all changed parts individually: Specify what you have changed. Here is the full prompt:
Act as an academic. Review the text delimited by three backticks. Make edits to make it sound natural and more suited to an academic setting. Make changes, however, preserve the original tone. Specify what you have changed. “`[INSERT YOUR TEXT]“`
Here is an example case using the prompt for writing an introduction to a research paper.
Let ChatGPT “Perform an Argumentation Check“
Causality, correlation, and logical coherence are important when writing an academic text. It can be somewhat difficult to understand for a human and ChatGPT. However, ChatGPT can complement you by checking the argumentation and logic. A warning in advance, please always be critical of the model’s output. The following prompt can be useful:
Act as an academic. Give feedback on the text delimited by three backticks. Check it for logical flow. Point out any inconsistencies in reasoning. “`[YOUR TEXT]“`
Behind the scenes, ChatGPT will first “read” the text. It will check if the text has its argumentation in order, by moving from one point to another.
This can include:
- Checking if the introduction clearly sets out the topic,
- If each paragraph logically follows the previous one,
- Or the conclusion effectively rounds off the argument.
Furthermore, it would look for inconsistencies in reasoning, such as contradictions, unfounded claims, or logical errors. This can include pointing out areas where the argument draws premature conclusions or does not consider alternative viewpoints. Finally, it will provide feedback.
Again an example case, using the Hypothesis Development section of a Master Thesis.
ChatGPT for Writing: Let’s Combine All the Steps
Great, you have now three new prompts in your toolbox that allow you to improve your academic writing style using AI. But running each part of your text through ChatGPT three times is quite inefficient and can quickly use up your GPT-4o prompts.
To solve your problems, we have combined all three components into one prompt. While evaluating the different steps simultaneously, you will receive responses for each part of the prompt individually. Hence, it is still clear what happens to your text, and no ChatGPTish text returns.
Here is the full prompt:
Act as an academic reviewer for a <STUDY AND YEAR OF STUDY> student. Please review the text delimited by three backticks using the following steps.
Step 1. Proofread the text without changing its structure.
Step 2. Edit the text to make it sound natural and more suited to an academic setting, making changes however preserve the original tone.
Step 3. Check for logical flow. Point out any inconsistencies in reasoning within each paragraph and on a higher level.
Use the following output format between three hyphens. After providing feedback for each paragraph, wait for a response before proceeding to the next paragraph. Continue until you have given general feedback on the overall text.
—
Original Text: [Paragraph]
Edited Paragraph: [Combined output of Steps 1 and 2]
Feedback Paragraph: [Feedback on Step 3]
—
Provide your responses after each section of the original text.
Original Text: “`[Insert the text here]“`
Here we have used part of a master thesis Literature Review for the prompt to be put under scrutiny.
Use our GPT: Check your academic writing with our GPT. Click the link above to access our tool designed to review and improve your academic texts. This GPT is built using the prompt above and is ready to make your academic work polished and professional!
