Grammar scares many people. It shouldn't.
Grammar is just the set of tools you use to put words together. The more control you have over it, the better you can get your meaning across.
Your reader needs to know the time - whether you're talking about the past (e.g. describing the method in a lab report) (1), present (e.g. describing your current strategy in a reflection) (2), future (e.g. talking about your predictions in a research paper) (3), or all time generally (e.g. describing theory) (4). Technically, this is called tense.
| (1) | Good writing offered advantages to ancient Roman, Chinese and Mayan leaders. |
| (2) | Good writing is offering practical advantages to this advertising campaign. |
| (3) | Good writing will offer many advantages to the workforce of 2050. |
| (4) | Good writing offers many advantages. |
Most academic work is about all time generally (4). Fortunately, that's the easiest one.
You can use grammar to direct the reader's attention - make them concentrate on what's important. This has a huge impact on your work's effectiveness.
For example you can make them focus on the action itself (1) or its consequences (2) (technically called aspect).
| (1) | Good writing helps achieve better outcomes. |
| (2) | Good writing has helped achieve better outcomes, such as last year's two HDs. |
You can also make them focus on the action itself (1), who receives the action (2), or who does the action (3) (technically called voice).
| (1) | Good writing shows meaning more clearly. |
| (2) | The meaning is shown more clearly. |
| (3) | Meaning is shown more clearly by people who can write well. |
Grammar's especially useful when you want to add more information to a sentence. You can add information about when (1), where (2), how (3) or why (4) something happens (technically called a prepositional phrase)
| (1) | Good writing shows information clearly after tutorials or seminars. |
| (2) | Good writing shows information clearly in academic assignments. |
| (3) | Good writing shows information clearly by organising the right words. |
| (4) | Good writing shows information clearly for research and revision. |
or add an implication (5), purpose (6), outcome, etc. (technically called a participle phrase)
| (5) | Good writing shows information clearly, making it essential to accurate work. |
| (6) | Good writing shows information clearly, keeping debate rational and evidence-based. |
or several other things.
Some grammatical rules often cause trouble, such as "the" and "a" (technically called articles).
"the" means "you know which one (or more) this is" (1); "a" means "you don't know which one this is" (2).
| (1) | Good writing made the Redfern Speech more powerful. |
| (2) | Good writing can make a speech more powerful. |
And some grammatical rules are just annoying, like the need to add "s" to an ordinary verb (1-2) when the sentence is about one person/thing (technically called agreement). Be careful of other words interrupting the sentence (3).
| (1) | Good writers make their point effectively. |
| (2) | A good writer makes their point effectively. |
| (3) |
X A good writer of university assignments make their point effectively. |