Academic & Scientific Register
Academic & Scientific Register
Academic German favors hedged, impersonal claims over direct assertions — leaning even more heavily on passive alternatives and nominalization than English academic writing does, and largely avoiding the first person that English papers still tolerate.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Hedging with lässt sich instead of a personal 'I/we assume'
Es lässt sich vermuten, dass die Ergebnisse auf einen Zusammenhang hinweisen. (It can be presumed that the results point to a connection.)
It can be presumed that the results point to a connection.
German academic writing reaches for the passive-alternative construction lässt sich + infinitive (from the B2 passive-alternatives lesson) to hedge a claim while erasing the person making it. English academic prose hedges too (may, might, appears to, it is assumed that), but English papers still commonly keep 'we' as the subject ('we assume that...'); German formal academic style avoids ich/wir far more strictly, preferring impersonal es, man, or the passive throughout — so where an English writer might keep some visible agency, the German equivalent typically erases it.
Konjunktiv I to report other researchers' claims without endorsing them
Müller (2019) zeigt, die Wirkung sei stärker als bisher angenommen. (Müller (2019) shows that the effect is stronger than previously assumed.)
Müller (2019) shows that the effect is stronger than previously assumed.
As covered in the B2 Konjunktiv I lesson, German academic writing uses Konjunktiv I (sei, here) to report someone else's claim while grammatically marking it as a reported, not necessarily endorsed, statement — even without an explicit 'according to Müller'. English has no equivalent verb form for this; it relies entirely on the reporting verb itself ('Müller shows that...') to signal distance. In academic German, dropping the Konjunktiv I and using the plain indicative (ist) would read as the author personally endorsing the claim as established fact, a distinction with real consequences in scholarly writing.
Standard structuring connectors for academic prose
des Weiteren, darüber hinaus, in Bezug auf, hinsichtlich, im Hinblick auf, zunächst, abschließend
furthermore, moreover, with regard to, regarding, with a view to, first of all, in conclusion
These connectors and prepositions are the backbone of formal academic structuring in German, largely mirroring their English counterparts one-to-one (des Weiteren ≈ furthermore, hinsichtlich ≈ regarding) — a genuinely transferable skill, since the logical scaffolding of an academic argument works the same way in both languages. The main new content is simply the German vocabulary itself, plus remembering that hinsichtlich and in Bezug auf both govern the genitive case.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
| German | Pronunciation | English |
|---|---|---|
| die Hypothese | dee hue-poh-TAY-zeh | hypothesis |
| die Methode | dee meh-TOH-deh | method |
| signifikant | zig-nee-fee-KAHNT | significant |
| die Schlussfolgerung | dee SHLOOS-fol-ger-oong | conclusion |
| die Datenerhebung | dee DAH-ten-air-hay-boong | data collection |
| die Stichprobe | dee SHTIKH-proh-beh | sample (statistical) |
| der Forschungsstand | dair FOR-shoongs-shtahnt | state of research / current literature |
| die Fragestellung | dee FRAH-geh-shtel-oong | research question |
| empirisch | em-PEER-ish | empirical |
| die Auswertung | dee OWS-vair-toong | analysis / evaluation (of data) |