Abstract Section Analysis

The Importance of Well Written Abstracts in Research Papers (RPs): A Deep Analysis.

The aim of this paper is to make a comparative analysis of the abstracts of four research papers belonging to the fields of education and medicine. Abstracts are the first contact readers have with papers;  however, they are the last part researchers write. As they summarize the major points made by the author, they tend to be short, concise and neat. They are generally written in no more than 250 words. Swales and Feak (1994) state that research papers abstracts consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences. The main purpose is to attract readers to go on reading the rest of the paper. According to APA (2008), an effective abstract uses one or more well developed paragraph which may be able to stand alone, strictly follows the chronology of the report and is intelligible to a wide audience, containing no abbreviations or specialized words. The present analysis will be based on distinguishing the main linguistic characteristics of abstracts, their structure, and their classification as well as their approach.

Considering their classification, abstracts can be either descriptive or informative in nature (Swales &  Feak, 1994). Informative abstracts are extracts from articles, chapters or as in this case, from research papers (RPs). The texts belonging to the medicine field, by Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) and Wijeysundera´s et. al (2009), follow this informative characteristic, as they provide a considerable amount of data on what the researchers did. As regards their structure, it can be asserted that they both belong to the structured type of abstracts since they are divided into sections with italicized headings which identify the main sections in the RP. The headings for both articles are: Objective, Design, ,Setting, Participants, Main Outcome Measure, and Results. Therefore, it can be assumed  that both  abstracts on medicine field follow the Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussions (IMRAD). Most researchers agree on this formula which is generally followed when writing this part of the texts. Other relevant characteristics these two abstracts share are connected to their linguistic features. In both abstracts the objectives are expressed with infinitives, as for the next sections they are written in full sentences in the past tense, negatives are avoided together with the use of abbreviations.   The vocabulary used is formal.   One main difference between these two pieces  of writing is that the  conclusion of Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) abstract on breast cancer is written in the past tense whereas the conclusion of Wijeysundera´s et. al ( 2009) abstract on cardiac stress is in the present tense, probably because of the kind of conclusion reached, which proved the hypothesis that guided this research.  Following Swales and Freak  (1994) again, the approaches of  these two abstracts can be characterized as  results-driven since they concentrate on the research findings and what might be concluded from them.

With reference to the abstracts of the educational field, by Rammal (2005) and King (2002), it can be pointed out that they are similar in the sense that they can be classified as indicative since they do not describe what the researches did in detail. Instead, they summarize the main information in the RP, and they do not provide extensive information about the results. Regarding their structure, they are unstructured since they are not divided into different sections under subheadings. In fact, both of them consist of only one paragraph. King´s (2002) abstract on DVDs seems to have the appropriate length whereas Rammal´s (2005) abstract  on video does not, it is quite short.  The first one contains seven sentences in all and the latter only five. Analyzing the linguistic features of abstracts, it can be seen that both of them are written in the present tense. In both abstracts it is possible to notice the use of the impersonal passive voice, full sentences and no negatives; abbreviations and jargon are not included.   As for their approach, they follow the lines of the summary approach of abstracts as defined by Swales and Feak (1994) because in just a few sentences they outline the different sections of the RP.

On the whole,  Jorgensen´ s ( 2009 ) and  Wijeysundera´s  et. al    (2009)  abstracts on the field of medicine are very structured, mainly following the IMRAD formula.   This characteristic can be thought as a consequence of another relevant aspect they share: They are results-driven, which means that they concentrate on results findings.     On the contrary, the article by King (2002) on the use of DVDs and Rammal (2005) on videos are not structured, but seem to have the function of attracting the readers’ attention, of generating the need of reading the rest of the article, which is one of the main functions abstract have.    As for the linguistics features of the abstracts, it can be seen that the fourth of them respect the tenses generally used for this kind of writings, all of them are written in full sentences and no examples of negatives, abbreviations and jargon can be found in either of them.  

References

American Psychological Association (2008). Concise rules of APA style. Washington,        DC: British

            Library Cataloguing-in –Publication Data.

Jorgensen, K., Zahi, P.,& Gotzsche, P., (2009).   Breast cancer mortality in organized mammography

screening in Denmark: comparative study.   British Medical Journal, 2010; 340:

  c1241.doi:101136/bmj.c1241

King, J. (2002).   Using DVD features films in the EFL classroom.    The Weekly column, 88.

Rammal, S.M. (2005). Using video in the EFL classrooms.   CDELT 25^th Annual Symposium, April

            12-13, 2005. Ein-Shams Univertity, Cairo, Egypt.

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. 

 Ann Harbor, MI: The Universty of Michigan Press.

Wijeysundera, D., Scott B., Fraser E., Austin, P., Hux J., & Laupacis A., (2009).   Non- invasive

cardiac stress testing before elective major non-cardiac surgery: population based cohort study.

British Medical Journal, 2010;340: b5526.doi:101136/bmj.b5526

An Analysis of some parts of a Research Paper: Its moves in the Introduction section, its Methods section, its Reference list and its In-text Citations.

The purpose of this paper is to make a deep analysis on Chang and Lee´s (2000) article “A major e-learning project to renovate science leaning environment in Taiwan.” Chang and Lee´s (2000) paper followed most APA (2008) characteristics for a research paper to be considered academic. Although the whole text was not divided with the correct subheadings APA (2008) specifies, all its parts can be easily identified.

The Introductions section clearly follows the three moves of the Create a Research Space Model  (C.A.R.S) stated by Swales and Feak (1994) creating a niche, establishing a niche and occupying it.  By referring back to what has been done, Chang and Lee (2000) create a niche.  The authors make reference to different past studies citing many researchers´ work, as Linn´s (2003) who reviewed the past, present, and future of technology.  As for the second move, establishing a niche, the gap is introduced with a negative connector and the use of the present perfect tense,  “however, school practices have not been innovated and improved in ways that reflect this progress in the development of a theory of learning from instruction” (Chang & Lee, 2000, p.8). The third move, which occupies  the niche, is introduced by means of a purposive statement “ therefore, this research project sets out to establish a centre for excellence in e-Learning sciences (Ceels) with the aim of realizing the common goal of modernizing school practices.” (Chang & Lee, 2000, p. 8).

The Methods section, which in this case is under the title “Project Framework”, includes most of the linguistic characteristics this section may have. Although the authors did not divide it in Participants, Materials, and Procedure, these three parts can be identified within this section. This part of the article is mainly written following the principles of process paragraphs, naming the steps the researchers would need to follow to carry out the research. The authors state “ the following research teams will be involved in the Project efforts throughout the 3-year period: (1) Classroom 2.0; (2) Mobile 2.0; and (3) Testing 2.0.” (Chang & Lee, 2000, p. 9). This section is mainly written in passive voice and it is slow paced, as everything has to be explicitly explained.

As regards Chang and Lee´s (2000) reference list, it can be stated that they produced  a very complete and well organized list, naming the authors in alphabetical order by the authors´ last name and year of publication. The only disagreement was the fact that they did not centre the word Reference. As for the in-text citations all sources that were cited in the paper were included in the Reference section. Moreover, they were formatted correctly following APA (2008) style. 

                                                                   References

American Psychological Association (2008). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in –Publication Data.        

Chang, C. Y., & Lee, G. (2000). A major e-learning project to renovate science leaning

environment in Taiwan. Tojet: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology 9 (1), 7-12. Retrieved June 28^th fromhttp://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ875757.pdf

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (1994). Academic Writing for graduate students: Essential Tasks and Skills. Ann Harbor. MI: The University of Michigan Press.

Two Important Issues for Academic Writers to Consider: The Inclusion of Citations and the Possibility of Publishing their Works.

           We do not generally use language to communicate with the world at large, but with individuals or group of individuals. As in life, groups are gathered into communities. One such group which is widely used to analyse written communication is discourse community, which Swales (1990) describes as a “a means of maintaining and extending a group´s knowledge” (p. 21). Being part of that group of people involves responding sufficiently well to the requirements of academic life, such as being acquainted with the importance of inclusion of citations to avoid plagiarism as a way to give credits to the other members of the community. Another aspect for the writers to be taken into account is to consider the possibility of publishing their work to share their own voice.

            Stolley and Brizee (2007) explains that gaining a familiarity of how to use proper citation is critically important, as inadvertent mistakes can lead to charges of plagiarism, which is the uncredited use (both intentional and unintentional) of somebody else's words or ideas. They also point out that “A charge of plagiarism can have severe consequences, including expulsion from a university or loss of a job, not to mention a writer's loss of credibility and professional standing.” (Stolley & Brizee, 2007). Simply acknowledging that certain material has been borrowed, and providing your audience with the information necessary to find that source, is usually enough to prevent plagiarism. As an academic literate one should be able to gain academic writing skills in order to construct and share meaning, but also be responsible enough when taking others´words as their own. Wallace (1991) states professional expertise is directly related to autonomy and self direction.  Writers should be able to develop knowledge and demonstrate it in a fair and correct way. For that reason it is important to respect and follow the American Psychological Association (APA)  which contains guidelines for every aspect of writing, especially in the social sciences, from determining authorship to constructing a table to avoiding plagiarism and constructing accurate reference citations.

            Sharing one`s knowledge is a challenge that any academic writer should consider. Thinking about the possibility of publishing a paper in order to make the voice heard is of ulmost importance. In order to do so, one should be aware of taking the audience in mind when the writing process starts so as to make the readers think, reflect and let them be active members of the discourse community they have become part of.   

                                                                   References

 Stolley, K. & Brizee, A. (2012, July, 5). Overview and contradictions. Retrieved from             http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/01/

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings.    Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Wallace, M. J. (1991). Training foreign language teachers: A reflective approach.   Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Introductions and Methods Sections Analysis

            A Comparative Analysis Between Two Academic Papers from Different Fields

            The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the introduction and methods sections of two research papers belonging to two completely different areas, namely the fields of education and medicine. The text on education follows the organization pattern which research papers should contain to present their introduction. The three moves of the Create a Research Model (C.A.R.S.) stated by Swales and Feak (1994), creating a research page, establishing a niche and occupying it, are neatly organized and clearly depicted. On the other hand, the text on medicine does not follow those requirements so clearly.

            In Sun and Chang`s (2012) educational paper, both authors make reference to all the previous research that has been carried out in the field using the present perfect tense and the present simple tense to describe the characteristics of blogs. The key term blog is is defined by means of a purpose statement or generalisation which introduces the main idea of the text from a general point of view.  The authors also establish a contrastive definition, which makes the rader realize that the word blog differs from the terms listservs, discussion boards and wikis. As it was mentioned before, the three moves of the the C.A.R.S are clearly expressed in the text referring to blogs. The first move, whose aim is to create a research paper, clearly refers back to previous studies which have been made in this field of using blogs to facilitate the development of a second language writing community. The authors make reference to different past studies, as Sun`s (2009) study on examining speaking practice on blogs and Noytim`s (2010) study showing that meaning served as the prominent focus rather than form in the blogging environment. Through these examples, it is clearly seen  that  the literature review is embedded in move one of the introduction  making reference to previous research in this area. Making use of a negative opening and raising a question, Sun and Chang (2012)  state the gap they found in the literature review:

Though, past literature has shed the light on the ways blogs can be used to encorage language learning and learners´participation in writing practices, little, if any, empirical research has been done to examine how interactions in blogs help EFL graduate students develop academic knowledge and writer identities. That is, if blogs are powerful tools in language learning, how do EFL students´ blog interactions demonstrate and facilitate how they process the knowledge they receive and make sense ogf who they are as emerging  academic writers? (p. 44)

This last question will be the motivator for the authors to run the research and write about the present study.

            In contrast, not even a simple definition is mentioned in the introduction of Roth et al. ´s (2010) article which directly provide an outline of past research “in the implementation of vaccines to avoid mortality in low income in low income countries”. (p. 1). The text on vaccines show the beginning of the second move by raising the doubt about BCG vaccines having non-specific benefitial effects on overall mortality.In this way, the authors provide different examples which suggest that much of the previous research has been accomplished on assumption rather than on randomized studies, shedding a light of doubt on the effectiveness of the revaccination of BCG to avoid infant mortality. In this way they create the need to run their research because this lack of information leads to more investigation on that field.

            In relation to the methods section, it can also be stated that Roth et al.´s medicine article does not follow the patterns most researchers and writers coincide with, such as its division in three subsections: participants, materials and procedure. However, they do make use of process paragraphs, including passive voice clauses in order to describe a process. In contrast, Sun and Chang´s article does organize the methods section into participants and procedures, and these two subsections are described in detail. The materials subsection is missing, probably because not much information could have been included due to the nature of this research. It is also possible to find examples of passive voice in this article as well.

            After contrasting these two articles, it can be concluded that Roth et. al´s article seems to follow the requirements for this kind of writing, presenting the information in a clear and neat way in both its introduction and methods section, whereas Sun and Chang´s article does not. The information in this article turns out to be confusing for the reader because its organization is not very clear and it is loaded with too many details and description which, as Reid (1994) stated, should be avoided by good academic writers.

                                                     References

Noytim, U. (2010). Weblogs enhancing EFL students' English language learning. Procedia Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2(1),127-1,132.

Reid, J. (1994). The process of paragraph writing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

Roth, A., E., Stabell Benn, C., Ravn, H., Rodrigues A., Lisse, I., M., Yazdanbakhsh, M., Whittle, H., & Aaby, P. (2010). Effect of revaccination with BCG in early childhood on mortality: randomised trial in Guinea-Bissau. British Medical Journal, 340, pp. c671-c671. doi: 10.1136/bmj.c671

Sun, Y. C., & Chang, Y. (2012). Blogging to learn: Becoming EFL academic writers through collaborative dialogues. Language and Learning & Technology, 16(1), 43-61.

Sun, Y. C. (2009). Voice blog: An exploratory study of language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 13(2), 88-103. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/vol13num2/sun.pdf.

Swales, J., M., & Feak, C., B., (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbour. MI:The University opf Michigan Press.

Writing collaboratively: A unique experience

 Collaborative writing was a valuable professional development opportunity which enriched my academic principles and most inner feelings. This step of the writing process was important in helping each other find our voice and provide a nurturing environment which placed emphasis on accepting, respecting and also, if necessary, allowing to reframe our peers´ work while increasing a sense of belonging to this small community. It was the combined motivation to explore and participate in the writing process more fully, and that associated with our collective sense of having something important to say, that fuelled the impetus for this collection of work. I would like to share with those reading these lines what emerged from that collaborative spirit of becoming better academic writers!