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.