Writing a research article

1. Writing a research article Discourse Community An example of a discourse community is pharmacologists. They fulfill the requirements of the definition since they have a broadly agreed set of public goals from which the most important may be the scientific study and use of drugs. They communicate with one another by means of journal articles, conferences, highly specialized terminology and a high level of expertise.

2. Writing a research article Teaching the linguistic/textual grammar or the cognitive processes of writing is inadequate to make a student researcher communicatively competent in scientific writing. The cultural assumptions, values, conventions and social practices cannot be learned from outside a community just as learning to speak a language fluently is not well served by memorizing dictionary and grammar exercises from a book.

3. Writing a research article • An experimental article (EA) is a genre that demonstrates the developmental stages of documenting a scientific experiment. It usually has a fixed format and includes a number of subsections such as introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion

4. Writing a research article Sometimes the article is written by adopting the structure of problem-solution instead of the standard four-part model

5. Writing a research article A theoretical article is different and perhaps the diversity in the structure of a theoretical article is much greater than an experimental article

6. Writing a research article Theologians begin by adopting a structure of argumentation that takes top-down approach, rather than a bottom-up process.

7. Writing a research article Review articleis a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of recent and current research or development in one particular field within the scope of a journal, including an indication of future research needs.

8. Writing a research article • Swales’s four-part framework for review articles: • 1. History: presenting a historical overview of the field • 2. Theory: presenting a theory to solve a problem in the field • 3. Issue: posing a problem in the field • 4. Current work: describing the status quo in the field

9. Writing a research article Book review essayscompare a number of key, recent publications, providing a descriptive and evaluative comparison of the materials and discuss the relative significance of the works in the context of current theory and practice.

10. Writing a research title Three requirements for a good title: It should indicate the topic of the study: area It should indicate the scope of the study: extent of its coverage or boundary It should be self-explanatory to readers: inclusive

11. Writing a research title • As Haggan (2004) argues, the overarching pragmatic aim must be to inform and to inform quickly. Titles are texts in miniature. They amalgamate economy with informativeness. • Semantically, titles are analyzed on the basis of informativeness:

12. Writing a research title • Area: formal, processing-based, interaction, strategies and cognitive processes, sociolinguistic • Scope: LT, psycholinguistic, LL, sociolinguistic • Topic: narrowed down • Method: historical, descriptive, experimental

13. Writing a research title • Punctuation: colon, dash, comma Colon: separate ideas, indicate relatedness of general to specific ideas • Structural features: NP, VP, Questions

14. Writing a research article Introduction • 1. What is the context of this problem? In what situation or environment can this problem be observed? (Background) • 2. Why is this research important? Who will benefit? Why do we need to know this? Why does this situation, method, model or piece of equipment need to be improved? (Rationale) • 3. What is it we do not know about? What is the gap in our knowledge this research will fill? What needs to be improved? (Problem)

15. Writing a research article • 4. What steps will the researcher take to try and fill this gap or improve the situation? What are the objectives of the study? What are the hypotheses? (Objectives) • 5. Is there any aspect of the problem the researcher will not discuss? Is the study limited to a specific geographical area or to only certain aspects of the situation? (Delimitations) • 6. In considering his/her method, model, formulation or approach, does the researcher take certain conditions, states, requirements for granted? Are there certain fundamental conditions or states the researcher takes to be true? (Assumptions)

16. Writing a research article Move 1 Establishing a territory Step1 Claiming centrality Step 2 Making topic generalizations Step 3 Reviewing previous research Move 2 Establishing a niche Step 1A Counter-claiming or Step 1B Indicating a gap Or Step1C Question raising Or Step 1D Continuing a tradition

17. Move 3 Occupying the niche Step1A Outlining purposes Step1B Announcing present research Step 2 Announcing principal findings Step 3 Indicating RA structure

18. Writing a research article Claiming centrality According to Fries, the major goal of CC is to articulate a type of appraisal: temporal, interest, quantity, importance Recently, there has been wide interest in …. The investigation of the role of L2 proficiency in L2 writing ability continues to be revealing for the better understanding of the nature of L2 writing

19. Writing a research article Topic generalization • A standard procedure for assessing has been …. • It is generally accepted that language does not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a context that … A language reflects the thoughts, attitudes, and culture of the people …

20. Writing a research article Review of previous work • Devitt (1991, p. 340) has investigated the …. • Connor and Mauranen (1999, p. 60) in their recent article on grant proposals state that …. • A few, however contend that register theory only deals with

21. Writing a research article • The second move begins with an adversative sentence connector such as nevertheless, yet, but … • verbs such as suffer, is limited, fail, lack, overlook, ignore, negation in verb phrases such as not, rarely, ill, adjectives like inconclusive, complex, misleading, limited, elusive, and quantifiers like no, little, few, none, neither

22. Writing a research article • Very little research has compared the structure of related genres, …. • Over the last two decades, the register theory has been challenged by • A few, however, contend that register theory only deals with

23. Writing a research article The explicit sign of including steps C and D is the occurrence of therefore, rather than however(Swales, 1990, p. 156).

24. Writing a research article • ‘Occupying the niche’, is to create the research space that warrants the present article. • This paper reports on the results obtained …. • We now repeat the interaction …

25. Writing a research article Move 1Establishing a territory (Citation required) Step 1Topic generalization of increasing specificity Move 2 Establishing a niche Step 1 Indicating a gap Step 2 Presenting positive justification (optional)

26. Writing a research article Here are some of the questions your literature review should answer: What do we already know in the immediate area concerned? What are the characteristics of the key concepts or the main factors or variables? What are the relationships between these key concepts, factors or variables? What are the existing theories? What are the inconsistencies or other shortcomings in our knowledge and understandings?

27. Writing a research article What views need to be further tested? What evidence is lacking, inconclusive, contradictory or too limited? Why do we study the research problem? What contribution is the present study expected to make? What research designs or methods seem unsatisfactory?

28. Writing a research article Pattern I- reference to single studies—past Martin (2003) investigated … Pattern II- reference to areas of enquiry— present perfect Research in the acquisition of metaphor has not provided conclusive answers. Pattern III- reference to current state of knowledge—present Action research, as Ellis argues, works on the assumption …

29. Writing a research article The present tense, also called citational present, is also used with important authorities in a scientific discipline. Widdowson (1985) argues …. Ellis (1998) holds that …. The Quran says that ….

30. Writing a research article Citation: The attribution of propositional content to another source. The six most frequent verbs used in applied linguistics are ‘suggest’, ‘argue’, ‘show’, ‘explain’, ‘find’ and ‘point out’ (Hyland, 1999).

31. Writing a research article The method includes a number of subheadings: (a) participants, (b) materials, (c) instruments and (d) methods and procedures

32. Writing a research article • How did he select the subjects? • How many subjects were used? • How were the subjects assigned to groups? • What was done to the subjects? What instructions did the subjects receive? • How and when was it conducted? • How long did it last? • How was the reliability of the measuring instrument measured? • How was the validity of the measuring instrument measured?

33. Writing a research article The schematic structure of a method: 1. Recognize a need to provide background knowledge 2. Frequently contain sub-sections 3. Use descriptions rather than citations to indicate various aspects of the methodology adopted 4. Tend to have one finite verb per clause 5. Provide definitions, examples and illustrations

34. Writing a research article 6. Include justifications and rationales for details of the procedures adopted 7. Contain a number of how statements 8. Contain one or more 'volitional verbs', such as We decided to analyze … 9. Tend to have a wide range of linking phrases (logical, temporal and spatial) at the beginning of sentences

35. Writing a research article: Results In the results section, the author describes his data, the statistics applied and the results of the descriptive and inferential statistics used. Authors may also use graphs or tables to accompany their description in order to help readers gain a better understanding of how the study turned out.

36. Writing a research article: Results All graphs, tables, diagrams and figures should be accompanied by texts that guide the reader’s attention to significant results. The text makes the results meaningful by pointing out the most important results, simplifying the results (e.g. “nearly half” instead of “ 48.9%”), highlighting significant trends or relationships (e.g. “the rate of learning decreases as the motivation decreases”), and perhaps commenting on whether certain results were expected or unexpected

37. Writing a research article: Results The results section is not an exact mirror-image of the tables or figures.

38. Writing a research article: Results Overall, the results section provides answers to the following questions: • What statistical procedure was used to study the hypotheses? • What was the probability level of each hypothesis? • What was the probability level of each statistics? • What was the attendant degree of freedom? • What was the strength of the relationship of the variables? • What were the group means and standard deviations? • What were the principal findings?

39. Writing a research article: Results Results sections in RAs “report results and comment on results, and that a recycled pattern of reporting and commenting may occur”.

40. Writing a research article: Results • Table 3 reveals that out of 4019 adjectival heads, 24% were intensified. When speaker age is taken into account, we observe an interesting pattern in apparent time. Figure 1 shows that the frequency of intensifiers …. (Reporting results) • However, an important consideration is to determine which intensifiers are being used. Table 4 shows that …. (Reporting results)

41. Writing a research article: Results However, notice the intensifier really. This intensifier vies for the highest frequency position …. The intensifier use of really is first attested …. More recently, Labov (1985, p. 44) observes that really is …. In British English, really has not received much attention, but …. (Comment on results)

42. Writing a research article: Results We can now turn to an analysis of …. Here we observe a dramatic pattern in apparent time. Very is the most frequently used intensifier …. In contrast, really is hardly ever used among …. (Report). This reveals a rapidly changing situation in this community. Moreover, the locus of the changeover appears …. (Comment on results)

43. Writing a research article: Results • Swales and Feak (1994, p. 171) and Swales (2004) introduce the following rhetorical moves for this part-genre: • Justifying the methodology • Interpreting the results • Citing agreement with previous results • Evaluative commenting on the data • Admitting difficulties in interpretation • Pointing out discrepancies

44. Writing a research article: Results As can be seen from the chart … In diagram … table graph According to … Table 1 As (is) shown in … Figure 2 Chart 3 It can be seen from the chart … diagram table graph

45. Writing a research article: Results There was a(n) (very) sudden rise minimal increase slight fluctuation small decrease slow decline …. gradual reduction steady fall marked drop large dramatic steep sharp rapid

46. Writing a research article: Results In relation to Compared with … twice as high as …. three times half of double that …. treble double treble the percentage of …. half

47. Writing a research article: Results Table 3 shows that …. reveals Consistent with In line with Contrary to ….

48. Writing a research article: Discussion In the discussion section, the author attempts to pull together or integrate the various parts of the study by summarizing the major findings. This is usually accompanied by emphasizing any theoretical consequences of the results, suggestions, implications, conclusions and further questions raised for later studies.

49. Writing a research article: Discussion The author moves forward in light of what he has obtained in the Results section. That is, he builds his Discussion on his achievements in the Results section. Results deal with facts and descriptions while Discussion deals with points and interpretations.

50. Writing a research article: Discussion The discussion section of an article is expected to furnish answers to the following questions: • What were the original purposes of the study? • How were these purposes met? • Why did the obtained results occur? • What were the conclusions of the research? • What is the contribution of the study to the research literature? • What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study?