Make up Test- Pachado

A Comparative Analysis of Two Research Articles’ Abstracts

           

            Abstracts are the most important constituent parts of Research Articles. Hubbuch (1996) defines abstracts “as brief summaries of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (p.126). These pieces of writing are crucial tools as they give a first impression of the article and they help readers to decide whether to continue reading them or not.  Correspondingly, the American Psychological Association (2007) argues that if an abstract is accurate, informative and comprehensible, it will make the document readable. Although Swales and Feak (1994) and Hubbuch (1996) explain the main characteristics that an abstract should contain to become readable for the audience, none of the authors has given writers any piece of advice on how to make the abstract interesting and attractive for the reader. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast two research papers’ abstracts to find and expose their main differences and similarities. One of the articles, entitled “Implications of a 2005 Measles Outbreak in Indiana for Sustained Elimination of Measles in the United States” belongs to the medicine field. The other one, entitled “TESL-EJ: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal” belongs to the educational field, respectively.

            Both the medicine and the educational abstract share several similarities between them. To begin with, both of them transmit information in a clear, concise, neat and objective way. Accordingly, both of them express the major ideas or parts of the authors’ arguments and express clearly the ways these ideas are related to each other. For example, “High vaccination levels in the surrounding community and low rates of vaccine failure averted an epidemic” Parker et al., 2006) and “The nature and role of electronic journals have been widely discussed over the past few years, and there is an emerging consensus on the parameters of such journals and the space in which they operate” (Sussex, 1994).

            As regards their main differences between these two abstracts, two main aspects can be taken into consideration. The first one has to do with the length of them. Swales and Feak (1994) agree with Hubbuch (1996) in the fact that research papers’ abstracts should consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences. In this sense, these two abstracts differ from each other as the educational one consists of six sentences and the medicine one is divided into different paragraphs. The second aspect that should be mentioned is about the approaches which were used to write them. Swales and Feak (1994) argue that there are two approaches to writing abstracts: the results-driven approach and the research paper summary approach. The medicine abstract is a clear example of the results-driven approach as the writers concentrate on the research findings and what might be concluded from them. For example, “Approximately 500 persons attended a gathering with the index patient one day after her return home. Approximately 50 lacked evidence of measles immunity, of whom 16 (32 percent) acquired measles at the gathering” and “This outbreak was caused by the importation of measles into a population of children whose parents had refused to have them vaccinated because of safety concerns about the vaccine” (Parker et al., 2006). Quite the opposite, the educational article’s authors do not follow any approach to write their abstract as it does not present the results that were achieved in the research study and it is not divided into different sections either. Finally, tenses usage is quite different in these two articles. In the medicine article past tense is used to expose the methods section, For instance, “We conducted a case-series investigation, molecular typing of viral isolates, surveys of rates of vaccination coverage, interviews regarding attitudes toward vaccination, and cost surveys” (Parker et al., 2006). On the contrary, in the education abstract present perfect is used to expose the literature review. For example, “The nature and role of electronic journals have been widely discussed over the past few years, and there is an emerging consensus on the parameters of such journals and the space in which they operate” (Sussex, 1994).

            All in all, after analyzing and comparing the two abstracts which belong to the medicine and the educational field, it could be concluded that both of them present and explain the main points of the paper to be developed by the researchers. Despite the fact that many differences have been found, those variations seem to be related to the discipline that the author belongs to and do not affect the abstracted work. Nonetheless, all the authors succeeded in including the mandatory components as well as making their documents readable by providing the reader with accurate, comprehensible and informative summaries of their completed work.    

References

             American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.

              Amy A. Parker, M.S.N., M.P.H., Wayne Staggs, M.S., Gustavo H. Dayan, M.D., Ismael R. Ortega-Sánchez, Ph.D., Paul A. Rota, Ph.D., Luis Lowe, M.S., Patricia Boardman, B.S., R.N., Robert Teclaw, D.V.M., Ph.D., Charlene Graves, M.D., and Charles W. LeBaron, M.D. (2006). Implications of a 2005 Measles Outbreak in Indiana for Sustained Elimination of Measles in the United States. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2006; 355:447-455 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa060775.

            Hubbuch, S.M. (1996). Writing research papers across the curriculum. (4^th ed.). Hartcourt Brace: Fort Worth, TX.

            Sussex, R. (1994). TESL-EJ: Conception and Potential of an Electronic Journal. (Centre for Language Teaching and Research). Queensland,   AUS: University of Queensland.

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

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

Unit 2- Final Task- Pachado

A Comparative Analysis of Two Research Articles

           

            Research Papers (R P) and Research Articles (R A) are composed by several parts: a title, an abstract, acknowledgements, an introduction, a literature review, methods, results, discussions, recommendations, references and appendixes. Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994) assert that the process of writing the introduction in a research paper is a time-consuming, hard and vexatious task. Furthermore, these authors expose that what is supposed to be the first part of the paper turns out to be the lastly written section. In the introduction, the writer’s principal objective is to attract the reader’s attention. That is why it is such a challenging task. Conversely, methods sections are mainly written following the principles of process paragraphs. In this sense, these are the easiest sections to write and they are often the first section that researchers choose to write in their papers. Methods sections, describe the details, the methodology, the materials and the procedures that were used and developed by the researchers to fulfill the aims of their research papers. Although Swales and Feak (1994) explain the main characteristics that research papers should contain to become readable for the audience, none of the authors has explained how to make them interesting and appealing to the reader.  

            The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the introductions with their literature reviews and the methods sections of two research articles to find and expose their main differences and similarities. One of the articles, written by Di Angelantonio, E., Chowdhury, R., Sarwar, N., Aspelund, T., Danesh. J. & Gudnason, V. (2010) belongs to the medicine field. The other one, written by Barrs, K. (2012) belongs to the educational field.

               Introductions in academic writing are structured in a general-specific manner, following the Create a Research Space Model (C.A.R.S.) (Swales and Feak, 1994). The C.A.R. S. Model has been created under the principle that writers use organizational patterns to present their introductions. These organizational patterns contain “moves” or cycles which are characterized by a number of semantic and syntactic features. There are three moves in introductions: creating a research space, establishing a niche and occupying the niche, correspondingly. Taking into consideration the three moves that should be present in academic introductions, it can be affirmed that in the article that belongs to the medical field these three moves can be clearly perceived. First, the authors start the introduction making reference to what has been investigated and done in the specific area that is going to be developed in the paper. For example, “End stage renal failure is known to be associated with striking excesses of cardiovascular and all cause mortality. Strong associations have also been reported between non-dialysis dependent chronic kidney disease and such outcomes in patients with ischaemic cardiovascular diseases, heart failure, and high blood pressure” (Di Angelantonio et al., 2010, p. 1). After that, the authors indicate the gap that has been found in previous research of the area. This can be noticed in the following statement: “However, many such studies have lacked concomitant assessment of estimated glomerular filtration rate and urinary protein status or involved less than 10 years of follow-up (the time horizon used in most clinical cardiovascular risk scores), omitted measures of discrimination or reclassification of risk to help in judging the incremental predictive value of assessing chronic kidney disease, or involved some combination of these limitations” (Di Angelantonio et al., 2010, p. 1). Finally, these authors expose the main purposes of their paper. As a result, the third move, which deals with occupying the niche, can be also perceived.

            As regards the educational article, the first move of the introduction can be clearly perceived too. The author makes reference to what has been done in the specific area to be developed. For instance, “Fostering L2 interaction both in and out of the classroom, especially when this interaction is occurring in a wider L1 context, is considered fundamental for second-language development” (Barrs, 2012, p. 10). In the same way, the third move is also present in the introduction of this paper as the author exposes the main purpose of it. For example, “This article reports on an action research project undertaken at the author’s language university in Japan, initiated by the issue of how to increase opportunities for continued English language interaction outside the classroom, specifically in the various holiday periods in the academic year” (Barrs, 2012, p. 10). Conversely, the second move in this educational article is not as clear as the one in the medicine paper. The gap that has been found by this author in previous research does not start with a negative opening such as however, although, nevertheless and so on.   

               Different authors such as Swales and Feak, coincide in the main characteristics that the methods section should accomplish in a research paper. Taking them into account, it can be affirmed that the medical article follow the principles established by these authors. To begin with, the word Methods in this paper is written at the start of the section. Moreover, the mostly used tense by the authors in this section is past passive voice. For example “Creatinine measurements were made at baseline within days of the initial examination by using the Jaffe method” and “Presence of proteinuria was assessed at baseline with a urinary dipstick” (Di Angelantonio et al., 2010, p. 1). Additionally, in the subsection participants, measurements and end points, the words are typed at the left margin of this article. In this subsection, the authors describe the subjects that took part in the research, the measurements which were practiced to those subjects and the results obtained from them.

            In the educational paper the methods section is divided into four subsections (Data Collection and Analysis Methods, Context, Participants and Materials). The Participants subsection describes the subjects that took part in this research paper. In the same way, the words Participants and Materials are typed at the left margin of the paper as well as the other two subsections chosen by the authors to be developed in this section. As regards the usage of tenses, the mostly used tense in the methods section in this educational paper is past passive voice. For example, “When students entered the Freshman English course, a questionnaire was administered in order to investigate their access to Internet-enabled computers and mobile devices”, “The action-research project was administered for one class of English-major freshman (first-year) students, (N = 28: 22 female and 6 male), who were all taking both semester 1 and 2 of the compulsory Freshman English course at the author’s university” and “The project was carried out at a private 4-year language university in Japan” (Barrs, 2012, p.14). However, the word Methods does not appear centered at the start of the section. Instead, the word Methodology is written in capital letters to start the methods section in this piece of writing.

            On the whole, it can be said that although both articles come from different fields, the authors of both papers intended to present a problem, analyze it and find a solution developing their papers in a similar way. Both authors write their articles following RAs’ structures, with an introduction, a literature review, a method section, the results, a discussion and a conclusion section in their papers. In this sense, it can be affirmed that both articles belong to a discourse community.

References

            American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.

            Barrs, K. (2012). Fostering computer-mediated L2 interaction beyond the classroom. Language Learning and Technology, 16 (1), 10-25. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february2012/actionresearch.pdf

            Di Angelantonio, E., Chowdhury, R., Sarwar, N., Aspelund, T., Danesh. J. & Gudnason, V. (2010). Chronic kidney disease and risk of major cardiovascular disease and non-vascular mortality: Prospective population based cohort study. BMJ (341), 1-7. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c4986.

               Purdue University Online Writing Lab (OWL). (2010). General Format. Retrieved February, 25th, 2010, from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

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

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

Unit 4- Final Task- Pachado- Quiroz

A Comparative Analysis of Four Research Article Abstracts

           

              Abstracts are the most important constituent parts of Research Articles. Hubbuch (1996) defines abstracts “as brief summaries of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (p.126). These pieces of writing are crucial tools seeing that they give a first impression of the article, helping readers to decide whether to continue reading them or not.  Correspondingly, the American Psychological Association (2007) argues that if an abstract is accurate, informative and comprehensible, it will make the document readable.  However, not all abstracts are structured in the same format; in this respect they follow the academic conventions in accordance with their field of study.

      Four research article abstracts which belong to two different fields of study, the medicine field and the educational field respectively, have been deeply analyzed and compared taking into consideration their main characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast these abstracts to enumerate and summarize their main similarities and differences.

            The abstracts of the two educational articles analyzed, one written by Aydin & Yildiz (2014) and the other written by Diez- Bedmar & Perez- Paredes (2012), have many features in common. To begin with, both of them are informative as they provide the reader with the main findings of the research. Furthermore, they are both organised in a clear, concise and neat manner. Swales and Feak (1994) state that “abstracts consist of a single paragraph containing from about four to ten full sentences”. In this respect, both abstracts offer a single unbroken paragraph comprising between seven and nine full sentences. Thus, both of them respect abstract length requirements.  Considering the linguistic features of abstracts outlined by Swales (1990) and Swales and Feak (1994) it could be said that not only do Aydin et al. (2014) and Diez-Bedmar et al. (2012) use the past tense but they also avoid abbreviations and jargon when writing their abstracts.

            Regarding the main differences between the abstracts of these two research articles, it could be affirmed that they vary in the use of impersonal passive voice, personal pronouns, and they also differentiate from each other as regards the usage of tenses. While Aydin et al. (2014) uses the impersonal passive, Diez-Bedmar et al. (2012) chooses the personal pronoun we to describe the research study.  For instance, “We investigated the type of feedback and the impact of English native –speakers’ feedback on Spanish peers’ discourse restructuring in the context of an online collaborative writing task involving tertiary level students of English and Spanish as foreign languages” (Diez- Bedmar et al., 2012, p.62). As for tenses usages, the opening sentences in both abstracts are written in the present. For example, as Aydin et al. claims “This study focuses on the use of wikis in collaborative writing projects in foreign language learning classrooms” (p.160). However, when describing results, it has been found that there is a tense variation in Aydin et al’s (2014) paragraph whereas Diez- Bedmar et al. (2012) prefers to keep the past tense. To illustrate this tense variation, Aydin et al. (2014) asserts “The results revealed that the argumentative task promoted more peer- corrections than the informative and decision- making tasks.” (p. 160). Similarly, in the same paragraph the authors claim “The results of the study also suggest that students paid more attention to meaning rather than form regardless of the task type.” (Aydin et al., 2014, p. 160).

            The abstracts which belong to the medical field share several similarities between them. To start with, the one written by Di Angelantonio, Chowdhury, Sarwar, Aspelund, [Danesh] & Gudnason (2010) and the other one written by Smith, Kerr, Fenner & Straker (2014) are informative abstracts, as they offer the reader the key results which were obtained during the research. For example, Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) argues “Compared with the reference group (estimated glomerular filtration rate 75-89 ml/min/1.73 m2 and no proteinuria); people with lower renal function within the normal range of glomerular filtration rate did not have significantly higher risk of coronary heart disease”. Likewise, Smith at el. expresses “Two clear themes emerged from the focus groups relating to (1) what adolescents liked or thought they wanted in a text message to support behavior change, and (2) how they experienced or responded to text messages”. What is more, both abstracts are divided into different paragraphs which contain the main parts of the research article to be developed. Each of the paragraphs is outlined with a heading at the beginning and they anticipate the reader what he or she is going to find in the research paper. In this sense, it could be affirmed that these two abstracts are structured abstracts since they both contain bolded headings and each heading identifies the main sections in the research study. All the paragraphs in both abstracts are concise, as well as clear and neat. Concerning the format of the two abstracts, although they contain the word abstracts as a title and their keywords are listed in bold, none of them are centered titles as required by APA conventions (2007). Similarly, neither of the writers of these two articles uses abbreviations or jargon language in their abstracts writing. Regarding tenses usage, these two abstracts share the similarity that in both of them the past tense is mostly used to express their result sections and the present tense is used in the methods and the conclusions sections, respectively. For instance, in the results section Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) affirms “Information on chronic kidney disease increased discrimination and reclassification indices for coronary heart disease when added to conventional risk factors (P<0.01)”. In the same way, Smith et al. (2014) argues “What adolescents said they wanted in text messages often conflicted with their actual experiences”. As regards the use of present tense in the methods and conclusion sections of the abstracts, Di Angelantonio et al. (2010) expresses “In people without manifest vascular disease, even the earliest stages of chronic kidney disease are associated with excess risk of subsequent coronary heart disease”. Equally, Smith et al. (2014) exposes “The conflicting views described in this study suggest that overweight and obese adolescents may not know or have the ability to articulate how they would best be supported with text messages during a healthy lifestyle maintenance phase”.

            Swales and Feak (1994) argue that there are two approaches to writing abstracts: the results-driven approach and the research paper summary approach. The former approach “concentrates on the research findings and what might be concluded from them” whereas the latter approach provides “one – or two – sentence synopses of each of the four sections.” (pp. 210-211). Accordingly, the two abstracts which belong to the medical field differ from each other because Di Angelantonio et al’s (2010) abstract puts emphasis on the results obtained during the research study. The paragraph which contains the results in this abstract is the longest paragraph and results are specifically described and explained by the authors. Quite the opposite, in Smith et al’s (2014) abstract each section synopses in a similar manner the main points of the research article to be developed by the authors.

            After analyzing and comparing the four abstracts which belong to the medicine and the educational field, it could be concluded that all of them present and explain the main arguments, the important results and the evidence obtained in the complete article. Despite the fact that many differences in language usage, structure and format could be perceived, those variations seem to be related to the discipline that the author belongs to and do not affect the abstracted work. Nonetheless, all the authors succeeded in including the mandatory components as well as making their documents readable by providing the reader with accurate, comprehensible and informative summaries of their completed work.    

References

           

            American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.

             Aydin, Z. & Yildiz, S. (2014). Using wikis to promote collaborative EFL writing. Language Learning & Technology 18 (1), 160-180. Retrieved fromhttp://llt.msu.edu/issues/february 2014/aydinyildiz.pdf

              Di Angelantonio, E., Chowdhury, R., Sarwar, N., Aspelund, T., Danesh. J. & Gudnason, V. (2010). Chronic kidney disease and risk of major cardiovascular disease and non-vascular mortality: Prospective population based cohort study. BMJ (341), 1-7. Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c4986.

              Diez- Bedmar, M. & Perez- Paredes, P. (2012). The types and effects of peer native speakers’ feedback on CMC. Language Learning & Technology 16 (1), 62-90. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/february 2012/diezbedmarperezparedes.pdf

              Hubbuch, S.M. (1996). Writing research papers across the curriculum. (4^th ed.). Hartcourt Brace: Fort Worth, TX.

           Smith, K., Kerr, D., Fenner, A., & Straker, L. (2014) Adolescents Just Do Not Know What They Want: A Qualitative Study to Describe Obese Adolescents’ Experiences of Text Messaging to Support Behaviour Change Maintenance Post Intervention. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2014; 16(4):e103. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.3113.

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

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