An Analytical Paper of a Research Article
A
writing style consists of uniform standards and formats for capitalization,
punctuation, spelling, word division and use of terms in order to communicate
information, share ideas with others, and learn from other colleagues in a
specific domain (Gelfard, H. & Walker, C. and The American Psychological
Association, 2001). For this reason, students who would like to be part of a
discourse community should be responsible for learning and applying this common
ground to facilitate communication. According to Grabe and Kaplan (1996),
academic writing is a type of writing that involves composing for knowledge transforming.
As academic writers, we should be aware of some specific characteristics that
are directly connected with the different features that distinguish a discourse
community as such in order to construct knowledge.
APA style was developed in 1928 when a
group of editors and business managers of anthropological and psychological
journals needed to reach an agreement about how to communicate and write their
journals for their own preparation. After that, the components were changed
through years until the first publication in 1912. This released manual was
recognized as the beginning of the APA style and as a compendium of the
guidelines which should be used to avoid plagiarism. The aim of this paper is
to analyze a research article and to describe the use of in-text citations, the
use of signal phrases in it and the way in which the reference list has been
written by the authors in relation to the APA conventions for academic writing.
The article written by Dalvit, Murray, Terzoli (2005) named “Providing
increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African
University” a. US China Education Review, Sep.2005, Vol. 2 (9) will be
analyzed.
The
previously mentioned authors have used a clever combination of in text
citations and reference list for documenting sources as a clear way of avoiding
plagiarism and respecting the original source. Considering the use of
in-text citations in this educational article, it can be affirmed that the
authors follow APA conventions. For example, “According to Heugh (2002), little
has changed since the end of Apartheid. The average level of English
proficiency within the African community is still comparatively low” and
“According to Halliday and Martin (1993), students of scientific subjects have
different problems, mainly at the lexical level” (Dalvit, Murray, Terzoli 2005,
p. 72-73). These in-text citations have been included in the body of the paper
and they are also mentioned in the reference list.
Another
aspect to be considered is the way in which these authors presented those
in-text citations. APA style establishes the use of signal phrases in order to
make it clear that a citation will be presented. In this case, as the author’s
name is included in a signal phrase, it is advisable to write and include the
date placed in parenthesis. There are several common verbs and structures for
signal phrases such as: claimed, reasoned, reported and so on but the authors
just decided to use "according to" to cite the authors in their
article. They also used paraphrasing in their in-text citations which implies
that the writers did not use the direct quotes in their paper.
The last aspect to be analyzed is the reference list which is
considered to be a compendium of all the resources the writers have citied
in their paper. This list should be arranged alphabetically and it should also include the complete information of each
reference. For example, Barkhuizen,
G.P. (2001). Learners’
Perceptions of the Teaching and Learning of Xhosa as a First Language in
Eastern and Western Cape High Schools: Summary Report. PanSALB Occasional Papers
Nr. 3. Pretoria: PanSALB and Boughey, C. (2002). Naming Students’ “Problems”: An
Analysis of Language-Related Discourses at a South African University.
Teaching in Higher Education, 7,
295-307 (Dalvit, Murray, Terzoli 2005),
are clear examples of a reference list which respects APA conventions.
All
in all, it can be affirmed that the authors of this educational paper followed
APA conventions for documenting sources in their article. The use of in-text
citations, the use of signal phrases and the way in which they chose to write
the reference list respect APA conventions in order to avoid plagiarism and to
respect the original sources.
References
American Psychological Association
(2007). Concise rules of APA style.
Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.
Dalvit,
L., Murray, S. and Terzoli, A. (2005). Providing
increased access to English L2 students of computer science at a South African
University. US-China Education Review, Sep. 2005,
Vol. 2 (9)
