Delving into Abstracts from Different Fields of Study

Delving into Abstracts from Different Fields of Study

The demands of discourse community require advanced literacy as a means to equip teachers and active researchers and to help them become fully-fledged professionals. Intensive reading and writing skills are essential to analyze Research Papers (RP), their components and their specific features in depth.  The abstract is one of these components and it is a very important section since it summarizes the content of the whole document and provides the reader with a concrete idea about what he will find in the research paper.  

The goal of this paper is to compare the abstracts included in four different research papers.  Two of them belong to the education field, whereas the other two are exponents of research papers in the medicine field.  Since abstracts are useful guidelines for readers to choose between one specific RP or another one, they should be written in a clear, concise, neat and objective fashion to present the audience with “a brief summary of the major points made by an author in a book or article” (Hubbuch, 1996, cited in Crimi and Pintos, 2010, p.11). 

Concerning the educational papers, Almerich’s et al. (2005) include in their work the differences in knowledge of the technological resources in teachers and the abstract section is written in both languages, English and Spanish.  This paragraph is organized into introduction, study objective, materials, participants and methods, results and conclusion with clear linguistic introductions for each part.  For example, the researchers state that “the sample is composed of 868 teachers and the questionnaire is the instrument of collection of the information.” (Almerich et al, 2005, p.127). 

Conversely, King (2002) organizes her article about the use of DVD feature films in EFL classrooms in a different way since she produces a highly descriptive paragraph. First, King (2002) presents her assumption about the replacement of VHS by DVD and then, she enumerates the characteristics of this new movie medium as a means to support her findings.  Finally, she mentions her research objectives and makes suggestions about the criteria to be applied when using DVDs in the EFL classroom.

Comparing these two papers, it can be assumed that their abstracts can be classified as unstructured but only one of them, Almerich´s et al. (2005), follows the Introduction-Methods-Results-And-Discussions (IMRAD) formula.  In addition, this aforementioned section is more informative in nature because it describes what the researchers did and it relies on the obtained data.  Besides, Almerich´s et al. (2005) include the use of keywords in a separated box, to help the audience anticipate the main concepts to be developed in the research paper.  On the other hand, King´s (2002) work does not include precise data on samples or results.

As regards language, Almerich’s et al. (2005) abstract is characterized by an abundant use of passive voice.  Examples of this linguistic resource that can be found in the paper are “the study is based in a survey design” and “it is analyzed how gender...” (Almerich, 2005, p.127).  In contrast, King (2002) develops her abstract using active voice and she includes passive forms only at the end of her paragraph by stating “selection criteria for choosing appropriate films to promote active viewing and engage involvement for making the most of DVD films are provided”.

In the analysis of the two RPs from the medicine field, it could be inferred that their abstracts can be classified as structured since both contain bolded subheadings which identify the main sections in the paper.  However, the sections in Austin´s et al. (2010) work, such as objective, design, setting, participants, interventions, main outcome measures, results and conclusion, differ from the one included in Anderson´s et al. (2008) paper in which only background, methods, results and conclusion are mentioned.

Regarding tense usage, both papers are based on precise data and the abstracts look at the past especially when referring to methods and results.  In contrast, simple present is used for background and conclusion sections.  These paragraphs describe experimental processes and the researchers make use of passive voice to allude the ways in which the results were obtained and analyzed.  Anderson et al. (2008) state that “active treatment was associated with a 30% reduction in the rate of…” (p. 1887) and Austin et al. (2010) claim that “score methods were used to reduce important differences…” (p.1).

Taking the four RPs into consideration, there are differences between the abstracts developed in the medicine field and the ones belonging to the educational area.  The former field is characterized by quantitative data while the latter gives primacy to qualitative research.  Consequently, the abstracts are permeated by these features and the researchers appeal to different devices as the inclusion of percentages in the medicine papers and use of adjectives of high frequency occurrence in the educational works.

All in all, it could be inferred that the four abstracts reflect a clear and scientific prose achieved by “continuity in words, concepts and thematic development” (APA, 2008, p. 32).  Furthermore, there are certain features which are common to the four abstracts; for example, the use of full sentences, the use of impersonal passive and the absence of negatives.  Additionally, there are certain requirements to be met when writing an abstract but these requirements might vary depending on the field of study.  What is more, abstracts belonging to the same field differ in structure, organization of information, tense usage, etc. 

It is worth mentioning that each discipline establishes its own criteria to be applied when writing the abstract for an academic paper.  Nevertheless, each abstract possesses a distinctive characteristic which defines it according to the field which the paper belongs to; and at the same time, this specific feature makes the difference even among research papers from the same field.  Finally, the researchers should bear in mind the potential readers when developing their academic papers to provoke the intended impact on the scholar world by inviting the target audience to continue reading their publications.  

                                                            

References

Almerich, G., Belloch, C., Bo, R., Gastaldo, I.,  Orellana, N., & Suárez, J.M. (2005). Diferencias en los conocimientos de los recursos tecnológicos en profesores a partir del género, edad y tipo de centro.  Revista Electrónica de Investigación y Evaluación Educativa (RELIEVE), 11(2), 127-146. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14137

American Psychological Association (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed.). Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

Anderson, C., Antikainen, R. L., Banya, W., Becket, N., Bulpitt, C. J., Dumitrascu, D. …  Thijs, L. (2008). Treatment of hypertension in patients 80 years of age or older. The New England Journal of Medicine. 358 (18), 1887-1898. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14141

Austin, P. C., Beattie, W. S., Elliot, R. F., Hux, J. E., Laupacis, A. & Wijeysundera, D. N. (2010). Non- invasive cardiac stress testing before elective major non-cardiac surgery: population based cohort study. BMJ; 340b:b5526, doi: 10.1136/bmj.b5526.

King, J. (2002). Using DVD feature films in the EFL classroom. The weekly column. Article 88, abstract section. Retrieved May, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=14144

Essential Sections for Supporting Hypotheses in Research Papers

Essential Sections for Supporting Hypotheses in Research Papers

For behaving as researchers, teachers should possess the writing skills necessary to identify and produce different text-types useful to provide and support evidence for their findings.  In addition, the implementation of these text-types would reflect teachers´ critical thinking and their ability to encode their messages making them accessible to the academic community.  For this reason, this paper aims to make a deep analysis of Results, Discussions and Conclusions sections in order to compare the devices utilized in articles from different fields.

Taking into account the organization of the aforementioned sections included in research papers, Barrs´s (2012) article presents the Results and the Discussion sections written separately, being the last section implied under the heading of Limitations.  Similarly, in Aspelund´s et al. (2010) paper, the two sections are written in a separate way.  Furthermore, in the work previously mentioned it can be assumed that the Discussions section comprises sub-headings as Strengths and Limitations; and Conclusion.

 It is worth mentioning that in Discussions sections from both papers, de-personalized statements are avoided since researchers from the two articles assume responsibilities for their findings using the first person singular in Barrs´s (2012) case and first person plural in Aspelund´s et al. (2010) work; for example, expressing “we also found that advanced stages...” (p. 5).  Additionally, a wide variety of reporting verbs are used to enrich the evaluative comments made by the researchers when analyzing advantages and drawbacks of the procedures followed in both studies.

Aspelund et al. (2010) include the main findings in the Results section using past tense and comparative adjectives.  For example, they state that “people with chronic kidney disease had higher mean levels of cardiovascular risk factors than did people without chronic kidney disease” (p. 3).  The main findings in Barrs´s (2012) work are divided into two sub-sections: the 1^st and the 2^nd period of action research.  In both sub-sections, it can be observed that there are explanations anticipating a further discussion on a specific topic by means of phrases like “see the limitation section for a discussion of this” (p. 17).

Swales (1990) states that tables and/or figures are used in the Results section to summarize data.   Barrs (2012) uses eight numbered tables in the Results section and cites them in the text using a repeated phrase like “as can be seen from the data in Table ...” (p. 16).  In contrast, Aspelund et al. (2010) include tables and figures and place the reference to them between brackets after mentioning the obtained data. These researchers support evidence alluding to varied formats of visual aids mentioning analogies among them; for example, it can be observed that figures 1 parallels table 3 and web table C (p. 3).  

Analyzing notes for tables, it could be assumed that Aspelund´s et al. (2010) work makes use of notes for uncommon concepts as “estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR)” (p. 3).  By contrast, these authors do not expand the meaning of the acronym for standard deviation (SD) assuming it can be deduced from statistical previous knowledge.  On the other hand, this type of notes is not used by Barrs (2012) since he shows the data by means of tables with percentages without relying on statistical resources.

Persuasive and argumentative text is used to write Conclusions sections in research papers.  In this case, Barrs (2012) and Aspelund et al. (2010) employ that text-type to produce their respective conclusions.  Though, Barrs (2012) also includes, the cause-effect relationship by means of a preposition stating that “[it was shown that students] participated in the project because of the desire to stay in contact with classmates and to practice their English skills” (p.22).  Likewise, Aspelund et al. (2010) establish that “stages of chronic kidney disease are associated with excess risk of subsequent coronary heart disease” (p.6). 

In the analysis of the researchers´ attitude towards their findings, Barrs (2012) is careful about making strong conclusions, instead statements expressing probability are introduced by means of modal verbs such as “this would suggest that [Computer-Mediated Communication] (CMC) projects ... can be of value” (p.22).  Aspelund et al. (2010) apply a similar strategy stating “assessment of ... modestly improves...” (p.6).  Consequently, expressions of tentative language which denote distance are recurrent not only in Results and Discussions sections but also in Conclusions sections from both articles.

Promoting further research is another objective of the Conclusions section in research papers.  Aspelund et al. (2010) advise that “further studies are needed to investigate associations between chronic kidney disease and non-vascular mortality from causes other than cancer” (p. 6).  Similarly, Barrs (2012) argues that “[certain programme] could be an area of further investigation in that a teacher may like to research whether or not there is a development in English ability through the use of such a programme” (p. 22).

On the whole, it can be stated that research papers are considered effective means by which professionals can share their experiences in their field of study.  For that reason, results, discussions and conclusions in a research paper should be presented clear and objectively.  Consequently, it is crucial to be acquainted with the characteristic layout and linguistic tools used for that purpose in each of those sections.  This fact will contribute to being able to interpret different text-types and produce the appropriate one in each case.

                                                             References

Aspelund, T. ,et al (2010). Chronic kidney disease and risk of major cardiovascular disease and non-vascular mortality: prospective population based cohort study. BMJ;341:c4986. doi: 10.1136/bmj.c4986

Barrs, K. (2012). Fostering computer-mediated L2 interaction beyond the classroom. Language, Learning &Technology, 16(1), 10-25. Retrieved April, 2012 from

http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=16031

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

    

Analyzing Research Papers from Different Fields

Analyzing Research Papers from Different Fields

Being a member of an academic community requires highly developed communicative as well as argumentative skills from the professionals in order to share findings and potential solutions for different fields.  Research papers represent a useful instrument for researchers to extend knowledge based on the combination of their analytical and thinking skill, and the information obtained by other colleagues.  For this reason, the aim of this paper is to analyze sections from different research papers on the education and the medicine fields and make a comparative analysis.  Initially, it is worth mentioning that the educational article is a qualitative research paper which is mainly descriptive and it is based on a case study applying a non- experimental procedure.  Conversely, the medical article is a quantitative research paper with an explanatory purpose using a deductive reasoning to analyze data.

As regards the introduction, the article written by Chang and Sun (2012) is organized according to the Create a Research Space Model (C.A.R.S.) developed by Feak and Swales (1994) that includes three moves.  In move 1, the relevance of the topic for research is introduced.  This relevance is presented from the general, use of blogs as a tool that “changed the way we use the Internet, from mostly information consumers to information creators and contributors” (Chang &Sun, 2012, p.46); to the specific, the use of blogs in pedagogical settings.  The literature review is included using in-text citations according to the American Psychological Association (APA) style.  Move 2 is indicated by the use of negative openings establishing that “though past literature (…) little, if any, empirical research has been done” and move 3 is introduced by the opening phrase “in the current study” (Chang &Sun, 2012, p.44).

Considering the structure of the introduction in the article written by Aaby et al. (2010), the three moves described by the C.A.R.S. model can be also found.  Move 1 is represented by a succession of references to previous conditions including historical periods.  Move 2 is described by the negative statement “the impact on overall mortality of revaccination with intradermal BCG vaccination has not been examined” (Aaby et al, 2010, p.2).  The literature review is included by the insertion of a summary of what has been investigated so far and this information is supported by endnotes referring to previous studies.  Percentages are also included with statistical purposes.  Move 3, in this case, is not introduced by an opening phrase; Aaby et al. (2010) explain that “[they] assessed whether intradermal revaccination with BCG is associated with a reduction in childhood mortality between 19 months and 5 years” (p.2).

Comparing the introduction sections in both articles, it could be stated that Chang and Sun´s (2012) article is more organized since move 1, move 2 and move 3 are clearly defined.  Aaby´s et al. (2010) article, however, is structured with a recursive style which turns the limits between moves more blurred.  Another difference is the way in which literature review is included (APA style in the former article and endnotes in the latter article).  Considering move 1, only the second one contains Reid´s (1994) process paragraph technique to indicate previous actions in the research topic.  As regards similarities, both articles include tentative language by means of modal verbs and the use of passive voice.

According to Swales (1990), Swales and Feak (1994) and Online Writing Lab (OWL) (2008), methods sections should include the description of the people involved in the research, named as participants, the tools used to measure and analyze the phenomenon, called considered as materials and the procedure including a detailed step by step process of the research.  For example, in Chang and Sun´s (2012) article there is also a reference to the sample size and a definition of the evidence as qualitative.

As far as titles are concerned, Chang and Sun´s (2012) work, the methods section includes a title which is not placed according to APA Manual since it is not centered at the start of the section, being typed at the left margin.  This title is followed by a brief introduction mentioning the use of a case study as a method to explore English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writers´ development as academic writers through collaborative dialogues in the blogosphere. 

 The first subheading within the methods section in Chang and Sun´s (2012) article describes participants´ age, sex, level of English and hours of exposure to the target language.  The procedures subheading within the methods section in the same article includes the description of the two main assignments for the course as well as the role of the course instructor “as a facilitator to guide students as they embarked on the blog project” (Chang & Sun, 2012, p.46).  The use of charts and tables is present in this section as a means of exemplification since Chang and Sun (2012) add Table 1 to illustrate the use of the language of the participants showing number of posts and replies.  Finally, the data analysis subheading introduces a section in which passive voice sentences are used to describe the way the collected data was examined and the reasoning applied to identify “salient themes, patterns and relationships regarding students’ learning and perception of their identities as writers”  (Chang & Sun, 2012, p.47). 

Analyzing Abby´s et al. (2010) paper, it can be observed that the method section is presented at the left margin, too; but there is no paragraph anticipating the characteristics and purposes of the study.  In this research paper, the present perfect tense is used to describe the setting, the study population and the routine data collection; and passive voice sentences are included to emphasize the role of the participants and the way in which the study was conducted.   Additionally, the present simple tense accompanied by percentages is included to explain sections like vaccination status and survival status.  Similarly, a process paragraph composed by descriptive sentences is implemented with the previous mentioned objective.  In order to specify the study design and study objective; simple past tense is chosen; and conditional sentences are found when establishing the internal and external criteria for the enrollment of the population.  

Analyzing the two methods sections, it could be observed that while Chang and Sun´s (2012) work includes only three subheadings, Aaby´s et al. (2010) paper presents a variety of subheadings which offer a detailed description of the study process.  Furthermore, in the first article there is no shift in verbal tenses being the simple past redundant throughout the text; in contrast, the second article is written using different tenses.  Drawing an analogy between the two research papers, it could be assumed that tentative language is present in both articles and there are references to legends of tables as a tool to support the researchers´ assumptions.    

As a conclusion, it could be inferred that although both research papers respect the main characteristics of the genre (text-type features, established structure patterns, language and grammatical aspects); they also present differences that are mainly caused by the different research topics they tackle.  As members of the educational field, we have to bear in mind those general characteristics and the specific features of the learning-teaching area in order to achieve a successful development of our academic writing skills.

References

Aaby, P.,et al (2010) Effect of revaccination with BCG in early childhood on mortality: randomized trial in Guinea-Bissau. BMJ;340:c671. doi: 10.1136/bmj.c671

American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC:

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

American Psychological Association (2008). Publication Manual (5th ed.). Washington,

DC: British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

American Psychological Association (2010). APA formatting and style guide.

Retrieved April, 2012 from

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

Chang, Y. & Sun, Y. (2012). Blogging to learn: becoming EFL academic writers through collaborative dialogues. Language, Learning &Technology, 16(1), 43-61. Retrieved April, 2012 from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=15606

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 Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.