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A Journal Article under Style Scrutiny

- An Analytical Essay -
            There are several systems currently used in journal writing to document sources.  Within the social sciences, APA (American Psychological Association, 2010) style is frequently used by journal publishers.  The purpose of this paper is to analyze the techniques for crediting sources in the journal article Providing Increased Access to English L2 Students of Computer Science at a South African University (Dalvit, Murray, Terzoli, Zhao & Mini, 2005).   The specific mechanisms of in-text citations, signal phrases and referencing are subjected to examination in the light of the conventions of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2010) in its 6th edition. 
            With regard to the use of in-text citations, APA (2010) style requires writers to include the author’s last name, the year of publication of the source and location reference.  In their article, Dalvit et al. (2005) resort to paraphrasing source material in all cases and they follow the indications of the APA (2010) system.  In other cases, paraphrased in-text citations are provided in parenthetical format, as in ¨This allows them to integrate new knowledge about computers into their existing knowledge structures (Sweetnam-Evans, 2001)¨ (Dalvit et al., 2005, p.74).   In some instances, they choose to quote by means of a signal phrase.  Signal phrases are used to integrate the ideas of others for support of the writers’ own voice.  An example of this in the article is: ¨According to Heugh (2002),…¨ (Dalvit et al., 2005, p.72).          
In relation to the use of signal phrases, many expressions can be found in the work of Dalvit et al. (2005), as could be seen in the following examples: ¨Preliminary investigation shows that…¨(p.73),  ¨According to Halliday and Martin (1993),…¨(p.73), ¨interviews with lecturers, tutors and students suggest that…¨(p.73), and ¨Research has shown that…¨(p.72).  Even though the choice of signal phrases given in the article can be considered apposite in terms of the way in which they characterize the context of the ideas being borrowed, it should be noted that they are all stated in present tenses.  This seems to be a deviation from the APA (2010) standards, which encourage the use of past tenses ¨when discussing another researcher’s work and when reporting your results¨(p. 78).
As far as referencing is concerned, the list appears to be in accord with APA (2010) style:  the entries are arranged in alphabetical order and the order of components within each entry coincides with the requirements in the sixth edition.  In spite of this, there are some elements which do not conform to said standards.  An example of this could be the numbering in the reference list.  Another detour is the capitalization of all words in the titles of works when the APA Manual (2010) indicates that writers should ¨capitalize only the first word of the title¨ (p. 185).
Having analysed the writing style portrayed in the article by Dalvit et al. (2005), it is possible to conclude that even though the authors have adhered to the indications of the APA (2010) style, a close examination seems to reveal some inconsistencies with the current APA edition.        


References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.
Dalvit, L., Mini, B., Murray, S., Terzoli, A. and Zhao, X. (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)

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A Journal Article under Style Scrutiny 
por Paula Gabriela Ferrari se encuentra bajo una 
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