Seeds of Academic Writing

Dear all,             Welcome  to ‘Seeds of Academic Writingʼ, my blog.   As a blogger, I am a complete novice but I hope to use this corner of cyberspace to share my reflections upon education in general and ELT in particular. I sincerely believe in the importance and benefits of a strong, sustained critiquing process in order to produce better academic papers which do state my views on educational issues.   Therefore, I embrace this blog as an opportunity to grow, learn and refine both as a scholarly writer and as educator under the critical eye and nurturing hand of other professionals who also feel the need to take this journey into academic writing.   Anchors aweigh!                                        ...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari Even though there are no figures available as to the amount of scientific literature that is annually published in all languages, it is undeniable that the world output of Research Articles (RAs) has  drastically increased to several millions in the last two decades.  Owing to the ¨North-South imbalance in the world¨ (Swales, 1987, p. 43), English has become the ¨ de facto language¨ of RAs (Simionescu & Simion, 2004, p . 129).  Two natural consequences may be derived from this: First, the   scientific style of English has become more sophisticated as it has ¨evolved to meet the needs of scientific method and of scientific argument and theory¨ (Halliday & Martin, 1993, p . 84).  Second, publications in national languages do not have the same status as English-refereed ones (Swales, 1987). Although the quality of the abstracts does not necessarily affect the journal editors’ decisions to accept or reject RAs (Swales ...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari References and Disciplinary Community Conventions Several recent studies have emphasized the importance of genre-based analysis as a tool for graduate students to understand how information is structured in the different written genres of the academy (Swales, 1987; Swales, 1990; Swales & Feak, 2004; Hyland, 2004).   This has been partly due to the need for graduate students and potential researchers to achieve international scholarly publication and develop their academic careers (Swales, 1987, p.42). Because the Research Article (RA) plays a pivotal role in the participatory mechanisms of scholarly discourse communities, RA writers ¨are very much concerned with positioning¨ (Swales & Feak, 2004, p.221) and are, thus, urged to support their argumentative claims with prior texts.   By showing their allegiance to a particular community, writers not only create a rhetorical gap for their research (Swales, 1990) but also ¨contribute to the st...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari In the last twenty years, the study of different text types in the light of genre- based analysis has become a central issue for linguists and English language teachers.  This has been partly due to the dominant role of English as the language of international research literature and to the ¨North-South imbalance in the world¨ (Swales, 1987, p.43) by which nonnative speaker academicians from underdeveloped countries have not been able to actively participate in their discourse communities at an international level.  Given these circumstances, many recent studies have focused on the analysis of the structure and linguistic features of the Research Article (RA).   Even though most journals from diverse scientific fields have adopted the Introduction, Methods,Results and Discussion ( IMRAD) format for structuring their RAs, it is noteworthy that ¨scholarly discourse is not uniform and monolithic…. It is an outcome of a mu...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari Genre-based Analysis of a Research Article Introduction           In the fast-paced world of modern technology and science, the research world has expanded and thus academic publishing has become a major concern for most academicians.   A possible reason for this is related to the researchers’ need to position themselves in their disciplinary communities by reaching publication before others (Hyland,2004,p.85).   Consequently, scholarly writing has grown to such an extent that more and more ¨non-Anglophones¨ (Swales, 2004) produce Research Articles (RAs) alongside native-speaker academicians.   According to Swales and Feak (2004), the Introduction Section (IS) of the RA genre is of outmost importance as it is the section where researchers highlight the centrality of their own research in the competition for both recognition among their peers and funding of their work (p.243).   Although considerable research has...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari Over the past decade, the world of academic publishing has rapidly modernized and the intersection of research and publishing has become ever more complex (Swales and Feak, 2004). In order to participate in a given discourse community, potential researchers need to be acquainted with the different rhetorical features each section of the research paper has.   According to Bruce (1983, as cited by Swales, 1990, p. 133), m ost RAs are prepared according to the IMRAD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) standard format because they follow the cycle of inductive scientific inquiry.   Even though many relevant aspects of   the RA sections in different fields have been pointed out by scholars in an attempt to reflect the characteristics of the genre itself (Swales, 1990; Swales & Feak, 2004; Hyland, 2004), more contrastive studies are needed to identify the specificities of each discipline.   The aim of this paper is to analyse an...

By Paula Gabriela Ferrari - Academic Summary -   Prensky (2001)’s ¨Digital Native/Digital Immigrant¨ Concept Revisited: Are We Trapped in a Metaphor?  In his critique entitled ¨ Review of Deconstructing Digital Natives ¨, Mark E. Nelson carefully examines the book ¨ Deconstructing Digital Natives ¨ and provides his own reflections on this controversial topic.  Because the book itself centers on Marc Prensky’s metaphoric distinction between digital native/digital immigrant , Nelson begins by quoting Prensky’s words to define these concepts.    According to Prensky (2001),  digital natives are the people who have been daily interacting with digital technology since they were born. As opposed to this notion, the term digital immigrants makes reference to those people who have incorporated digital technology later in their lives.   Nelson points out that the digital native metaphor (and its corollary, digital immigrant ) has triggere...