Academic Writing
Lecture 1
Rita Kovordanyi (Nahid Shahmeri, Magnus Merkel, Anna Vapen)
Department of Computer and Information Science
Outline
•  Course information
•  Research papers and academic writing in general
•  Summary vs. critique
•  The assignments for the seminars
Timeline of the course
Period 1
Period 2
Introduction to the theory of computation
(CS students only)
Intro to advanced academic studies
Equal opportunities
J. Gleisner
Library seminar
M. Rosell
Introduction to assignment 1
+ supervisor meeting 1
Lectures: Academic writing 1 and 2
R. Kovordanyi
Introduction to assignment 2
Supervisor feedback, summary
Assignment 1:
Summary
Supervisor feedback, review
Assignment 2:
Critical review
Working time for the assignments
•  Summary
•  2 weeks: write draft
•  1 week: supervisor feedback
•  1/2 week: final version
•  Review
•  4 weeks: write draft
•  1 week: supervisor feedback
•  2 weeks: final version
•  7/12
•  Any additions to assignment 1 or 2
How to find information
Literature
•  Swales, John M. & Feak, Christine B. Academic Writing for
Graduate Students - Essential Tasks and Skills. University of
Michigan Press, 2004, ISBN:9780472088560
•  Recommended (not mandatory): G. D. Gopen, J. A. Swan. 1990.
The Science of Scientific Writing—If the reader is to grasp what the
writer means, the writer must understand what the reader needs.
American Scientist, vol. 78.
•  Or a literature of your choice, as long as it does not contradict
the principles brought up by the course
Research paper – different types
•  Theoretical papers using logical argumentation
•  Going from general to specific (e.g. theoretical physics,
mathematics)
•  Review articles (or meta-analysis papers in medical research)
•  History, current work, theory/model, issue
•  Responses and reactions to earlier work (rare in most fields)
•  Short communications (brief reports or notes)
•  Empirical research papers
•  IMRD structure
•
Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion
Research paper structure
•  Title
•  Abstract
•  Introduction
•  (Background)
•  Method / technique / implementation
•  Results
•  Discussion
•  Conclusions (Future work)
•  Acknowledgement
•  References
Overview of a Research Paper
Introduction
General
Specific
Method / technique /
implementation
Results
Discussion
Specific
General
The writing process
Problem
Collection of
material
Sorting
Selection
Revise
Transfer
thoughts
to text
Getting started
Structuring
Finished text
Problem
•  What do I want to state/
describe/reflect on/ argue
for?
•  For whom? Which
audience?
•  In what context?
Academic? Locally?
Internationally?
•  How go about to solve it?
Genre?
•  Summary
•  Critical review
Collection of data
•  Library and internet: journals, books, conference proceedings,
databases…
•  People: interviews, questionnaires
•  Why?
•
Acquire knowledge (missing)
•
Check what you think you already know
•
Get an overview
•
Compare different views and facts
•
…
Sorting and selection (of the data/material)
•  Select topic(s) and perspective(s) that are relevant
•  E.g. for technical audience: technical details
•  For designers: usability issues
•  Right level of detail
•  Restrictions? Number of pages? Time available?
Preliminary plan:
will focus on these subtopics,
and describe these perspectives
Structuring
•  Decide preliminary headings, e.g.
•
Introduction
•
Background
•
Solution/implementation (Method + Results)
•
Discussion
•
Conclusion
•  Within each section (heading)
•  Decide flow of the text
•  Write short bullets for each piece of idea you want to write about
•  When you’re satisfied with flow: expand each bullet
Structure
•  Ways of structuring text
•  Logical
•  Associative
•  Contrastive
•  Chronological
•  Spatial
•  Thematic
Important in
academic
writing
•  Audience
•  Purpose/Objective
•  Structure
•  Flow
•  Presentation/Layout
EXAMPLE TEXTS
Sid
17
07/09/15
Linköpings universitet
The intended audience (Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 8-9)
Text 1
Text 2
People have been pulling freshwater out of the oceans for centuries using technologies that involve evapora9on, which leaves the salts and other unwanted cons9tuents behind. Salty source water is heated to sped evapora9on, and the evaporated water is then trapped and dis9lled. This process works well but requires large quan99es of heat energy, and costs have been far too high for nearly all but the wealthiest na9ons, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (One excep9on is the island of Curacao in the Netherlands An9lles, which has provided con9nuous municipal supplies using desalina9on since 1928.) To make the process more affordable, modern dis9lla9on plans recycle heat from the evapora9on step. A poten9ally cheaper technology called membrane desalina9on may expand the role of desalina9on worldwide, which today accounts for less than 0.2 percent of the water withdrawn from natural sources. Membrane desalina9on relies on reverse osmosis – process in which a thin, semipermeable membrane is placed between a volume of saltwater and a volume of freshwater. The water on the salty side is highly pressurized to drive water molecules, but not salt and other impuri9es, to the pure side. In essence, this process pushes freshwater out of saltwater. (Mar9ndale 2001)
Reverse osmosis (RO) membrane systems are oRen used for seawater and brackish water desalina9on. The systems are typically installed as a network of modules that must be designed to meet the technical, environmental, and economic requirements of the separa9on process. The complete op9miza9on of an RO network includes the op9mal design of both the individual module structure, and the network configura9on. For a given applica9on, the choice and design of a par9cular module geometry depends on a number of factors including ease and cost of module manufacture, energy efficiency, fouling tendency, required recovery, and capital cost of auxiliary equipment. With suitable transport equa9ons to predict the physical performance of the membrane module, it should be possible to obtain an op9mal module structure for any given applica9on. (Maskan et al. 2000)
Structure/Organization
(Swales and Feak, 2004, p. 12)
•  All good texts have structure
Dear Ms. Wong,
Thank you or your interest in our university.
Acknowledgment
On behalf of the Dean of the Graduate School, I congratulate you on being accepted to the program in Aerospace Engineering to begin study at the master level. /…/
Good News
As a reflec9on of the importance the Graduate School places on the ability of its students to communicate effec9vely, the Graduate School requires all new students whose na9ve language is not English to have their English evaluated. Specific details for this procedure are given in the enclosed informa9on packet.
Administra9ve details
We look forward to welcoming you to Midwestern University and wish you success in your academic career.
Welcoming close
Standard strategy in academic writing:
The problem-solving approach
•  Description of a situation
•  Sets the background/context
•  Identification of a problem
•  This will be the focus of the rest of the paper
•  Description of a solution
•  Describe in such detail that the study is replicable by someone else
•  Evaluation of the solution
•  Strengths and weaknesses
•  Unsolved questions (future research)
Example of problem-solving approach
(Swales & Feak, 2004, p. 14-15)
For over 20 years now biologists have been alarmed that certain popula9ons of amphibians have been declining. These declines have occurred both in areas populated by humans as well as areas seemingly undisturbed by people
Descrip9on of situa9on
However, offering clear proof of the declining numbers of amphibians has been difficult because in most cases there is no reliable data on past popula9on sizes with which to compare recent numbers. Moreover, it is not en9rely clear whether the declines are actually part of a natural fluctua9on in popula9ons arising from droughts or a scarcity of food.
Iden9fica9on of a problem
To address this problem biologists are changing the way they observe amphibian popula9ons. One good documenta9on method involves coun9ng species over the course of several years and under a variety of clima9c condi9ons.
Descrip9on of a solu9on
This method should yield reliable data that will help researchers understand the extent to which amphibian popula9ons are in danger and begin to determine what can be done to stem the decline in popula9ons.
Evalua9on of a solu9on
Overview of a Research Paper
Introduction
General
Specific
Method / technique /
implementation
Results
Discussion
Specific
General
The general-specific (GS) approach
•  Often used in introductions
•  Often used as background in an analysis section or discussion
•  GS texts can start with
•  Broad statement
•  Contrastive or comparative definition
•  General fact
•  Narrow in on a particular focus
•  The final focus must be clear to the reader: this is what the rest
of the text will be about
Example of GS text (Swales & Feak, p. 45-46)
Selling ci9es: promo9ng new images for mee9ng tourism
Mee#ngs tourism, which we define as travel associated with a`endance at corporate or associa9on mee9ngs, conferences, conven9ons or congresses or public or trade exhibi9ons, has emerged as a significant subsec9on of the tourist industry both in terms of volume of travel and expenditure generated. “Mee#ngs” demonstrate enormous variety, ranging from small business mee9ngs of a few par9cipants to large conven9ons of, for example, professional associa9ons which might a`ract in excess of 20,000 delegates. General defini9on Details in support
The range of loca#ons within which these mee9ngs take place is also broad, including such sites as hotels, universi9es, sports venues, and specially built conven9on centers.
Details
The mee9ng tourism market has been vigorously pursued by many former industrial ci9es in Europe and the U.S. as part of their strategies of post-­‐industrial urban regenera9on (Law, 1987, p. 85).
Details
This market offers a number of obvious a`rac9ons to such ci9es, not least the rapidity of its growth…
Narrower
Figures for the U.S.A. suggest the business conference industry almost doubled during the…
Narrower
Good text flow
Topic sentences
•  Each paragraph should contain one topic sentence around
which the rest of the paragraph is built
•  The topic sentence is usually the first sentence of the
paragraph
Specifying paragraph
This leads to a two level hierarchy of the descriptions. On the
activity level we have the actual manipulation of the task, while – at
the procedure level – we only have information about the ordering
of the activities.
Exemplifying paragraph
In all interesting cases the Gauss-Seidel iteration converges
at least as fast as the naive Jacobi iteration. For instance, the
latter needs five iterations to converge for the rev/2-example
whereas the former method converges after only two iterations.
Substantiating paragraph
The division of unification procedures into being either
complete or incomplete sometimes seems too coarse. In
particular this is the case when the underlying theory is
underspecified, so that no sound and complete unification
procedure can exist.
Modifying paragraph
The implementation of DCGs is correct with respect to the
declarative semantics outlined above. However, because
Prolog is used for solving literals in rules, it is not complete.
SUMMARY OF A PAPER
Summaries
•  Should focus on the most important and most relevant aspects
of the original text
•  Condense into 400 words in your summary
•  Should present the points of the original article accurately
•  Present in your own words!
When you write a summary
•  Helps if you can see the previously described structures in the
article you’re about to summarize
•  Identify important milestones/important points in the paper
•
What was the main point or objective of the paper?
•
What was the intended audience?
•
What is the problem described?
•
What is the solution?
•
How was the solution evaluated?
•  Describe these briefly in your summary, in your own words
•  Make sure you are not biased (= neutral tone)
Summary vs. critique
•  Summaries should provide an accurate, unbiased account of
the content of the source material
•  Critiques should also contain an evaluation within their “field’s
accepted standards of judgment”
•  Neutral tone
•  “Logical” argumentation
Critiques
•  Critiques should be fair
•  Not your personal views, but reasonable, logical evaluation
•  Don’t apply evaluation criteria from other fields, keep it to the
specific tradition
•  Different emphases on critiques in different fields
•  Empirical sciences
•
Are the conclusions supported by the results? Other ways to interpret
the results?
•  Social sciences
•
Discuss the methodology used
•  Natural science and engineering
•
Discuss pros and cons of the technique / solution presented
Your assignments
(Detailed instructions next week)
1.  Write a summary of a research article
2.  Write a critical review of different article
•
Start with brief summary, as a way of saying: ”This is my
understanding of the paper”
•
Discuss pros and cons of the technique/solution described in the
paper
•
The discussion-part should be at least 60% of the total text
Next lecture
•  Critical review
•  Language issues
•  Proofing and revision
•  Citations and references
•  Plagiarism and how to avoid it
•  The seminar assignments are handed out