Following rules to produce academic writings

Academic writing not only does it involve managing an excellent proficiency in language but also displaying a high level of knowledge of the researched topic. These qualities combined in a well organized format of the article will help the audience to read it smoothly and to become more interested. To present information about a research carried out in any field, to show its purpose, methods and findings, the writer must respect some rules or follow some guidelines. These specifications have been agreed by special committees formed to unify criteria and to establish dos and don’ts in writing academically. For instance, as Pintos (2009) describes, “MLA (Modern Language Association) …used in Literature and composition fields; CBE (Council of Biology Editors)…for the sciences; Chicago Manual of Style…for History and Humanities…” (pp.14-15)

As far as Psychology and other Social Science fields are concerned, the manual specially designed to establish standards for writing is The American Psychological Association (APA). It is continuously updated to offer format and style orientations to write research papers; cite sources; make in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes and how to list the reference page. Pintos and Crimi (2010) following Sampieri, Collado and Lucio (1998), point out that research papers are produced after a process which involves different stages. Some of them are performed before the process of writing itself, the delimitation of the topic to be dealt with; a literature review; the definition of the type of research to be done (exploratory, descriptive, correlational or explanatory) to name a few. Each phase is then described in the final report.

In spite of the fact that the different sections of a research paper are the same for any field, articles written in the education field and others belonging to the medicine one can have some similarities as well as some differences. To visualize them, the internal structure of a paper from the former field will be analyzed and compared with the one of the latter. Loucky’s (2007) article that belongs to the education field follows APA style. American Psychological Association (2009) suggests following a scientific method to write research paper to make it easier to read it. It also provides a list of the sections to be included. They are: title page, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, references, appendixes and tables or figures (if they are necessary). The first sections of the example in the present paper are analyzed. They contain information organized and presented under the Introductions, Literature Review and Methods headings whereas the report from the medicine field, Espié et al. (2009), contains no Introduction section but Background and Methods. To have a clear panorama of what sort of information is included in each section, a deeper analyses will follow.

The Introduction section is of utmost importance in order to catch reader’s interest and attention for the article. It must be organized following a pattern called Create A Research Space Model (C.A.R.S.), Swales and Feak (1994) refer to this model as a principle by which writers must organize this paper section moving from the general topic to the particular situation. Besides, there are three moves that can be observed at reading this section: creating a research space, where writers should show the importance of the research and have to review previous research; establishing a niche, they have to indicate the gap in previous research; and, occupying the niche, they have state the purposes of the study and an announce the principal findings, meanwhile an indication of the structure the research report will have, can be optional.

In Loucky’s (2007) Introduction section, it can be seen that he omits the second move (establishing a niche) and in a single sentence he shows the importance of research and immediately he refers to his study. On the other hand, in Espié et al.’s (2009) article, the C.A.R.S. model can also be distinguished when reading the introductory paragraphs. However, introduction and literature review are treated together under the heading Background. The authors present the topic paraphrasing authors and then refer to the study itself in particular.Whereas the medicine article presents the literature review merged with the introduction, the education article, presents this section (Literature Review) in isolation. It might be due to what The Writing Center of the University of New Carolina (n.d.) asserts,

A literature review discusses published information in a particular subject area, and sometimes information in a particular subject area within a certain time period. In a research paper, you use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new insight that you contribute. (Literature Reviews, What this handout is about? para. 2)

As regards the Methods section, in both of the examples analyzed, the principles of process paragraphs have been followed. Although the subsections (Participants, Materials and Procedure) are not titled as such in all the papers, they are properly dealt with and refer to. Loucky’s (2007) Methods section includes Participants and Procedure as a subtitle. On the contrary, Espié et al.’s (2009) section refers to them in different paragraphs but they are not headed as subtitles. In both articles, tables showing statistical information that has been described are also available.

All in all, it would seem this educative research paper as well as the medical research paper can vary somehow taking into account headings for different sections. But all of them contain organized paragraphs in each section that move from the general topic to the specific one. In addition, they follow the same order to present the information gathered after a professional research. In both cases, respecting the style standards and format guidelines have contributed to facilitate a smooth reading.


















References

Espié, E., Gaboulaud, V., Baubet, T., Casas, G., Mouchenik, Y., Yun, O., et al. (2009). Trauma-related psychological disorders among Palestinian children and adults in Gaza and West Bank, 2005-2008. International Journal of Mental Health Systems, 3:21 doi:10.1186/1752-4458-3-21. Retrieved April 27, 2010, from http://www.ijmhs.com/content/3/1/21

Loucky, J. P. (2007). Improving online reading and vocabulary development. KASELE Bulletin, Nº 35, pp. 181-188

Pintos, V. (2009). Unit 2: Personal narratives in teaching. Handout for Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Idioma Inglés. Buenos Aires: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved in July, 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource

Pintos, V., & Crimi, Y. (2010). Unit 2: The research article: Introduction, Literature Review and Method sections. Handout for Licenciatura en Enseñanza del Idioma Inglés. Buenos Aires: Universidad CAECE. Retrieved on April, 2010, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/mod/resource/view.php?id=4691

Swales, J.M., & Feak, C.B. (1994). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Harbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.

The Writing Center, (n.d.). Literature Reviews, What this handout is about. University of New Carolina. Retrieved on July 12th, 2010, from http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/literature_review.html