Week 7: Group Discussion

This week our group discussed the progress of the paper. In the blog, I plan to sort out some precautions for English papers

Harvard reference format to be used in the article

Referring to Literature

Oneimportantcharacteristic ofacademic writina is that al the sources of information that the writerhasusedneedto beindicated.notust as a biblioaraphv or list of references. but also in oralongsidethetextIn some cases the source will be the main subject of the sentence in others the sources maybementioned parenthetically (in brackets) or via a notation

system(eg.footnotes)The more common verbs and verb phrases used in academic writing for referringtosources are given below.Note that different referencing systems are used in differentdisciplinesntheexamples.the Harvard in-text referencina svstem has been used Also note that the “author as subject” style is less common in the sciences

“ldeally, your review should be evaluative and critical of the studies which have a particular bearingonyourown.Forexampleyou may think a particular study did not investigate some necessary aspect ofthe area, or that the authors failed to notice some problem with their results.”

Being Critical

Asanacademic writeryou are expected to be critical of the sources that you use. This essentiallymeansquestioning what you read and not necessarily agreeing with it just because the information has been published. Being critical can also mean looking for

reasonswhyweshould notjustacceptsomething as being correct or true. This can require ou to identify problems with a writer’s arguments or methods. or perhaps to refer to other people’s criticisms ofthese. Constructive criticism goes beyond this by suggesting ways in which a piece of research or writing could be improved.

..being against is not enough. We also need to develop habits of constructive thinking Edward de Bono

Describing Methods

nthe Methodssectionofa dissertation orresearch article. writers aive an account of how they carried out their research. The Materials and Methods section should be clear and

detailed enough for another experienced person to repeat the research and reproduce the results. Typical features with examples of this language are listed below.