Analyzing the Overall Panorama of Research Articles

When analyzing Research Articles (RA), one should focus on the rhetorical patters, linguistic tools, and the formatting styles required in academia to understand the defining features that make RAs different from other types of academic texts (Swales & Feak, 1994; APA, 2010). The purpose of this paper aims at identifying the main characteristics of a RA about an e-learning project and comparing and contrasting the supporting evidence found therein.

            One of the aspects that one can start analyzing in a RA is its structure, i.e. how the content is organized in the text to fulfill the academic requirements. Most RAs consist of several sections, which, according to Swales and Feak (1994), match up with different text types to denote the purpose which they are written for. These sections are identified as the abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusions. However, the first distinguishing aspect one may identify when analyzing Chang and Lee’s (2010) work is its sections designations. Even though they used different names to label the parts of their article, they provided a rationale, for example, in the Background to explain the choice of the topic and the importance of their study, which would be the first move of the introduction - creating a research space - in Swales and Feak’s (1994) model and would correspond to the general-specific text type that moves from the central topic towards the particular issue in discussion.

            Another distinguishing feature identified in this work is the absence of some sections, giving the article a sense of incompleteness. This appears to be related to the fact that the writers’ purpose is to present a plan of how they would conduct their research project and to gain approval from the university authorities or tutors-to-be. Therefore, one might infer that this type of RA shares many of the characteristics of an academic proposal since the researchers included a Methods section, named Project Framework, which, in Swales and Feak’s (1994) terms, depicts how researchers would carry out their study, outlining the different steps in their project and anticipating some possible drawbacks they may encounter in their near future.

            Based on the limited evidence analyzed in Chang and Lee’s (2010) article, it can be concluded that their work seems to comply with many of the requirements of academia to identify their work as a RA. Moreover, many of the sections seem to follow the standards to write academic articles proposed in Swales and Feak’s (1994) model regardless of their sections designations. 

References

APA (2010). American Psychological Association Publication Manual (6^th ed.). American Psychological Association. Washington, DC.

Chang, C., & Lee, G. (2010). A major e-learning project to renovate science leaning environment in Taiwan. TOJET: The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology, 9 (1), 7-12. Retrieved June 2011 from www.tojet.net/articles/911.pdf

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