Response to the reading of Swales & Feak (1994)’s unit 7& 8: Constructing a Research Paper

This chapter introduces a typical organizational pattern for research papers including title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, and references. I have learned how to write them academically through Swales & Feak’ (1994)’s chapters until now, not the whole structure of my research paper but the part of them. However, this chapter helps me to draw a big picture of my research paper since I am going to write my research paper soon.

The unit seven explains about methods and results deeply, and the unit eight focuses on the other parts. Many practical tips were introduced through these two chapters. Among them tenses, which can be used on each part of the research paper are very useful because I have been curious about them and complicated so far. As long as I work with academic writings, I need to come back to Swales & Feak (1994)’s book, like other reference books.

Having read these two chapters, I can start to construct my research paper. Of course, this process is a just start and I need to practice these tips and skills over and over again to get used to them!

Swales, J. & Feak, C. B. (1994). Constructing a Research paper I. Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers of English (pp.155-172). Ann Arbor, MI: the University of Michigan Press.

Swales, J. & Feak, C. B. (1994). Constructing a Research paper II. Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers of English (pp.173-217). Ann Arbor, MI: the University of Michigan Press

Response to the reading of Swales & Feak (1994)’s unit 5: Writing Summaries

This chapter introduces how to write summaries. As a graduate student, I am asked to read many articles and write reflections on them. Sometimes, I concern how I can read so many articles in a limited time because most of TESOL-MALL articles are quite long and students are supposed to read several ones in a week. According to Swales and Feak (1994), formal summaries need to be done by following guidelines (p.114);

• Try to paraphrase except for technical terms
• Include enough details to present the content clearly
• Just cite specialized vocabularies or technical terms without paraphrasing
• Do not include writers’ comments or evaluation

As I compare draft summary with rewrite summary (p.115), I recognized that readers will be difficult to understand summaries clearly if authors do not write summaries properly.

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In addition, I realized that comparative summaries are different from traditional summaries. The one is more complicated and comprehensible. I need to write comparative summaries for my literature review and then “it needs to infer and make explicit the relationships among my sources” (Swales & Feak, 1994, p.127).

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In conclusion, when we summarize articles, we need to paraphrase except special words and infer and explain clearly for comparative summaries!

Swales, J. & Feak, C. B. (1994). Writing Summaries. Academic writing for graduate students: A course for non-native speakers of English (pp.105-130). Ann Arbor, MI: the University of Michigan Press.