As you wade through the evidence on your subject, you will learn to discriminate between useful information and unfounded or ill-conceived comments. Some sources, such as the Internet, will provide timely, reliable material but may also entice you with worthless and undocumented opinions.
— James D. Lester
In this unit you will:
·learn about the crucial steps to academic writing from topic deciding, source criticism, application to validity and reliability and result discussion
·learn about the process of writing from the reading stage through to proofreading
·learn about the key writing skills, organized alphabetically from argument to working in groups
·know the application of research methodology and design for those carrying out different types of second language research
Pre-class work
1. Work with your partner and discuss the following topics.
(1) Why do we have to do research?
(2) While writing a report or a research project, who will decide the topic?
(3) Based on what will a topic be determined?
2. The abstract provides a brief overview, that readers will usually use to determine whether the study is relevant to their current interests and research needs. However, in addition to enticing a potential audience and convincing publishers, it is also important to write a good, representative abstract for retrieval purposes. Thus, useful questions to ask when evaluating the abstract for research reports include the following:
( ) (1) Does it provide a concise yet representative overview of the topic and aim of the research?
( ) (2) Are the sample and materials/methods briefly described?
( ) (3) Are the results of the study summarized, and is the relevance and importance of the study clear?
( ) (4) Are the research questions clearly formulated and unambiguously worded?
( ) (5) Does the study fill a gap in the literature by addressing a relatively underresearched area or an unresolved problem?