Research questions
4.5 Research Articles and MA Theses: Comparing Oranges to Apples?
Connor (1996, p. 149) suggests that in a single research one should obviously “not mix apples and oranges” and compare student writing in one culture with professional writing in another. Later, in 2004 she somewhat modifies this claim, and cites James (1980), who stresses that in contrastive studies we must “make sure that we are comparing like with like: this means that the two (or more) entities to be compared, while differing in some respect, must share certain attributes” (ibid., p. 169). What I will argue here is that research articles (RAs) and Master’s (MA) theses are subgenres of the same research paper genre and their similarities provide a sufficient foundation for a meaningful comparison of their differences. According to Baker and Brizee (2011):
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A research paper is the culmination and final product of an involved process of research, critical thinking, source evaluation, organization, and composition. […] The goal of a research paper is not to inform the reader what others have to say about a topic, but to draw on what others have to say about a topic and engage the sources in order to thoughtfully offer a unique perspective on the issue at hand.
(Source: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/658/02/)
The term may thus refer to academic papers published in refereed journals, term papers written by high school or university students, and theses or dissertations submitted to obtain a degree or a professional qualification. Going back to the metaphor, we are rather comparing green apples to red apples in our effort to go beneath the surface to discover what is happening inside.
4.5.1 Research articles. Research article (RA) is defined by Swales (1990) as a written text of a few thousand words, which reports some investigation by its author(s) and relates its findings to those of others. An RA is only considered finished if it is to appear or has appeared in a research journal or in an edited book. RAs in the past decades have become a “standard product of the knowledge-manufacturing industries”
(Swales, 1990, p. 95). In 1990, Swales estimated the total of published research articles yearly around five million; since then, the number may have multiplied with the emergence of online journals. It is no wonder that not only a great number of journal articles, but also recently, several books (e.g. Swales, 2004; Hyland, 2000) have been published on academic writing, showing the increasing interest in various discoursal features of this genre. Biber et. al (1991, p. 32) in their Longman grammar of spoken and written English take a corpus-based approach to English grammar and include five
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subcorpora, which form the basis of their grammatical investigations. Their academic prose subcorpus contains both extracts from books and research articles. For their 333 research articles “the total number of words is 2,676,800 and the average text length is 8,050 words” (p. 32), which makes this corpus large enough to draw generalizable conclusions from. In Chapters 6 to 9 of this dissertation I will rely on much of their data and their analytical approach.
As Swales (2004, p. 3) points out, presently, “rhetorical consciousness-raising”
in English, the predominant language of research internationally, and a “focus on form”
are “for educated advanced learners, important elements in any major pedagogical strategy”. He writes that “overall we seem, at least in research and scholarship, to be approaching a situation in which English is becoming a genuine lingua franca”
(Swales, 2004, p. 43). Journal editors’ linguistic evaluation of manuscripts written in English by inexperienced researchers is largely dependent on their clarity and logical connectedness, and the coherent development of the topic from one sentence to the next; so much so, that it is becoming an essential part of “disciplinary acculturation”
(Swales, 2004, p. 218) to be able to come up with a complex yet reader-sensitive text.
Academic research articles are characterized by a fairly regular discourse structure. One of the textual features that contribute to both the interpretability and connectedness of the surface text is cohesion.
Studying the functions of reference as one of the linguistic devices to establish cohesion in academic discourse is important for various reasons. From the reader’s perspective referential items (demonstratives, personal pronouns) may be deceiving in the sense that they are seemingly easy to understand, yet they sometimes require complex interpretational processes from the reader to retrieve their content from other shorter or longer (and sometimes various) segments of the text: this way, a text may
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appear confusing or may also be misinterpreted as a result of vague or ambiguous references. In addition, referential items are very frequent lexical elements, but their functions are not identical across languages; for this reason, describing their functions in RAs, especially those beyond sentence boundaries may have relevant pedagogical implications for non-native authors who need to publish RAs in international journals.
4.5.2 Research articles and MA theses. Bhatia (1993, p. 13) suggests that “a major change in the communicative purpose” is a decisive and reliable criterion in distinguishing a specific genre, while “minor changes or modifications” characterize what he calls “sub-genres”. The following discussion of similarities and differences will show that research article and MA thesis are two subgenres of the research paper genre;
therefore, the similarities in their structure, content and purpose indeed allow for a meaningful comparison.
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Research article
8MA thesis
9Context of situation
Communicative purpose /
a report of the results of research by the author placed in the context of other research in the field (Swales, 1990)
demonstrate the author's ability to review existing research, report an investigation and argue their own views against an expert of the field Field in our present corpus: the specific field of the papers
is applied linguistics Tenor novice or expert to readers within a
specific discourse community
novice EFL learner to expert readers
Mode
written: a few thousand words:
20.000 – 40.000n (in the present corpus of RAs),
written: approximately 80.000 n
may contain graphs, tables, figures, etc.
Structure
Abstract
Introduction (sometimes in one section with Background)
Background / Context Methodology or Method Findings / Results / Discussion Summary / Conclusions Notes
References Appendices
Certificate of Research / Title Page Contents
Abstract Introduction Review of Literature
Text/Analysis (possible subsections include: Research Method, Materials, Procedures, Results),
Conclusions Notes (if applicable) References
Appendices/Illustrations (if applicable)
Table 11. Comparing RAs and MA theses
Note. Italicized content is identical in both subgenres.
The comparison of the two subgenres in Table 11 concentrates on their communicative purposes and structure. It should be noted that MA theses in our corpus contain papers that follow the requirements for thesis writing before 2006; nevertheless, there have been no major changes in either the layout or the required content since then.
4.5.2.1 Communicative purpose and field. The main communicative purpose of an RA is to publish a novel piece of research. By doing so the author(s) of the article may intend both to add to academic knowledge in a particular field, and at the same
8 Some characteristics of research articles in Table 2 (field, mode and structure) are described on the basis of the corpus compiled for the present study.
9 Information about thesis requirements at ELTE are from the university's Web page:
http://seas3.elte.hu/seas/studies/graduation/thesis.html
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time, to participate in the social interactions of a particular discourse community.
Research article as a knowledge creating genre and one that “involves social interactions” (Hyland, 2002, p. 12) needs to:
“establish the novelty of one’s position, make a suitable level of claim,
acknowledge prior works and situate claim within a disciplinary context, offer warrants for one’s view based on community-specific arguments and procedures,
demonstrate an appropriate ethos and willingness to negotiate with peers”
(p. 12).
Benefits for the successful author include social recognition or maintenance of community membership, sometimes manifested in financial rewards, such as research grants. A Master's thesis is written as part of the graduation process. It should be an analytical piece of writing that documents research into an issue specifically related to a field of English applied linguistics. While for some students the only real purpose of writing the paper is ‘survival’ and the completion of a degree, for many others it is part of making the first steps necessary for scholarly work. The latter group’s purpose is similar to that of RA writers’; that is, they wish to participate in the specialist discourse community by reporting their own – though possibly not yet novel – research results.
For them, writing an MA thesis is an important step in the acquisition of the methodological, technical and stylistic norms and conventions of the target discourse community. The research study can be a replication study; it is not necessary to come up with a new approach or completely new findings. Students should also demonstrate that they can critically present previous research in the field, that is, take a unique position and synthesize theory accordingly. Both corpora used in the present study
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consist of texts written in the field of applied linguistics.
4.5.2.2 Tenor. For theses the actual audience is usually the supervisor and another marker. At most it is a local group of readers. Research articles are intended in general for global communities across various cultures and disciplinary backgrounds.
While the author of a thesis is formally the student, in many cases, supervisors provide a great deal of help to students, sometimes even in terms of language. Supervisors give professional help for thesis writers: “they recommend relevant literature and courses, comment on the various drafts of the thesis, suggest changes if necessary, etc.”10. The fact that in the final 'product' the contribution of the supervisor is invisible may distort results of the present study. Even so, the same holds true for research articles published by NNSs in English language journals. As one of the journal editors in Flowerdew's (2001) study explained: "...if it’s clear that the research itself is worthwhile, then I put an enormous effort to translate it back into proper English" (p. 130).
4.5.2.3 Mode. MA theses and RAs are both written texts following the rigorous Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion (IMRD) pattern with slight variations. RAs tend to incorporate the review of the literature in the introduction of the paper, while MA theses always have a longer section on the theoretical background of the study.
Both use formal academic register and follow similar stylistic conventions (APA, MLA), sometimes with minor modifications according to the requirements of the given journal or institution. Alongside the running text they may contain tables, figures or diagrams to illustrate the content of the text.
10 Sources:
http://seaswiki.elte.hu/studies/MA/English/graduation/Thesis
http://ludens.elte.hu/~deal/pages/THESIS_FILES/MA_thesis_guidelines_final.pdf
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As Halliday and Hasan (1976, p. 22) explain, mode is not only “the channel taken by the language” but also its “genre, or rhetorical mode”. While the two types of research paper differ in their review of the literature, the IMRD structure is present in both; therefore, in this respect Swales’ (1990) move-step analysis is applicable to them in identifying and comparing their rhetorical structures. Clearly, in this dissertation we do not have enough space for an in-depth discussion of the rhetorical structure of our two corpora; however, we will sometimes draw on the results of Swales’ (1990) analysis in the interpretation of the results in Chapters 6 to 9.
4.5.2.4 Structure. The structure of the two sub-genres is essentially the same, the greatest difference being that the review of the literature in theses is much longer.
Without the review the length of the rest of the papers is similar and a reasonable comparison can be drawn. Both include the presentation of method, main findings and conclusions. As Table 11 shows, MA theses are generally twice as long as RAs, however the two differ mainly in the length of their review of the literature. While RAs cite a similar number of references, thesis writers need to explain their resources in order to demonstrate understanding of the literature, and ability to apply the common terms and linguistic device characteristic of a field of study. RAs have a much denser review of the literature, requiring more skill from the writer to package the information in a way that it is still accessible for the reader.
As we have seen, thesis is not only similar to RA in structure, content and purpose, but is also a pedagogical genre in the sense that a successful thesis is usually a first step in genre acquisition for students hoping to enter a target discourse community.
As differences also exist between the two genres, students are not expected to imitate
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expert writers' RAs, but can and are indeed expected to borrow ideas, ways of structuring their thoughts, and lexico-grammatical and cohesive features used by experts.