MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Over the break, keep thinking about your one-article review.  Here is a checklist-style document we will look at today. 

Documents have beginnings, middles, and ends.  Now, can you determine if your article is LEMON-shaped or more pear shaped.   

For such an ending, you need to guage importance, novelty, immediate use/application, excitingness.

Most research articles are lemon-shaped because the results themselves carry the primary interest of the techncial reader.

Classic example of the pear-shaped article would be the Watson and Crick set of articles in the post-WWII rush to do science. Let's visit slides 9-12 of the Google set on research articles.

Back to the overal structure. Here is a good way to arrange your analysis:

Beginning: 1-3 paragraphs that prepare the reader to understand and trust the center portion of your analysis (three or four body paragraphs).  Use a cognitive wedge strategy aka "lemon nipple." Think:

• • Opening (see the seven strategies presented last week-- you can combine them.)
  • Citation/Ethos of lead author (see detail below)
  • Definitions/descriptions or backgrounds, which is largely common knowledge.  You should think about these necessary items over the break.

Middle: 3-4 body paragraphs. Start with one paragraph per point BUT you may need to divide complex material into two shorter but connected (by transition) paragraph. These are your larger paragraphs.  You MAY need to nest small definitions -- use the appositive technique -- near the material.

End: Taper off, with some useful information or thoughts for closing.  For example, brief critique (this is hard and will NOT count against your work grade-wise), applications, further line of inquiry, implications for society.

New links for class discussion today:

Academic language phrase bank (really useful for analysis and writing). Spend some time here AND save the link.   Thank you to the fine folks at Manchester University, UK.

DETAIL Citation/ethos/introduce your lead researcher:  in class, we will talk about the conventions of citation in a close read of an article.  Basically, the steps are:

1. first mention, full name (in the ethos paragraph that also introduces the article).
   • (author, date)
2. last name throughout
3. Example:  Marybeth Shea is a professor of technical writing at the University of Maryland. She studies stasis theory in environmental policymaking.  Her research article appears in the Journal of Conservation Biology and is the subject of this review (Shea, 2014). Then, in rest of document, refer to the work using the last name:
   • Shea's approach...
   • Her findings...
   • What Shea's inference fails to account for...

Onto house keeping:

So many people did not make it into peer review that sigh, my heart sank.  I will open an identical place for the late arrivals today.  Please DO THIS OVER THE BREAK.  I will post on the ELMS Calendar and email the group. 

12 people have not posted.  And, 15 people posted late.  If you are in those two groups, I need to make something today for you to enter into a Review Task.

For those who did post on time, all peer editing is due tonight for each other.

Seven people STILL NEED TO GIVE ME A COFFEE CUP MEMO.  Please email when you have done this.