Week 13: toward Turkey Time and end of semester
Good morning. I will post some helpful sentences and phrases that will help you in two ways: transition between paragraphs AND complex content and help you with mentoring words/phrases. Preview of new craft item: strategic use of voice -- first and third -- to signal your article's "voice" and your commentary voice. Note: research article reading is really a conversation with researchers. Yes. A technical conversion, tis.
I will talk about last Friday's ER Writing task (not too late to get in there; due TONIGHT). Then I will post (ELMS mail+calendar) the OPTIONAL ER REVIEWING TASK.
When you return from the Thanksgiving brief break., you must chose one of two paths-of-completion. And, yes, we have a metaphor. Buy a ticket to one of two destinations.
- Train Ride to Atlanta, planning to wrap up between the last day of class and the first weekend of finals
- Train Ride to Boulder, planning to wrap up after the first weekend and before/on the last day of finals.
- Send the end of this post for details and dates. I will add to ELMS calendar before Wednesday.
Ok, craft lessons, with focus on definition work-->
BEGINNING (say para three or four) with Definitions. You can consider bullets. These work well when the concepts are closely related. For example (two samples),
Let's review PCR types before we look at Guerro's modifications in her study:
- Polymer chain reaction (PCR) tests for....
- Quantitative PCR (qPRC)...
- Pyro sequencing ....
The treatment studies for Patel's rice productivity work examine subtle soil pH variability in spring crops typical of terraced fields in SE Asia. The soil categories, based on surveys of Thailand posted at the UN FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) data base:
podulized categories 3-8
spodosoil category 6
hydropodosoils (two) designed for this experience but based on the UN's Food and Agriculture (FAO) emerging research linked here.n
More complex definitions might need their own paragraphs. Consider defining what a highly conserved gene is and how that work helps scientists use animals for human disease. In my work with farmers and nitrogen scientists, i need to define Q method, which tests subjectivity rather than objectively. Farmers get this but scientists tend not to. I write a short para on Q method, followed by brief description and defense of when subjective research IS part of science inquiry.
MIDDLE PARAGRAPHS with Variation in the fat portion of the document aka locating your analysis after one or more of the body paragraphs -- you might want to write a short paragraph in YOUR VOICE after the body paragraph. I call this the fat-pearl small gold bead necklace pattern. In this way, you place a small definition paragraph before one of your body paragraphs.
Preview: On Wednesday, I will show how you can nest short reminder definitions WITHIN sentences of body paragraphs.
ENDING--Wrapping up: What is YOUR MAIN MESSAGE here? What take-away do you want people to remember. Readers are cognitively awake as the document closes. This is a good cognitive condition to remember for you as a speaker/writer and as a listener/reader.
Sample from my field-->From Patel above and other rice studies: my main message is that nighttime temps under climate change pose kernel malformation problems for the world's most important grain.
HINT: your ABT can be rewritten with the therefore as YOUR MAIN MESSAGE about the usefulness of findings.
---
TRAIN ATLANTA (A-train, after Duke Ellington's classic jazz-bop tune by Billy Hairston)
Friday, Dec 6 ER WRITING POST of current draft (last ER Writing interaction)
Monday, Dec 9, ER REVIEW POST to your peer group (Last ER Reviewing interaction)
Wednesday, Dec. 11: PARKING LOT FOR FINAL SUBMISSION; Submit by Monday the 16. Earlier submissions helpful to me.
TRAIN BOULDER
Friday, Dec 6 ER WRITING POST of current draft
Monday, Dec 9, ER REVIEW POST to your peer group
Friday, Dec.13 ER WRITING POST (last ER Writing interaction)
Monday, Dec 16, ER REVIEWING POST (last ER Reviewing interaction)
Wednesday, Dec 18 PARKING LOT FOR FINAL SUBMISSION OPENS; submit by Friday the 20
Note: time is tighter for the last interaction/revising because holidays commencing.
We have tunes!
Marybeth Shea
Preview of next week: Transitions, meta-discourse including counting out, and strategic voice. All of these sample/mentor sentences can help you tighten the prose to cohere or flow for your reader.
Before we look at Patel's work on food additives, let's review a few key definitions. (Good first sentence for your definitions paragraph. Is meta discourse because of before we look and let's review; Sentence also uses we and let's (let us); this meta discourse invited the reader to join you, the writer).
You can read more about polyphenols and oxidative stress at the open pages of the Nutrition Society of the US. (Here the metadiscourse of reader address uses you; also, you can see the opportunity for both a referral link as well as a good way to end the definition paragraph with a recommendation for more background reading, if needed. Here, you accommodate the different needs of your audience.)
Let's turn now to Suarez's use of bioplastics in 3-D printing applications for oyster restoration. First, Suarez describes....(This is a good way to leave definition work and start on your body paragraphs. AND, importantly, you begin your counting -ut metadiscourse to alert your reader to a specific take away. This continues, with your second body paragraph --> new topic of ankle joints).
A second key take-away from Cummings' analysis of ankle joint morphology concerns wear and tear on patellar (kneecap) interior surfaces. (You counted out/signaled that this is a second point from your article. You can can use other meta discourse (next, in addition):
A next methodological insight from from Patel concerns benthic bioindicator species....
In addition to Cumming's ankle morphology work is the important biomarker of damaged collagen leakage into interstitial spaces.
The first two points from Mozafari's cardiac perfusion study strongly support her conclusion concerning injectable medications administered in the field, while enroute by ambulance. (The counting-out metadiscourse technique can also help you in subsequent paragraphs, for example, your anallysis/critique where you would focus on two previously described body points).
Most bioretention specialists will appreciate the specific findings about nitrogen uptake by hedgerows. This knowledge is important for farmers seeking mixed benefits from using plants as flexible "green tech": windbreaks, shade for energy conservation, screening from neighbors, and for sinking nitrogen into the soil, out of the airshed. (At the end of your review, you may address who would care about this knowledge or what disciplines use the knowledge. Here, these are biotention experts and farmers. Identifying who cares can be part of your conclusion paragraph(s).)
Detail on VOICE! Let's think about voice. Here is a google slide set on Active/Passive Voice in science style. Some people think that you must also use passive voice constructions in science. Not so!
We can also think about how to use first person voice in your review to make clear when YOU are analyzing the work of the researchers/authors. You can use first person voice in science but you must be deliberate and selective. Read this summary of what David Schultz (atmopheric scientist) of Eloquent Science says.
Some sentences, first up is how to use third person to present work of the researchers.
Quantitative PRC, a standards-calibrated PCR routine, helped researchers establish the differences with seven treatment groups.
Thomas Brock, discoverer of Thermus aquaticus, is largely ignored as central to PCR creation.
Alan Alda, "Hawkeye" from Mash, is now a widely-acclaimed science communicator.
Researchers then built an aluminum model of a spherical cow (not a joke here) to study energy input-throughput for dairy cow economics.
Controlling for distribution differences in the seven treatments requires transforming box plots into violin plots (violin shapes permit visual inspection of the distributions).
Hapeman and her colleagues used ananometers (wind speed detectors) to document air turbulence near the top of the hedgerow.
The Vegetated Emissions Buffer (VEB) is a type of hedgerow installation to manage a number of farm attributes, including ammonia odor reduction.
The best tree species to withstand high ammonia and poultry litter dust is Austree Willow (Salix andromeda X austria)
Now, your voice, in first person (good for analysis work and meta-discourse to turn between points, demonstrated earlier):
As a biochemist, I am interested in their activation energy criteria for selecting likely reaction pathways.
I am confused about the use of the one-tail ANOVA test for this study.
One of the most memorable aspects of this observational study is the use of prison data sets. I wonder about consent, even though a footnote attests to this. This study made me research more about the ethics of informed consent for vulnerable populations. I recommend reading... and .....
Preview for post-Thanksgiving: sometimes we place small definitions within the body paragraphs. Think of them as nested definitions.
Kary Mullis -- often high on LSD -- invented PCR in the early 1980s, near Berkeley, CA.
Ghost peppers -- 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce -- feature Scoville units in the low millions.
Marie Curie -- two-time Nobel Prize winner -- died of radiation-induced blood cancer.
CAUTION: dashes are exciting and should be used for, well, exciting information. I submit that that these three examples are exciting.
