_____________________________________
Oops, science is POWERFUL!
ENGL 390, 390H, and (sometimes) 398V Class Journal
_____________________________________
Week 13: simmering with one-article review plus TURKEY
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:
- first mention, full name (in the ethos paragraph that also introduces the article).
- (author, date)
- last name throughout
- 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.
Week 12: one-article review work ABT and selective counting
From the Reading Grid posted last week, here are two elements we focus on today (screen clips/open in new tab):
;)
;)
Let's look at the ABT statement you will need to do by Friday. Here are links to resourses you need to understand how to do these statements. (from the Reading Grid clips):
TaDAH! , in Andrew Revkin’s words (channeling Randy Olson, Trey Parker, and Aristotle).
Next focus from the Reading Grid is the power of selective counting:
Recall the “power of three, four, or seven” of George Miller (1956) BUT also look at this 2012 Science Daily summary of “four is magical” ; bottom line?
Three or four, plus perhaps subclusters of related ideas for a total of seven is a good strategy for audience cognition and memory.
Marybeth Shea
Wednesday! We talk in detail about ABT statements. This slide set includes ABT statements guided by Randy Olson himself with MS and PhD students in environmental science. Look at the complexity and technical detail! At the end of the slide set is a Google doc where you can see me guide medical humanities students into writing ABT statements.
You will use and ABT statement or two in Friday night's Writing Task, prompt opened this afternoon. By popular request I should bold and use large point size.
Friday night 11.45PM (grace halo period until about 11AM Saturday), post an Eli Review Writing Task. (Link updated at 3.41 Wednesday AND on your ELMS Calendar).
Monday night 11.45PM, post your Eli Review Review Task.
BE ON TIME FOR EACH OTHER, please.
Have five or so points? You can think also of dividing into a point used in your intro and/or appoint used to close.
Here are seven ways+examples to open a document. And, the way you close an article can borrow from these openings (based on the now defunct Cain Technical Writing E-Text project formerly hosted at Rice University.
Now, I want to look at how IMRAD and ABT work together. And yes, we hear/see from Randy Olson again. Two qualities to contrast are:
- Narrative structure, ABT, follows a horizontal axis arrow (times arrow, actually)
- Rational->irrational structure -- head, heart, guts, gonads/sex organs-- follows a vertical axis, where the action is from top down.
Five minutes, with an Australian scientist/interview:
Humanizing science! Emotion and humor in just the right proportion and timing. Aristotle would call this kairos.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday and your protected time to manage your work! I am available online today between 9-9:50, 10-10:50 and 11-11:50. Here is your GoogleMeet code (same for all Fridays this semester).
Here is one follow-up on Randy Olson's work that connects IMRAD structure with ABT narrative frames on communication. This 67-page PDF of a slide set features a few central images that I have captured in a working slide set (six Google slides for now to help you with your work this weekend) for us to use next week. We need to deepen our understanding of ABT as a structure to guide critical thinking and careful, concise writing.
Task reminders:
Friday night 11.45PM (grace halo period until about 11AM Saturday), post an Eli Review Writing Task. (Link updated at 3.41 Wednesday AND on your ELMS Calendar).
Monday night 11.45PM, post your Eli Review Review Task.
Keishai Bahr, PhD, www.bahrlab.com
Post a Comment
Week 11: Reading and writing the research review article (assignment 3)
TUESDAY AM UPDATE: Here is your OFFICE HOURS in the
SKY/AMA document (open now at 10 AM). I host between 8-9. You can ask before than time. You can look after that time.
Wednesday? I will open the Eli Review one-week parking lot for the Memo 2 for a grade.
Friday? I open a place on Eli Review for you to start thinking and reading about your one-article review. Let's talk about this important prewriting assignment. First, here is a long googe doc (arranged in tables) for you to copy/download to track your reading. Next, let's talk about the shape(s) of this document. Recall the use of the cognitive wedge that can govern a small document but also can guide us on large document sections. We also worked a bit on the cognitive wedge (and the related rhomboid). I will draw a picture in class to remind you. Shape, in a document, relates to arrangement (think flow chart) but also to three essential portions. Recall how important counting is!
Articles have beginnings, middles, and ends. Think Lemon-shaped to start.(A variation is pear; another variation is the bread loaf). Consider for a moment, the power of the beginning. News article openings are good for the lay audience. Why? Several strategies:
- highly visual
- interesting case
- hook with tidbit of interesting information
- topic (timely)
For technical audiences, open with
- review of logos (detail of costs, population size, enormity of problem)
- controversy
- new application or breaking news
Shifting to craft lessons: Let's look at this recent article in PloS One about writing scientific prose (counting strategy!). We should aways keep the reader in mind. What are craft choices for? To support the reader! In Science, two scientists talk about how they read articles. Ruben writes in the Science blog-sphere with a somewhat lighthearted approach while Pain responds to his piece with her approach. Read the comments!
Cautionary note on article choice: research article, literature review, meta-analysis, proof, proof-of-concept, specialized application, method, opinion or memoir (a physician speculates on end-of-life bedside manner).
Craft resource you may want to save: Here is the "bible" of writing (and reading) scientific prose:
Mayfield (OOPS! Commercial publishing gobbles up a resource again). NEW! Here is a link to Mayfield, at MIT, the open access univeristy hero!
Now, let's look/review at the basic parts of the (intro/Method/Results/Analysis/Discussion (IMRAD) article .
As promised for you about this assignment, a flow-diagram designed with two shapes to help you.
Marybeth Shea
Wednesday morning. Later today, UPDATED this evening: I will open the "parking lot" for the Coffee Cup Memo; lot is for a week or more.
By Thursday, I will open up a WRITE-ONLY task for you about your selected article. Due Friday night.
Today, we chat briefly about items from Monday, that help us think about these elements of science communication:
- scientific writing is different from science writing
- humor does have a role in science, often an insider role and a broader communication role
- however, humor is deeply contextual and often results in pretty serious problems when "leaks" out to community (wider audience).
- gallows or dark humor
- parody of music videos is a wonderful science genre, including for medical students
- however, humor is deeply contextual and often results in pretty serious problems when "leaks" out to community (wider audience).
Oxford comma in science, a short mini lesson in a Google doc with comma iinformation links.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday and your protected time to manage your work! I am available online today between 9-9:50, 10-10:50 and 11-11:50. Here is your GoogleMeet code (same for all Fridays this semester).
We chatted briefly about humor in science, with a focus on two qualities of humor in communication:
- can be really effective
- is risky and must be designed and deployed carefully.
The whole Twitter fiasco includes a rabid and vicious take-done of parody by some accounts and not others. Listen to scientist Randy Olson -- and filmmaker -- about how logo and humor contrast in the human (audience) response. Listen for head, heart, guts, and sex organs and the irrational-rational gradient.
Food for thought by a marine biologist who communicates to stabilize the planet because upon the earth we live and move and have our being.
Post tonight in Eli Review (can be done as late as Sunday afternoon) for me, this reading grid with some elements about your article. Directions:
- Download or copy my Google doc to your computer or your Google drive.
- Place the APA citation of your selected article in the one-cell table within the header.
- Fill out at least three of the lilac-colored rows in the table.
- Upload to Eli Review.
Be reading to go forward on openings/closing and author ethos next week. We write this assignment in small portions now until the end of the semester.
---
Final thought: humor reflects human complexity. Getting humor right uses skills from critical thinking, acting, elocution, public speaking, timing, cultural sensitivity. Humor requires flexes of the head, heart, gut, and often sex organs (See Randy Olson above). I keep thinking about how tthe president of Ukraine began as a stand up commedian. Wow. Talk about applied pathos.
Week 10: toward one more draft/editing sesh
Some resources for us (Google docs):
- What does this look like, with notes (lorum ipsum+celery flow chart+annotated comments
- Last year's OHitS/AMA (Q&A about this memo just BEFORE turning in for grade)
Today, I chain back to pick up a few grammar/puntuation lessons from an earlier week. You can find them at the end of Week 8: Update on Friday, October 21, 2022 at 07:55AM
- That which (takes a comma)
- Alot v a lot
On Wedneday we will look at semicolon/colon. And, anything else in this space.
Few craft choices I will emphasize today:
strategic use of YOUR voice within the memo (not just the polite first-person opening and closing paras
counting out in complex or long paragraphs
three cup choices, two of them disposal
four stages of LCS (origin/materials, transport, use, disposal)
both of the long paras where you summarize the Moore or Hocking peer reviewed research articles can be best handled by dividing into parts (your LCA paragraph is a transition to this work and sets you up to count).
HINT: use the stage names as part of your counting out. This is a named counting categories strategy.
Be safe tonight, ok?
Marybeth Shea
Recall that transitions strategies are your friend! First up, the overall binding strategy is to pay attention to the beginning and end of paragraphs (as you know). Here is your Lego memory helper for that.
You can also use meta discourse of first person phrases -- within the memo -- that clue the reading that you are either:
-
-
- leaping
- shifting
- pivoting, or
- punting.
-
Here is a checklist for the coffee cup memo (Google Sheet). You can also review this Trait list from the most recent Review Task that was due on Monday, late evening.
I will open up the next Writing Task for this Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday Review Task on Thursday AM.
Marybeth Shea
Happy Friday and your protected time to manage your work! I am available online today between 9-9:50, 10-10:50 and 11-11:50. Here is your GoogleMeet code (same for all Fridays this semester).
Three common lapses (noted in the Eli Review Writing Task prompt) include:
- not using formal citation with the Moore (Team Paper) or Hocking (Team Styro) paragraphs that you summarize; relatedly,->
- not using curated links that you use for referral or punting; and
- not acknowledging the reasonableness of the other position, including a formal citation to direct reader to that information.
One critical thinking skill we practice here is achieve "flow" both in the writing and in the cognitive of the reader. In this assignment, we work to achieve flow across complexity and contrast when the science in unclear.
Some boilerplate language you can use, based on some questions emailed to me yesterday:
Having defined LCA, let's look now at Martin Hocking's work on . . . (or, insert Charles Moore)
As you can see, Hocking's work is, essentially, an LCA on disposable hot beverage cups.
Moore's work focused primarily on the end phase of the LCA. Here, the key idea noted earlier about how "leaky" both disposal and recycling systems are. Essentially, we do not landfill and recycle near as much of both cup materials that we think; hence, we experience now a critical volume of aquatic plastic.
Should you need more information on climate change and energy efficiency, see this helpful and brief article at..., which summarizes the science-based work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
For purposes of this cursory analysis (short analysis, first-cut look, quick-and-dirty examination), we will now turn to Moore's groundbreaking work on ocean plastic.
Recall, that my recommendation relies both on:
- my opening assumption about ocean plastic (or climate change) and
- LCA as a decision criteria
Week 9: coffee cup memo gets real
We will chain back and forth over the last two weeks to look at topic sentence helpers, paragraph helpers, and even the polite opening and closing options you have in this memo:
polite opening helpers:
Here is my brief recommendation memo on disposable coffee cups. I recommend....
I am using the frame of climate change, which requires a focus on energy consumption within the materials and transport of these disposable cups. OR
I use the frame of ocean plastic, of which Styrofoam is a part, to shape my analysis of coffee cup choice.
polite realistic closing helpers:
I hope this analysis helps you think about what coffee cup we should use. Please let me know if I can look at this problem in another way.
As I just indicated, the frame of analysis matters. Might we devote more intellectual time on this, with focus on both climate change and the fate of ocean plastic? I would be happy to lead this effort.
This work and frame-based recommendation means we should redouble our efforts at using re-usuable options. I have some ideas I can share at our next staff meeting.
Which paragraphs to start with? Short simple ones, like
opening recommendation
local office description
compare contrast of disposal options and their energy flows plus disposal "grave"
EPA definition of Life Cycle Assessment (analysis) or LCA
final paragraph
This week, in the Friday 11:45 , Sat, Sun, and Monday 11:45 -- we will post and respond in Eli Review to a working draft of this memo. Next week we will do another version of this work. Final version due for a grade beginning circa November 9.
Do you have an article selected to review? We start that in Week 1 of November. Decide on an article!
Wednesday preview:
- will talk about informal (IPPCC and Algalita Foundation) and formal sources (Hocking and Moore)
- "punting" with curated linked referral citations
- cautions about the ethos of who shares information from peer reviewed research
- discussion (critical thinking) on the incommensurability of direct comparison of climate change problem with ocean plastic problem and how to note and then punt (this link really needs curation: TBD in class)
Marybeth Shea
TRANSITIONS!
First, begin by looking at this OWL PURDUE exhibit on useful transition words and phrases. Back to paragraphs:
- look at the last sentence of each paragraph;
- then look at the first sentence in the next paragraph.
Do you see connection between content, including a reasonable pivot to new information? The paragraphs, although they stand alone in topic and content, should CONNECT or TRANSITION with the surrounding paragraphs.
Paragraph check: Ask
- What is the paragraph doing in the document? What type of paragraph serves this purpose? For example, a narrative paragraph can tell a brief story or present a case or example. An illustrative paragraph – cousin to descriptive paragraphs - paints a picture.
- Is the paragraph cohesive? Does the content “hang” together? Do the sentence choices achieve cohesion? Look at the transition words and phrases in the OWL link above. You can use them to achieve cohesion and flow between sentences. This focus is called local coherence, which is key to achieving flow.
Finally, paragraphs do not truly stand alone in most documents. Paragraphs combine to provide coherent content in a document for a reader. Ask this: do the paragraphs fit and support the arrangement or structure of the document? Focus on transitions between paragraphs, which help with cohesion in the document. Local coherence (within a paragraph) + global coherence (between paragraphs and within a document) create overall flow.
Cheap! Way To achieve cohesion between paragraphs try "chaining" by transitions. Place the topic of the next paragraph in the last sentence of the preceding paragraph. The first sentence of the new paragraph must include that topic also. Doing this knits or binds the paragraphs to each other. Here is how a math person would say this:
Let ParaA be the preceding paragraph.
Let ParaB be the following paragraph.
Let T be the topic that should appear in both paragraphs.
We will limit our discussion now to two sentences:
-
- the last sentence of ParaA and the
- first sentence of ParaB.
In reality, ParaA and ParaB exist in a document with an arrangement of many paragraphs.
ParaA relates to ParaB through the last sentence of ParaA AND SIMULTANEOUSLY through the first sentence of ParaB. The relating elements is a topic, T; T can be a repeated word or a phrase. Some variation on T makes for good style.
Tight transitions pivot on repetition of key word or short phrase. Loose transitions allow a topic substitution or phrase (selected with care for reader knowledge/background).
Food for thought: You also can use the transition space to punt or jump to another subtopic in the memo. Phrases:
Having reminded you of the central emergency of climate change, let's turn now to...
Now that you have more details on the emerging problem of ocean plastic, we can look at...
Recall that this memo is a short back-of-the-envelope analysis for our purposes. We can reconsider these frames more carefully but would face the incommensurability problem.
define with punt referral link to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy?
block quote of short definition from above
pivot to why we need to acknowledge the reasonableness of the other position
Climate change and the fate of ocean plastic resist direct comparison. This is why the other cup choice is reasonable, given a different frame. Consequently....
Marybeth Shea
Good morning.
I am available online today between 9-9:50, 10-10:50 and 11-11:50. Here is your GoogleMeet code (same for all Fridays this semester).
Hint: do you see the block quote sample at the end of this post? 
What is your one ring source that can rule them all? The celery-green flow chart! You should also review the pats three week, especial Weeks 9 and 8 (reverse chron order). Have you gathered up all the free phrases, sentences starters, rough paragraphs, topic sentences, transition ideas into your working document? PLEASE DO SO. This will make your busy life easier.
Please do NOT forget your Eli Review Writing Task due tonight. Show up. Post something. Do this so you can give and receive feedback. You can help your peer editing partners even if you are not completely with suggested 4-6 paragraphs that are pretty easy to write. This way, your presence helps others propel the writing forward.
And for you? You can draft off each other in a cycling or aerodnynamic way. In this short 2017 web article from Cycling Tips is this quote:
So how much energy can you save from drafting? Interestingly, there seems to be little consensus among researchers that have investigated this topic. Studies have shown drag reductions of between 27% and 50% for riders that are drafting, with the exact reduction depending on a number of variables — the size and on-the-bike position of the rider in front, likewise with the rider drafting, the distance from the wheel in front, the direction and strength of the wind, and more.
de Vroet, Matthew
