LC-1310 - Academic Communication for MSc Students (o,w), Lecture H10, 18.1.2022-5.4.2022

Assignment 2: Analysis of an article, in your assignment, include each step

Step 1:

Search for journal articles (recent ones if possible) related to the topic area of your choice. Choose the most relevant article out of the ones you find for further analysis.

Aalto library link: https://primo.aalto.fi

Search for articles: Through a database such as Scopus: https://primo.aalto.fi/discovery/dbsearch?query=any,contains,scopus&tab=jsearch_slot&vid=358AALTO_INST:VU1&offset=0&databases=any,scopus

Google Scholar: http://libguides.aalto.fi/e-resourcelinking/google-scholar  (see instructions for how to link the Aalto library to Google Scholar)   

Step 2:

Read and analyze the important parts of the article: abstract, intro, results & conclusion to get the main idea of the research topic in question. For the assignment (Step 1-2), simply include the source information about the article, its link and the reasong why you chose it for this task.

 Step 3: Pay attention to the use of sources in this article. What kind of citation method is used (numerical: superscript, square brackets?  author date)?  Any idea of the specific citation style name (i.e., APA, IEEE, Nature...)? How many sources  are listed in the article? How does the author incorporate the citations in the text? Does he / she use information prominent citations or author prominent citations?  Or a bit of both?

For the assignment (Step 3), include your answer to these questions above.

 Step 4: Try to identify "academic features” in the text, such as more formal choices of words or expressions, organizational features, or sentence structures. 

For the assignment (Step 4), include your own list or examples / excerpts from your article to show these academic features..

Step 5: Analyze again the abstract. How is it structured?  Analyze the introduction. In what order does it approach the topic?

 You could compare the structure to the suggested abstract here: http://sana.aalto.fi/awe/style/reporting/sections/abstracts/model/index.html

and compare the introduction to the CARS model structure mentioned here: http://sana.aalto.fi/awe/style/reporting/sections/intros/index.html

For the assignment (Step 5), inclue your own analysis of the abstract and the introduction structure according to the instructions above.

Submit the article and your analysis (answers to the steps)  here in MyCourses for the assignment points. As models, you could take a look at some of the model assignments from earlier students (Friedrich, Klein and Song)

Be ready to share and discuss your findings in our next class.