EAPP - Week 2

 

English for Academic and Professional Purposes Online Distance Learning Modalities 11 – Ingenious

 

English for Academic and Professional Purposes

Module 2, Quarter 1 Use knowledge of text structure to glean for information he/she needs

 

We Follow

 

Lesson Objectives:

At the end of the lesson, the learner should be able 1. to use knowledge of text structure to glean the information he/she needs. (CS_EN11/12A-EAPP-Iac-4)

 

Academic texts are written for professional for  professional audience or persons specializing in a specific field. You can sense the formality in their tone because they express thought on a serious subject matter using complex sentences  , and technical and academic language  . In contrast, nonacademic texts are written with friends, family, and general readers as target audience. You can sense the informality in the tone because the content is conversational and is expressed using simple and compound sentences joined by conjunctions like ‘and’ and ‘but’.

 

You have six general classifications of academic texts to cover in subject. Each is used for different purposes; thus, each hasthis unique content and structure. is generally the Essay proforma for all analytical compositions. However, not all essays are academic. Only those that are written for professional audience and exhibit formal tone in subject matter, sentence structure, and language can be considered academic. Concept paper defines an idea or a concept and clarifies its ‘whatness’; thus, its most prominent structure is the use of definition. Reaction paper is generally an informed and insightful perspective on art, popular culture, and a technical topic. Position paper asserts an argument. Report retells data, incident, or event. Research are a highly formal kind of reports.

 

 The flow charts below will give you an idea about how texts generally organize their content. All compositions in paragraph forms basically have the three parts: introduction introduction,, body body,, and conclusion.. However, there may be variations in the terms used, conclusion in the approximate location (i.e. near the beginning, anywhere in the body, or about at the end), and in the preformatted forms prescribed by agencies. Doctor’s report and police blotter may have different appearances. The researches that you know may have chapters 1 to 5. Thesis may be at the second or later paragraphs but definitely before the details are given. Long texts may also be divided into several subheadings. You must remember that there is no single, foolproof method of successful writing. What you have in figures 1 and 2 are the general structure and content for the common academic texts.

 

Introductions or the opening paragraph(s) aims to make a good impression on readers. If you run out of ideas on how to start your paper, you may consider any of theascommon used in opening an essay, such telling a strategies story (anecdote or parable), quoting a reputable person, using sayings, mentioning startling facts like questions, statistics, citing a lawa or the Bible, asking rhetorical or sharing personal experience and realization.

 

Whichever strategy will be fine, but you need to process them and connect them to your mostthesis important the introduction – the thesis statement statement. . Your is thegoal one in sentence gist or summary of your entire paper. All your evidence and discussion in the body will revolve around  your thesis. This comes comes usually at the end of the the first paragraph or in the second paragraph. Beginning writers can introduce the thesis this way: “Thus, this paper is written to prove…,” prove…,” “For “For this reason, this essay will  focus on …,” …,” “In “In this paper, you will understand …,” …,” “In “In order to discuss …, this position paper will analyze…” analyze…” or etc. Remember to avoid writing what Shiach (2007) calls a ‘ waffle’ waffle’ in your opening paragraph. What is ‘waffle’? It is an empty paragraph. You may commit this when you attempt to hide your topic by making generalized, empty statements. Look at the example below. It can apply to a whole range of topics, but which manage to say nothing relevant.

 

Academic papers may also mention at the introduction about how your ideas will flow in the body to fully discuss your thesis. Because there are many great things you need to mention in your introduction, long texts may need more paragraphs. However, your goal is to make the introduction as much as possible as short as one paragraph, that is about five sentences.  The body is composed of several several paragraphs that that cohesively discuss the thesis. These paragraphs are your means to lead your readers, so they can make sense of your composition. Have you experienced reading a composition without paragraphing? read and hard absorb. Hence, you should order paragraphsIts in tiring a wayto that readers can to follow the points you want to stress, as you present them.

 

As a general rule, one paragraph should deal with only one main topic. The sentence sentence. In academic papers, that has the main topic is called the key or topic sentence. paragraphs are advised to start with the key sentence. This is because you have professional and busy readers who need to be guided as to the content of your paragraphs. After presenting evidence through the point-by-point analysis of hard data, stories, events, and opinions, your closing sentence should round off the paragraph or dovetail to the next paragraph. In order to maintain the appearance of “continuous, coherent and integrated whole,”  you may link one paragraph paragraph to th the e next using these transitional expressions: expressions: “Another essential feature of …,” “While it can be argued that …, it is also true that …,”” However, many critics disagree with this …,” “To counter this argument, …,” “Nevertheless, the evidence is that …,” “Secondly, …,” “The bulk of the available evidence, then, points to the fact that …,” “On the contrary, …,” “Having analyzed this aspect, I would now like to …,” “Furthermore, …,” “In order to emphasize this point, I would like to point to …,” “Moreover, there are other convincing arguments to back up …,” and “Therefore, …”.  …”. 

 

Lastly, you need to bring the writeup to an emphatic conclusion and leave the impression that the topic has been relevantly and thoroughly dealt with. Some appropriate words or phrases that you can use to signal this include, “Finally, “ Finally, …,” “As I have argued, …,” “As I have shown, …,” “Therefore, …,” “The bulk of the evidence, then,  points to …,” “However, “However, as I have shown, …,” and “Based on this evidence, ….”  Summarizing is an important element of conclusion, but you should find a fresh and concise way of doing this. You should not repeat what you said in the body. The neat final sentence leaves the reader something to think about. Sometimes, it can be a call for action; action; it is something you want them to do after every point you raised in the body. So, if your readers are looking for specific information, i nformation, they are somehow guided as to where to find them. Likewise, if you are looking for an information, you are also guided as to the part of the text to turn to. In addition to the general contents of academic texts that are mentioned in the flowcharts, the usual information that are asked for when reading are the 5W’s and 1H (what, who, when, where, why and how) information.

 

 The table 1 below below lists the common examples of these q questions uestions and the parts parts you can turn to for for the information.