Sentence Structure in Academic Prose and Its Implications for College Writing Teachers
For this assignment, please summarize the research articles I uploaded. Indicate which paper you summarize as a reference entry either on the last page or at the beginning of your assignment.
Sentence Structure in Academic Prose and Its Implications for College Writing Teachers
Glenn J. Broadhead, Iowa State University James A. Berlin, University of Cincinnati Marlis Manley Broadhead, Iowa State University
Abstract. In response to conflicting norms of "complexity" and "simplicity" for college students' sentences, we analyzed syntax in 64 academic journals representing four areas: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. Our basis of analysis was Christensen's "macro-syntactic" distinction between base clauses and free modifiers. Despite the conflicting norms, we found many similarities across the range of academic writing. Base clauses vary slightly from one area to another in length, and there is less difference than expected in the amounts, kinds, and variety of free modifiers, though the areas range from greater to lesser use in the order listed above. The greatest differences (especially between the polar disciplines of literature and engineering) lie in the function of free modifers, in the number of multi-structured sentences, and in the deployment of structures in long versus short paragraphs. These data suggest that a coherent approach to college-level instruction in sentence structure is possible and desirable.
Sentence Structure in Academic Prose and Its Implications for College Writing Teachers
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Sentence Structure In Academic Prose And Its Implications For College Writing Teachers, is a research paper write and prepared Glenn, Marlis ( Iowa state university) and James (university of Cincinnati). There has been a conflict on the aspect of simplicity and complexity of the sentence structures for college writing. Traditionally the difference between complex and simple lies in the rhetoric distinction of the plain and eloquent structures. Glenn et al considered the two aspect of the sentence among the academic areas of study such as the natural sciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities. The complexity norm sentence structures is commonly used by the teachers as they would want to make sure that the students in the high school level and the college levels to be articulate in combining sentences or while generating rhetoric. Using the Terminable unit (T-Unit) which is basically an independent clause plus the accompanying modifiers, the teachers can measure the aspect of complexity. Previous research by Christensen (1978), indicate that the T-unit is a good gauge that helps draw the line between the good and the adult writing. In his paper, he indicated two ways of assessing the complexity of the documents. One of the ways was clause length while the other was the free modifiers number of words. The simplicity norm mainly dwells on the clarity of the content and the consciences of the material. The standard measure in the simplicity norm is the sentence rather than the T-unit.
A closer look at the two norms reveals that they tend to use different set of terminologies to describe the measures that they use. However, there is not a single approach that can be said to be a coherent approach that can relate to all the academic areas across the board. As such, the purpose of the paper is to try and establish if it is possible to have such an approach that cuts across the academic fields writing. To do this the team tried to establish at first, if the subject matter of the different academic areas have any form of influence in the sentence structures. This due to the fact that, there are chances that if the material is...