Page 321 - English for Writing Research Papers

310

18.1 What’s the buzz

(1) Compare these two discussions of the same finding from a fi ctitious paper
which examines the level of intelligence amongst PhD students. In which case
is the key result highlighted most effectively?
discussion a An in-depth study (Smith et al, 2016) of the intelligence quotas of doctoral
students researching in the fi elds of engineering, robotics, biosciences, agriculture and vet-
erinary sciences revealed that such students had a level of intelligence, which on average,
was equal to a value of 8.115% above the norm. In the present work, with a larger sample
(i.e. 5000 students as opposed to the 500 students analysed in the study by Smith et al) it was
found that students in the same disciplines (i.e. engineering, robotics, biosciences, agricul-
ture and veterinary sciences) had an intelligence quota of 9.996% below the norm.

discussion b Smith et al (2016) found that PhD students in engineering, robotics, biosci-
ences, agriculture and veterinary sciences had above average intelligence (just over 8%).
Our study totally contradicts Smith’s finding. Using a sample that was ten times larger, our

experiments proved that such PhD students have very limited intelligence (a surprising
10% below the norm), and would in fact be more suited to cleaning toilets than carrying
out research. This radical finding may help governments reduce the amount of funding

given to post-graduate university education.
Discussion B is designed to be humorous for the purposes of this book. However it
reveals some important points:

• important findings get lost in long sentences (the sentence length in
Discussion A is around 50 words, in B less than 20)

• a short sentence attracts attention (e.g. the 6-word sentence in B)
• you should make clear comparisons and contrasts with literature data

• readers need to be alerted when you are about to announce something impor-
tant (e.g. Our study totally contradicts Smith ’ s fi nding )

• clear writing with no redundancy is easier to read, easier to immediately

understand the importance, and easier to remember

• the occasional use of emotive words ( surprisingly , radical ) may help to give
more impact
• using the active and personal forms is more dynamic (e.g. Our experiments

proved versus it was found that )

The primary aim of a discussion is to highlight the level of innovation of your
research. Basically, it justifies why you wrote the paper. Thus, along with the

Abstract, it is generally the most important section in the paper.