scholarly journals How to improve English articles writing style: Twenty highly-applicable grammatical points

Author(s):  
MR Mozayan

Introduction: Today, English and its use as an international language is agreed upon by all, and a wealth of scientific articles written every day in the whole world is in English. The purpose of this study is to project some commonly used grammatical points that native speakers of Persian, unfortunately, do not follow or do not have adequate knowledge to use when writing in English, but this style of writing in the scientific articles by authors whose mother tongue is English is quite obvious. Methods: In a retrospective study, the author has tried, by drawing on three decades of experience in editing English articles, to provide intriguing points needed to improve the quality of the English articles couched by researchers and authors through exemplification. Results: A review of English articles written by those whose mother tongue is English or Persian shows a noticeable difference, both structurally and lexically, between the two writing styles. Conclusion: Heading off this major problem requires holding numerous meetings and workshops on how to write English articles for Persian speakers to familiarize them with style and features of metadiscourse in research articles jenre.

Author(s):  
Anita Setyawati ◽  
Restuning Widiasih ◽  
Ermiati E ◽  
Ida Maryati

Menarche is the first experience of menstruation would cause anxiety among teenagers, fear, discomfort, and affect the quality of life of teenage. This condition was caused by the taboo assumption to discuss menstruation with family and their environment. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify urban teenagers' readiness toward menarche. This study was conducted with the process of searching, collecting and analyzing articles. The search sources used were Cinahl, Scopus, Cochrane, Pubmed, and Cengage databases. The keywords used were menarche, readiness, and urban teenagers. The inclusion criteria used were 2013 - 2018 research articles, full text, and English articles. The exclusion criteria used was non-urban teenagers. According to the keyword was found 124 articles. After being selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 7 articles were analyzed. The result showed urban teenagers' readiness consisted of internal and external readiness. Internal readiness consists of age and knowledge. Internal readiness can affect self-acceptance, maturity of mind, and views on the stages of growth and development that are being faced. External readiness consists of social support. Social support for urban teenagers is useful to get information and attention when menarche. External readiness for urban teenagers was already good but lack of internal readiness. Therefore, counseling and health education related to menarche was needed starting from elementary school.Keywords: Menarche, readiness, urban teenager.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Charles Mueller

According to Swales’s (2004) analysis of research articles (RAs), introductions generally involve three “moves,” with Move 1 (M1) establishing a research territory, Move 2 (M2) identifying a gap in existing research, and Move 3 (M3) discussing how the current research addresses this gap. Some cross-linguistic studies have suggested that Asian writers organize introductions differently from English writers, with less use of M2, less employment of direct criticism of previous research, and more cycling of moves. The current study examined 75 applied linguistics RAs written during the last decade: (a) in English by English native speakers, (b) in Japanese by Japanese native speakers, and (c) in English by Japanese native speakers. Analysis showed that the RAs written by these three groups exhibited only minor differences. The results suggest that Japanese-authored RAs and English native-speaker RAs are converging around an agreed-upon set of disciplinary expectations. Swales(2004)の文献研究における分析によると、序文には一般的に次の3つの「ムーブ(動き)」が含まれる。ムーブ1(M1)では研究領域について述べ、ムーブ2(M2)では先行研究では明らかでないことを特定し、ムーブ3(M3)では当該研究においてM2を如何に明らかにするかを示す。既存の交差言語的研究では、アジアの研究者による序文の構成は英語を母語とする研究者のそれとは異なり、M2や先行研究の直接的な批評が少なく、ムーブの繰り返しが多いことが示唆されている。本研究では、過去10年間に発表された応用言語学の研究論文75本を(a)英語を母語とする者の英語の論文、(b)日本語を母語とする者の日本語の論文、(c)日本語を母語とする者の英語の論文の3つに分け分析した。その結果、この3グループ間にはわずかな相違しか見られなかった。このことから、論文執筆者の母語が日本語か英語かに関わらず、双方によって書かれた研究論文は、合意された当該研究領域の期待の範囲内にまとまっていると示唆される。


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-54
Author(s):  
Irmala Sukendra ◽  
Agus Mulyana ◽  
Imam Sudarmaji

Regardless to the facts that English is being taught to Indonesian students starting from early age, many Indonesian thrive in learning English. They find it quite troublesome for some to acquire the language especially to the level of communicative competence. Although Krashen (1982:10) states that “language acquirers are not usually aware of the fact that they are acquiring language, but are only aware of the fact that they are using the language for communication”, second language acquisition has several obstacles for learners to face and yet the successfulness of mastering the language never surmounts to the one of the native speakers. Learners have never been able to acquire the language as any native speakers do. Mistakes are made and inter-language is unavoidable. McNeili in Ellis (1985, p. 44) mentions that “the mentalist views of L1 acquisition hypothesizes the process of acquisition consists of hypothesis-testing, by which means the grammar of the learner’s mother tongue is related to the principles of the ‘universal grammar’.” Thus this study intends to find out whether the students go through the phase of interlanguage in their attempt to acquire second language and whether their interlanguage forms similar system as postulated by linguists (Krashen).


2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Tomás Espino Barrera

The dramatic increase in the number of exiles and refugees in the past 100 years has generated a substantial amount of literature written in a second language as well as a heightened sensibility towards the progressive loss of fluency in the mother tongue. Confronted by what modern linguistics has termed ‘first-language attrition’, the writings of numerous exilic translingual authors exhibit a deep sense of trauma which is often expressed through metaphors of illness and death. At the same time, most of these writers make a deliberate effort to preserve what is left from the mother tongue by attempting to increase their exposure to poems, dictionaries or native speakers of the ‘dying’ language. The present paper examines a range of attitudes towards translingualism and first language attrition through the testimonies of several exilic authors and thinkers from different countries (Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Hannah Arendt's interviews, Jorge Semprún's Quel beau dimanche! and Autobiografía de Federico Sánchez, and Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, among others). Special attention will be paid to the historical frameworks that encourage most of their salvaging operations by infusing the mother tongue with categories of affect and kinship.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Post Silveira

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.


Author(s):  
Cedric Gesbert ◽  
Joëlle André-Vert ◽  
Marc Guerrier ◽  
Margaret Galbraith ◽  
Christine Devaud ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In 2017, The French National Authority for Health (HAS) created an open, online, systematic contribution process to enable patient and consumer groups (PCGs) to contribute to health technology assessment (HTA) carried out to aid public authorities in reimbursement and pricing decision making. Objectives This retrospective study analyzes how French PCGs contributed to the HTA process within the HAS for the first 2 years of this new mechanism. Methods PCG contributions received between 01 January 2017 and 31 December 2018 and the recording of deliberations leading to reports of the corresponding HTAs were included. Analysis grids were designed by the investigators with 5 rounds of refinement tests on 10 random PCG contributions and the reports. Systematic data extraction was then performed separately by two investigators. PCG answers to the open-question templates and the related final HTA report published by the HAS were analyzed. Results Seventy-nine contributions from 44 PCGs were received and analyzed by the HAS for 78 out of the 592 HTAs performed for drugs or medical devices during the 2-year period. Twenty-five percent of the HTAs performed for drugs received at least one contribution. The contributions covered quality-of-life aspects, access to care, and personal and family impact. Membership and budget of the contributing PCGs varied greatly. Conclusions The experience gained in the first 2 years demonstrates the feasibility of the process and the fact that PCG contribution actually provides relevant input on the patient perspective for HTAs used for reimbursement decisions. The challenges identified on the side of PCGs were time constraints and human resources.


Author(s):  
Kristofer Montazeri ◽  
Sigurdur Aegir Jonsson ◽  
Jon Skirnir Agustsson ◽  
Marta Serwatko ◽  
Thorarinn Gislason ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose Evaluate the effect of respiratory inductance plethysmography (RIP) belt design on the reliability and quality of respiratory signals. A comparison of cannula flow to disposable cut-to-fit, semi-disposable folding and disposable RIP belts was performed in clinical home sleep apnea testing (HSAT) studies. Methods This was a retrospective study using clinical HSAT studies. The signal reliability of cannula, thorax, and abdomen RIP belts was determined by automatically identifying periods during which the signals did not represent respiratory airflow and breathing movements. Results were verified by manual scoring. RIP flow quality was determined by examining the correlation between the RIP flow and cannula flow when both signals were considered reliable. Results Of 767 clinical HSAT studies, mean signal reliability of the cut-to-fit, semi-disposable, and disposable thorax RIP belts was 83.0 ± 26.2%, 76.1 ± 24.4%, and 98.5 ± 9.3%, respectively. The signal reliability of the cannula was 92.5 ± 16.1%, 87.0 ± 23.3%, and 85.5 ± 24.5%, respectively. The automatic assessment of signal reliability for the RIP belts and cannula flow had a sensitivity of 50% and a specificity of 99% compared with manual assessment. The mean correlation of cannula flow to RIP flow from the cut-to-fit, semi-disposable, and disposable RIP belts was 0.79 ± 0.24, 0.52 ± 0.20, and 0.86 ± 0.18, respectively. Conclusion The design of RIP belts affects the reliability and quality of respiratory signals. The disposable RIP belts that had integrated contacts and did not fold on top of themselves performed the best. The cut-to-fit RIP belts were most likely to be unreliable, and the semi-disposable folding belts produced the lowest-quality RIP flow signals compared to the cannula flow signal.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-470
Author(s):  
Irene Cenni ◽  
Patrick Goethals ◽  
Camilla Vásquez

AbstractIn this study, we focus on a specific form of metacommunication found in an emerging digital genre: Hotel reviews posted on TripAdvisor. In particular, we investigate how tourists represent their service encounter interactions. The main goal of the present study is to identify what these digital metacommunicative practices reveal about communicative norms and expectations among groups of reviewers writing in three different languages. We analyzed a multilingual dataset of 1800 reviews written in English, Dutch, and Italian. The results reveal that reviewers commented upon a broad range of aspects when evaluating service encounters interactions, for instance, describing the quality of the interaction (e.g. polite, correct), or a lack of communication when a specific type of communication is expected (e.g. absence of greetings, or apologies after a service failure). Further, we found similar cross-linguistic patterns, such as appreciation for being able to communicate in one’s mother tongue during the hotel-guest encounter. At the same time, a few differences across languages emerged, such as the preference for precise and correct information within British reviews. Since service interactions are of fundamental importance for customer satisfaction, our findings contribute not only to the current research on metacommunication in digital contexts, but may also be significant for service providers in the hospitality industry.


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