This paper would be an excellent model for any student writing a scientific paper with a similar structure and style, but since this kind of writing is not widely taught in our program, I will focus this guide on more broadly applicable elements. If you would like lessons geared to scientific writing or have questions about any other aspects of this guide, email me at hcschaaf@bu.edu.

Abstracts

For Faculty: Emma’s work could be combined with other abstracts from WR to help students analyze the structures of abstracts across different disciplines. This analysis addresses the abstract as a genre but also enables students to consider variations and commonalities in the structures of arguments across disciplines.

Some potential papers with abstracts that could be used include Issue 9’s “Hwa-Byung: The ‘Han’ Blessed Illness” and “All Hammed Up: How Hamilton: An American Musical Addresses Post-Racial Beliefs,” Issue 8’s “When Awareness Is Not Enough: Trivialization of Women’s Symptoms and the Gender Gap in the Outcomes of Cardiovascular Disease Patients,” and Issue 7’s “Painting the Real Picture: The Benefits of Autoethnographic Filmmaking for Children with Life-Threatening Illness.”

For Students:
Read each abstract sentence by sentence and take notes to answer the following questions:

  • Concisely describe the function and content of each sentence in the assigned abstracts.
  • What similarities do you see between the functions of particular sentences across abstracts? Do these sentences with similar functions appear at similar points or at different points?
  • What patterns do you see in the overall structures and sequences of material in the abstracts?
  • What variations in content, structure, and style do you see between the different abstracts? What factors cause these differences?

Standard Form Introductions

WR 120

For Faculty: Although it is an introduction for an advanced piece at the WR 150 level and so is lengthier than the introductions most students will write for their first academic papers in WR 120, the three parts of Emma’s introduction would likely be possible for students to find in an activity when they were first introduced to the standard form introduction. The only aspect that is not completely straightforward involves background elements that appear after the question/problem, but this aspect can lead to fruitful discussions about order.

Even if your course does not focus on scientific papers, Emma’s paper could be used in combination with other WR papers to show how the patterns of the standard form introduction hold across a variety of disciplines. Revealing this range through student work is helpful for showing that skills we teach are transferrable to a variety of majors.

Some potential introductions that could be used include Issue 11’s “First Responders: The Evolution of Presidential Role and Rhetoric in the Era of School Shootings,” Issue 10’s “‘Fall’n in the practice of a damned slave’: Racial Ideology and Villainy in Shakespeare’s Othello,” Issue 9’s “The Benefits of Prison Nursery Programs: Spreading Awareness to Correctional Administrators Through Informative Conferences and Nursery Program Site Visits” and “The Grim Reality Hidden Beneath Freshkills Park’s Bright Façade”

For WR 120 Students:

  • Mark the parts of the introductions that you think are functioning as background. What aspects make you think they are serving this function?
  • Find the sentences that you think are functioning as a problem / question /destabilizing moment. How do the writers distinguish their arguments from the texts to which they are responding?
  • Find the claim / hypothesis.
  • After marking the parts that serve these different functions, consider the order of particular points in the introductions in more detail. How do the writers make transitions between background material, problem/questions, and claims, as well as between points within the background?
  • How does the type of exhibit the writers are using and the academic discipline in which they are writing affect specific features of the introductions?

WR 150s

For Faculty: At the 150 levels, the introduction could be explored even more as an opportunity to reflect on how research, reading, writing, and editing practices differ for varied audiences, genres, and purposes.

For WR 150 students:

  • Mark the parts of the introduction that you think are functioning as background. What kinds of data and sources are the students introducing in the background and what do those ideas suggest about the writers’ research procedures?
  • Find the sentences that you think are functioning as a problem / question /destabilizing moment. Where do the writers distinguish their arguments from the research to which they are responding? How do they define a niche for their research?
  • Find the claim / hypothesis.
  • After marking the parts that serve these functions, consider the order of particular points in the introductions in more detail. How do the writers make transitions between background material, problem/questions, and claims, as well as between points within the background?
  • How do the different types of research the writers conducted and the different academic disciplines in which they are writing create differences in content and structure between the introductions? What aspects of the structure are the same or similar across disciplines?

Acknowledgment and Response: The Effects of Paraphrase

For Faculty: Emma’s paper demonstrates several typical ways of acknowledging and responding to sources in a scientific paper. The acknowledgment emphasizes paraphrasing and summarizing findings rather than quoting specific points. Emma’s paper could be paired with a paper that primarily quotes previous research. A more elaborate exercise could compare four papers – two that use primarily paraphrase and two that use quotations from previous arguments.

Some papers that use quotations from arguments to which they are responding include Issue 10’s “‘Howl’ as Literary Montage: Cinema’s Influence on the Beat Generation” and “Representations of Mental Illness on FOX and CNN: The Parkland Shooting,” Issue 9’s “Minstrelsy and Brechtian Epic Theater: An Analysis of Satire,” and Issue 7’s “Battlestar Galactica: A Vehicle of the American Road.”

For Students:

  • Find three instances of acknowledgment and response in each paper.
  • After analyzing each of these examples, generalize about the effects of acknowledging through quotation vs. paraphrase.
  • How does the choice of acknowledging through paraphrase or quotation affect the ways that writers respond to the material from previous research? Considered another way, what opportunities do quotation vs. paraphrase create for response?
  • What are the advantages and disadvantages of paraphrase vs. quotation depending on how you want to situate your argument in relation to others?

Genres: Organization and Argumentation

For Faculty: Even if your course does not feature scientific writing, Emma’s paper can help students accomplish two central goals for WR 120: crafting responsible, considered, and well-structured written arguments and reading a range of genres with understanding, appreciation, and critical judgment. Developing tools for understanding how and why arguments in particular genres and disciplines are structured in the ways they are allow students to comprehend and use the genres they need in the future.

For Students:

  • “Responses of urban Eastern Gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) to humans and conspecifics in an area of Boston Common” is divided into major sections which are further sub-divided. What are the effects of making divisions with headings in comparison to having an argument with no sections? How does the writer visually distinguish major sections from sub-sections?
  • As is the case with most original research in scientific disciplines, the major sections of the paper are Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. Describe what the primary function of each section seems to be, identify what features helped you figure out the purpose of that part, and suggest why you think a paper in the sciences would need a section that serves each function. How do sections with these particular functions help to advance a scientific argument?
  • Look at the Method, Results and Discussion sections and list the further sub-divisions of each. What are the functions of each of these sub-sections? How do they come together as a group to strengthen the structure and clarity of the specific major section of which they are a part?

Multimodality: Use of Visual and Spatial Elements

For Faculty: Emma’s paper uses two visual elements – a map and two charts – in order to present some of its data. Analyzing these elements would help with visual literacy and the study of multimodality even if your students are not writing scientific papers. The questions that follow are meant to be generally applicable.

For Students:

  • What purpose does the map serve? How does it help express similar information to some of the descriptions in the Method section?
  • What specific details does the map present and how are those details relevant to the argument? How does having a map help you as a reader to envision the site and what the writer is doing and arguing in ways that prose could not?
  • Based on your work with this example, brainstorm some types of information that maps convey persuasively and some contexts in which maps can help to advance an argument.
  • The writer presents two charts in her Results. How do you read the information on the charts differently than you would read the same data if it were presented in prose paragraphs?
  • Evaluate the sets of categories that each chart uses to organize its information. Do the categories work together to explain the focus of that chart? Is the sequence of the categories from left to right logical? Imagine that the order was shifted in various ways. How would the change in sequence affect your processing of the information?
  • Each of the charts has several categories with very few words but also has a final column entitled “Comments” which has more text than the other columns. Evaluate the decision to include this category/column in the charts. Is it too lengthy for the chart format in general? Why or why not? How does having these details juxtaposed to the shorter information affect how you read these connections? What would be the effects if the writer had moved this longer information elsewhere and not included it in the charts?
  • Based on your analysis of charts in this paper, what types of information can charts convey effectively and what types of data do they communicate less effectively? How do the columns and structures of charts create relationships between the data presented in ways that prose paragraphs do not?

Organizing Annotated Bibliographies

For Faculty: In preparation for writing their own annotated bibliographies, students could analyze Emma’s organizational approach. I asked her to submit her annotated bibliography rather than the version with the references in alphabetical order because I felt that her groupings of sources might help students consider how annotated bibliographies can be brainstorming and organizational tools in addition to being finished products intended for readers’ guidance.

For Students:

  • Describe the approach the bibliography uses to organize sources into sub-sections. What types of categories does the writer use to group the sources? How can this particular type of organization help the researcher structure her argument?
  • What are some other approaches that could be used to group sources to help brainstorm an argument? What types of relationships could you create between your argument and your chosen sources by sorting / classifying sources through particular categories?
  • Each annotation has two parts. Reading through the entries, what is the function of each part? How are each of those functions helpful for planning an argument based on relationships to a range of sources?

Place-Based, Outside-the-Classroom Learning: Inspiration for Boston Papers

For Faculty: Although it responds to larger research conversations about the Eastern gray squirrel and urban wildlife more generally, “Responses of urban Eastern Gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) to humans and conspecifics in an area of Boston Common” relies on a specific Boston context. Emma’s research took place at Boston Common – one of the city’s oldest and most famous sites. Her paper could be explored on its own or read alongside Issue 5’s “Down the Street and Around the World: An Exploration of Everyday Exoticism in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum” if you are planning to have your students write papers in which they will engage with places outside the classroom in Boston by directly visiting them.

For Students:

  • What kinds of strategies do the writers use for observing particular details of the specific Boston sites featured in their papers? How could you adapt these observational strategies in your Boston-based paper?
  • What different strategies and structures do the writers use to present their observations of the places in the papers? Which of these strategies and structures could you use in your paper? 
  • How do the writers analyze the specific Boston sites they use as exhibits? What aspects of their approaches could you adapt to your analysis?
  • Compare the sentence-level writing styles of these two papers. What features of style from either could you adapt to your paper? What features do not seem apt for your paper?
  • In addition to the places analyzed, what other sources do the writers use in each paper? What aspects of their textual source-use could you adapt to your paper?

— HOLLY SCHAAF
WR 150: Writing, Research, & Inquiry