Hedging in Data Commentaries

Dear Professor,

I am writing this mail to explain why the scores during makeup exams were lower than the regular exams. According to me there can be several reasons to this. As there were less number of student during the makeup exams so there are chances that students who scored high during regular exam were not present in makeup exam, which caused the average score to come down. Absence of board examples might have had some impact on the overall score of the class. It is also possible that room environment might had some impact as there were few students who were uncomfortable in hot temperature of the class. Makeup exam was administered on Friday and it is possible that some of the students had some other commitment to fulfill at the end of the week so it can be also considered as one of the reason for low average class score.

Best Regards,

Vivek Thakker,

Teaching Assistance,

The George Washinton University,

School Engineering & Applied Science.

Class Presentation Summary

It’s always exciting to learn new things about language reading and writing. After all presentations that students presented in the class about different topics which were basically concentrating around Introduction styles different languages and how they differs with author and filed of studies i have learnt many important points. So in this article I will enlighten few of the points that I feel are important.

After reviewing the presentation about use of inclusive and exclusive pronouns in academic writing, I leant the most important and basic fundamental use of "I" and "WE" in different ways and how use of both can make difference in the message that author wants to convey. This learning will defiantly help me in future when I will be in position to write a paper for my own research.

An excellent presentation about rhetorical structures in Arabic language research article gave me a chance to understand and to know the language & structure of context in different language with I am not much familiar.  Presentation about use of Chinese language research paper also gave me an opportunity learn and understand different approaches adopted by authors from different regions.

After attending this presentation session I also got to know about publication facts and procedures to publish a paper in the field of law, which is much different field for me. 

So, Overall this presentation session gave me an opportunity to grab new knowledge and understand basic fundamentals about writing introductions for my research article and it also gave me the hands on experience to analyze already published research paper and provide my opinion and findings.

Citations Theories (Part: Move 1b)-

There are many theories that have been put forward to explain the importance of the citations in the academic text. They all vary with the opinions of the authors or textbooks that can be validate in different manners. Some experts have highlighted the ethical aspect of citations. For example, some textbooks claim that citations are used to recognize and acknowledge the intellectual property rights of authors. According to this view, citations are a matter of ethics and a defense against plagiarism.

A similar idea is that citations are used to show respect to previous scholars by recognizing the history of the field and acknowledging previous achievements. Ravetz (1971), for example, claims that citations operate as a kind of mutual reward system: rather than pay other authors money for their contributions, writers “pay” them in citations.

Some researchers have also emphasized the benefits of citations in terms of authors’ authority. For instance, in Gilbert’s work (1977), citations are viewed as tools of persuasion. Writers use citations to give their statements greater authority. Bavelas (1978), following a similar line of reasoning, argues that citations are used to supply evidence that the author qualifies as a member of the chosen scholarly community: citations, in other words, are used to demonstrate familiarity with the field.

Moreover, other scholars, taking Swales (1990) as an example, have paid attention to the method of citation. He states that citations are used to create a research space (CARS) for the citing author. By describing what has been done, citations point the way to what has not been done and so prepare a space for new research.