PB2A

In the past several weeks, we mainly talked about genres for non-academic contexts, such as advertisements, movie reviews, and sport comments. But, how about the genres in the scholarly academic paper? What is the difference between non-academic essay and scholarly academic paper?

I have read an academic paper about climate changes, “Changes in North American Spring,” which mainly discuss whether the spring in North America is earlier and earlier arrival due to global warming. After simply glance the paper, I can point out several special features of it. The constitution of the academic essay is so special that divide to separate part; there are large amount of data and numbers in the context; and the reference of the academic essay is much more than normal essay. First, the constitution of this paper is unique comparing to others. This paper divides whole article to several parts: Abstract, Intro, Data, Methods, Result and discussion, and Acknowledge, note, reference. The constitution of the paper is similar to the process of an experiment. In other words, such an academic paper jus is a specific record for an experiment, which is to testify an argument. Even we have written some essay to proof an argument, we did not write as specifically as the academic paper did, not include as many data as it did, and either not show as specific process as it did. In the “ Changes in North America Spring,” the first part is “Abstract,” which uses a short paragraph simply tells readers what the article is for. (Whether the arrival of earlier spring is true.) Then, “ Intro” part introduces phenology data of spring plant are very useful to show the climate changes in particular aspect. Here, the writer has hinted the main method to proof the argument. After that, “data” is very important in such academic essay, since it is the most important and direct evidence to proof the argument. In this paper, it gives specific the first leaf and first bloom dates of lilac, which can show whether the spring arrives. Only data is not enough to clearly proof the argument, so the “method” is needed. In this part, it introduces how to use the data of the lilac, and how to compare them with each other to proof the spring is earlier arrival. Also, there are some data graphs, which can shows the result more clearly and directly. From the “method”, “result” is obvious to readers. The next part “ result and discussion” is the most important part of the paper, since whole paper is evidence to get the result. Like this paper, the author gets more than one result from comparing different years and different places data of lilac first leaf and first bloom. The last part may be common to see in most essays. However, other normal paper do not have so many references as such academic paper, in that whole paper use as many evidence to proof the argument as author can. It can say in other way, the more reference the paper has, more persuasive the paper is. The above parts necessary to constitute a complete scholarly academic paper, especially research paper, since each part has its own function to show persuade readers to believe the paper’s argument.  

From the discussion to the construction of “ Changes in North American Spring,” we can find many differences between non-academic essay and academic paper, and we also can find most genres of academic paper, which divides the whole paper to separate parts, has thousands of specific data and method to compare data, shows the most persuasive result for the argument. The degree of specific and persuasive of the academic paper makes people cannot suspect the result in the paper and I believe that such academic paper is the most persuasive article I have ever read.

“Changes in North American Spring”

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Schwartz2/publication/227960215_Changes_in_North_American_spring/links/551ab3b20cf2bb754076cdc5.pdf