English For Research Purposes.docx

Frequency/Percentage ENGINEERING Biomass and Bioenergy RA1 RA2 RA3 Metabolic Engineering RA4 RA5 RA6 RA’s 1-6 No of articles Percentage of articles (%) ECONOMICS Ecological Economics RA7 RA8 RA9 Finance Research Letters RA10 RA11 RA12 RA’s 7-12 No of articles Percentage of articles (%) Information Element/Stage Gap Indication

Purpose Statement

Research Question

Gap Indication

Purpose Statement

Research Question

1 1 2

3 2 2

0 0 0

2 1 1 8 6 100

2 3 1 13 6 100

0 0 0 0 6 0

4 2 2

2 3 2

0 0 0

2 1 5 16 6 100

2 3 2 14 6 100

0 0 0 0 6 0

Discipline Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science) Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science)

Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science)

Instance However, there is a lack of studies that focus on optimizing the pyrolysis conditions for the creation of sewage sludge biochar to be used as a soil amendment. To date it is still mainly limited to the application of physical models of heat exposure. (RA7) In this study, we investigated the role of GLDC as a metabolic regulator in hPSCs. (RA6) Given the features of the ecosystem and how it interacts with the main skateholders and the government of the Galapagos (Jones, 2012), we concentrated on: (a) soil carbon storage provided by mangroves, within the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. (RA8) -

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INTRODUCTION

In recent years, the numbers of research made for various kinds of topics have been increasing exponentially to the point there is too much to look at. Research article is one of the best way to communicate between a professional with the public audience. Furthermore, not all of the professional has the same expertise thus making research article as an excellent medium to expand knowledge and new discoveries vastly. Research article is also defined as research report in which consist of a general structure in the method of writing it. A research article is a paper written by a researcher to describe a research study that has been completed (Weissberg and Buker, 2005). According to Weissberg and Buker (2005), an experimental research report should consist of 5 stages that starts from the abstract to the introduction. Next is the method and then the results and discussion. Last but not least is the conclusion. These steps are also known as IMRD/C (Swales, 2004). Swales (2004) also stated that there are 3 moves in writing an introduction in a research report. Move 1 is establishing a report, move 2 is establishing a niche and move 3 is occupying the niche. The importance of research report is to spread information in the most specific way without having any particulars missing from the report due to its specific form of writing. This leads to the question, why is it important to analyse elements commonly found in research article’s introduction? A well written introduction of a research article should have all the elements and moves as mentioned above to lay out the best introduction to a research article. A previous study to identify problems in writing thesis introductions in research methodology class shows that 50% of students in a local university in Malaysia does not abide to the moves in writing an introduction of a research report as mentioned by Weissberg and Buker (Siti Hamin, 2013).. In a research made by Lim (2012) on the study of how do writers establish

research niches found out that 60% or 18 out of 30 research articles was written in complete cycles (comprising Moves 1,2 and 3) while the remaining 40% do not have complete cycles of the introductory section writing. There are very less comparison in the elements of a research report writing between applied science and social science from past research. The purpose of this paper is to compare the 3 elements (indicating gap, research question and purpose statement) in the introduction of a research report between two disciplines: Engineering (Applied Science) and Economics (Social Science). The deduced elements that is taken note of from past research articles are the gap indication, the research questions and the purpose statement. This research can provide better coverage on the difference between research writing in applied science and also social science. This paper can also further expose the importance of the elements stated by Weissberg and Buker (2005) and Swales (2004) to the general public especially students who will come to write a research thesis in their final year of degree studies and going towards a more higher education. The outline of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 explains the methodology of this research. Section 3 presents the empirical findings of the 12 selected articles. Section 4 is the discussion in the comparison between the 2 disciplines and finally, section 5 is the conclusion.

METHODOLOGY

This research aims to identify 3 elements in the introduction section of past research articles. 2 disciplines was chosen from Applied Science and Social Science, which are Engineering and Economics. Next, 2 research journals was taken from each disciplines. For Engineering, the Journal of Biomass and Bioenergy and also Journal of Metabolic Engineering. Meanwhile, for Economics, the Journal of Ecological Economics and Finance Research Letters was taken. 3 research articles for each research journal was selected, hence a total of 12 research articles was analysed for this paper. 2 factors was considered in choosing the 12 articles. The 12 articles was selected based on the IMRD/C structure to fulfil Weissburg and Buker’s interpretation of a research article and the publishing year of 2019 as it is more recent. All 12 articles was taken from the website ScienceDirect which stores various numbers of research articles. All the research articles was labelled into RA1 to RA12 to ease the tabulating phase of the findings. The data was analysed through reading the introductory section of each research article and extracting the 3 elements: 1) Gap Indication, 2) Research Question and 3) Purpose Statement. The frequency of each element was tabulated for all 12 articles and was compared to each journal and disciplines. The percentage identifying the element in all the research article was also calculated. The keywords identifying each of the element was underlined to ensure accuracy in the analysation. The examples from each discipline from the research article was also deduced out and tabulated to compare the type of keywords used in the elements and to act as a proof at the result section that such element was correctly identified.

RESULTS

Frequency/Percentage ENGINEERING Biomass and Bioenergy RA1 RA2 RA3 Metabolic Engineering RA4 RA5 RA6 RA’s 1-6 No of articles Percentage of articles (%) ECONOMICS Ecological Economics RA7 RA8 RA9 Finance Research Letters RA10 RA11 RA12 RA’s 7-12 No of articles Percentage of articles (%) Information Element/Stage Gap Indication

Purpose Statement

Research Question

Gap Indication

Purpose Statement

Research Question

1 1 2

3 2 2

0 0 0

2 1 1 8 6 100

2 3 1 13 6 100

0 0 0 0 6 0

4 2 2

2 3 2

0 0 0

2 1 5 16 6 100

2 3 2 14 6 100

0 0 0 0 6 0

Discipline Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science) Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science)

Engineering (Applied Science) Economics (Social Science)

Instance However, there is a lack of studies that focus on optimizing the pyrolysis conditions for the creation of sewage sludge biochar to be used as a soil amendment. To date it is still mainly limited to the application of physical models of heat exposure. (RA7) In this study, we investigated the role of GLDC as a metabolic regulator in hPSCs. (RA6) Given the features of the ecosystem and how it interacts with the main skateholders and the government of the Galapagos (Jones, 2012), we concentrated on: (a) soil carbon storage provided by mangroves, within the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies. (RA8) -

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In all the studied research articles as shown in Table 1, the elements: Gap Indication and Purpose Statement is present in all the 12 studied research articles (RAs) with research purpose having the most frequency with a total of 27 throughout the 12 RAs. The research purpose has the most frequency mainly because a research article is meant to have an objective or purpose rather than just spouting what is known and to show that the specific paper is not duplicating previous studies. Also, it is found that all 12 RAs have Gap Indication with a total frequency of 24. Out of 12 RAs, there was no Research Question element found within the introductory section. The possible reason may have to be correlated with research question is seemingly an outdated method of writing the introduction as it seems unnecessary and also since the disciplines chosen are science categories therefore it should be scientific and precise. Both Applied Science and Social Science have 100% statistic on the presence of Gap Indication and Purpose Statement, meanwhile, 0% for Research Question for both disciplines. Referring to table 1 again, the Applied and Social Science is very similar to each other as they both have Gap Indication and Purpose Statement with no Research Question. A sample of selected sentences with corresponding keywords to indicate the element is shown in table 2. Based on table 2, the keywords that were used within the selected Research Article “lack of studies” and “limited” for gaps. Besides, the word “however” and “to date” is also indicating the gaps. Meanwhile, the keywords used for Purpose Statement was “we investigated” and “we concentrated”. Normally, the purpose statement is written in past tense however they are some cases in which the purpose statement is written in present tense.