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READING SCIENTIFIC ARTICLESRobert Siegel, The Vaccine Revolution https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/readingsci.htm
There are many approaches to reading scientific articles. Those of you who have had significant experience reading such articles will have developed a style of you own. For those of you who have not, I will discuss one approach. One does not read a journal article like a novel or a newspaper article. There are several reasons for this: 1. The information is too dense to comprehend it with a simple reading. 2. You may be interested in a specific aspect of the article rather than the entire thing. The special structure of such articles allows one to find the desired section more easily. 3. Understanding of one part of an article will often require backward or forward reference to another part of the article.
For adequate understanding of an article, you should be prepared to read an article at least two, three, or four times. You will often be amazed to discover that what seemed completely incomprehensible on the first reading appears to make perfect sense on subsequent readings. Phase I: Screening the article. Phase II: Getting the punch line. Phase III: Understanding the approach. Phase IV: First reading. Phase V: Increasing understanding Task 1. Study the advice on how to reada scientific article and answer the questions in italics. Phase I: Screening the article. 1. Read the title once fast looking for key words. Read the title slowly until it makes sense. Predict the field of science and the topic of the article. Does the subject , expert systems, look familiar to you? What does ESTHER mean? Can you find a quick answer in the abstract or introduction? 2. Look through the authors to see if there is anyone whose name you recognize, whose work you know. This is an important process in trying to judge the quality of the data. What countries and institutions are they from? Why do you think the authors work in different organizations? 3. Look at the date. In the field where information is rapidly changing, the date may be all-important . When was the article published? Do you think that it is still topical?
4. Some articles have a brief list of key words. They are usually quite informative and should be looked at early on. Is it a review article or an original research article?
Task 2. Study the advice on further reading of a scientific article. Do the tasks given below. Phase II: Getting the punch line.
1) Read the abstractonce fast looking for key words. Read the abstract slowly until it makes sense. The widely used structure of research article abstracts is the following ( Alexander et al, 2008. EAP Essentials):
2) Read introduction. The introduction is often the easiest part of an article to read. In some cases, it is also the most informative - not so much in terms of presenting new information, but in consolidating background information. Some authors will also present the punch line of their research in a way that is easier to understand than the way it is presented in the abstract.
Task 3. Rhetorical functions can be classified into three main macro-functions:
Describe: narrative; instructions; process Explain: comparison and contrast; definition and classification; cause and effect; change and development Persuade: problem and solution; argument and support; evidence and conclusion Read the introduction to Larichev et al, 2001 and identify rhetorical functions of its parts:
3) The introduction will often cite many of the references. This is an excellent time to begin looking at them. Task 4. Answer the questions in italics: Do the authors cite their own works? Write their numbers from the list of references. Do the cited references consider mostly expert systems in general or their application in medicine? Phase III: Understanding the approach 1) Peruse the figures and tables. You will not understand them this first time through but this will help you know what to look for when you actually read the article.
Task 5. Look at figure 1 and describe it in pairs after having answered the questions.The description on p3 will help you. Fig1 1. What is presented on Figure one? 2. What does each node of tree represent? 3. Why are there only two branches emanating from each node? 4. What is the minimum number of questions needed to arrive to a conclusion?
Figure 2 is the diagram presenting the principle modules of ESTHER system,whose description constitutes the main part of Results section. Without reading the results part, give a general description of the picture.
Phase IV: First reading
2) Skim the abstract and the introduction once again. At this point you should be able to have an adequate understanding of them.
3) Skim the methodssection. The methods section will need to be studied carefully only if you intend to use some of the procedures in your research. We will use this section of the article (p.2) to work with academic vocabulary.
Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1658
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