English sample essay, Summaries of English Language

Download English sample essay and more Summaries English Language in PDF only on Docsity! Tackett 1 Jennifer Tackett Professor Ramey WTNG 102.17 November 17, 2015 Genre Analysis Before delving into a genre analysis, one must wonder what genre really means. According to the editors of LiteraryDevices.org, a genre means “the type of art, literature or music characterized by a specific form, content, and style.” In literature alone there are thousands of genres ranging from the illustrative picture books of one’s childhood to the epics of Grecian heroes. There are how-to books to arrange one’s furniture to align a person’s energy or mystery novels with just enough clues to allow the reader to guess “whodunnit.” This paper focuses on analyzing a genre of scientific research intent on sharing the discoveries of its authors. This paper will analyze a scientific research article titled “Morphology, swimming performance and propulsive mode of six co-occurring hydromedusae” written by Sean P. Colin and John H. Costello and published in 2001 in The Journal of Experimental Biology. They present the effect of different morphologies on swimming ability for six different species of jellyfish. Colin and Costello’s article adheres to the four major characteristics of any genre: a clear rhetorical purpose, content, structure, and linguistic features. First is an analysis of the authors’ intended audience as members of the same discourse community. A discourse community “identifies a grouping of people who share common language norms, characteristics, patterns, or practices as consequence of their ongoing communications and identification with each other” (Bazerman 2009). Fellow marine scientists or invertebrate biologists would be quite interested in this piece. The target audience for this journal entry is greatly limited, as it has highly specialized language predominantly understood Tackett 2 by the marine science community. One would have to be very familiar with the subject, as the author does not provide definitions for esoteric terms. An individual may read this article once or twice and then keep it for reference. The purpose of this article is to analyze different morphologies in jellyfish (physical characteristics) and how that affects propulsion (how they swim). Colin and Costello wrote this article to share this information with other scientists so they can use this to better their own research. Secondly, Colin and Costello make sure to adhere to the content submission requirements of The Journal of Experimental Biology, found as the journal’s “aims and scope.” When an author wishes to submit an article to the journal, the authors must first have their writings reviewed by their peers. This usually happens when an author submits an article for consideration. The article is given to one person for review, and if the reviewer believes the article is not fit for submission, it is reviewed by an editor of the journal. In this situation, the article may be considered for resubmission if the author makes the appropriate changes. Colin and Costello cite articles within their article to provide background information that might be needed to understand the experiment as well as other articles that are related to the experiment being done to illustrate their proficiency with the subject. In - text citations use the Harvard (name, date) citation method. The submission requirements do not state the type of format used to present citations in the reference list, but the journal editors do give examples for various text styles. For example, a journal article would be cited in this style: “Rivera, A. R. V., Wyneken, J. and Blob, R. W. (2011). Forelimb kinematics and motor patterns of swimming loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta caretta): are motor patterns conserved in the evolution of new locomotor strategies? J. Exp. Biol. 214, 3314-3323.”(Journal of Experimental Biology). In general, most scientific papers use the American Psychological Association (APA) citation style, as shown in Tackett 5 article challenges the belief that large - belled jellyfish have better jet propulsion than oblong small jellyfish. In this article, Colin and Costello demonstrate the truth of the discourse community through experimental data, clear and concise information, and through following the scientific method. The most important part of writing a scientific article is sharing information. Sharing information strengthens collaboration between scientists to verify results so that they become truths. Tackett 6 Works Cited Bazerman, Charles. “Issue Brief: Discourse Communities” National Council of Teachers of English.org 2009. Web. 9 Nov. 2015 Colin, Sean and Costello, John. “Morphology, swimming performance and propulsive mode of six co-occurring hydromedusae” The Journal of Experimental Biology. 2002. Web. 9 Nov. 2015 Journal of Experimental Biology Editors. “Submitting a Manuscript to JEB” The Company of Biologists. jeb.biologists.org. Web. 9 Nov. 2015 Literary Device Editors. “Genre” LiteraryDevices.net 2013.Web. 9 Nov. 2015