Yazeed K.

Abughaliah ALA Analysis, D3 March 17, 2014 ENG-122, AC2 Software Engineering Academic writing is used by scientists, and authors use it more frequently because it is the most effective way that can make people learn about new information, and scientists also use it to express their ideas and explain them to the readers clearly. What that indicates is that the most effective ways for engineering authors to communicate is to use academic writing because it can demonstrate that they understand the materials with which they are dealing. Most of the time, engineering authors prefer to use specific structural and linguistic patterns in order to make their writing distinct and different from other academic writing patterns. Chung-Yang Chen, who is a Ph.D. researcher in digital signal processing group at California Institute of Technology and an electrical engineer, and Pete Chong, an Engineering Director at UTC Aerospace Systems, wrote an article entitled '' Software Engineering Education: A Study on Conducting Collaborative Senior Project Development'' that proves to us engineering authors depend on a specific structural pattern to express and explain their ideas clearly. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the structural writing pattern that engineers use in terms of organization such as, providing key words, an abstract, an introductory paragraph, main ideas in sub-points, conclusion, and a reference page. Not only that, but engineering authors also have a specific way of writing when it comes to the linguistic pattern such as, using independent and dependent clauses, simple, compound, and complex sentences, direct and indirect quotes, and using neutral verbs and language. The Software Engineering article indeed has a specific structural organization that makes it look like an engineering article. First of all, it gives the readers a little basic information about
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the article such as when it was written, when it was reviewed, and when it was accepted. This is important because nowadays science is developing and theories are changing compared to how they were in the past, so authors provide some information about the dates and when the article was published because people now want to use current information, not old information. Obviously, this makes their research more updated and more reliable, so people can learn from it without worrying about getting wrong or old information. After that, engineering authors provide some keywords to the audience to give a clue about the topic and to try to clarify their idea from the beginning because this will make it easier to understand their points. Moreover, engineering authors provide an abstract about the article. This is important because engineering articles are long, and it is really hard to know the main idea of the article just by looking at the title by itself. Engineering authors use these patterns because they are very effective, and they provide the readers with some basic information about the article before they start reading it. After that, engineering authors give an introductory paragraph about the article, which is important to guide the readers to start following the text. If they get confused while reading the article, they can also return to the introduction to get back on track. After engineering authors give an abstract and introduction about their article, they obviously start explaining and expressing their ideas and main points. The effective way for engineers to explain their main points is to arrange them in a specific pattern, which is to provide sub-titles for each main idea. Each sub-title is also divided into a number of sub-points. This method is effective because it makes the points look more organized, so every sub-point is put under the sub-title that belongs to it in order to avoid confusing the readers. When engineering authors start their main ideas, they initially start with a literature review about their project and give some information about the level of reliability of their work such as introducing the points that make their research more

reliable or less reliable, so it is also very helpful and effective for the audience because that makes them comfortable with what they reading without worrying about gaining unreliable or wrong information. After that, engineers provide sub-titles about methodology. This point is important because engineers demonstrate to the readers the methods they used to collaborate and prove their hypothesis, which helps the readers determine the excellence of the work they had done. Another thing that engineers cover in their writing as shown in ''Software Engineering'' is a sub-point about their investigations. As we know, after doing research about a specific hypothesis, it is really essential to demonstrate the final results. Engineers should do that in their academic writing because engineering is a very complex field that is full of problems that should be solved, so after they work to prove their hypothesis, they are required to show the results to the people in order to teach them whether the hypothesis is true or not, so they become more knowledgeable about it eventually. If people read the whole research and do not find the overall results, they will not learn as much from the research, and there will be a very important part of the research missing. Another thing that engineering authors include is a sub-point that is about discussions. The discussion main point includes the interviews that have been conducted with other people to know more about the topic. This is actually essential because it can strengthen the research because people will hear different point of views and then engineering authors explain what people say or claim, and it is also beneficial for engineers because they can get extra information from outside sources that can be helpful. Also, in the end, the article includes a main point under the name validity check to show the readers and researchers that all the information and data is correct. Finally, there was a conclusion and reference page. The conclusion must be at the end of

the article because it summarizes the main ideas, and it reminds the readers of the importance of the research. The reference page is also definitely necessary because people can refer it when they need more information about something that drew their attention, and that can also increase the reliability level of the article because people can check the accuracy of the information through the reference page. While the structure of an engineering article is important to reflect the ideas that engineers have, the linguistic pattern or sentence structure is also a very important factor that can also make engineering writing distinguishable from any other writing. Engineers use a specific sentence structure that makes their writing effective. As seen in the software engineering article, engineers tend to use a combination of simple, complex, and compound-complex sentences, but it is noticed that they use a very limited number of compound sentences. The authors of the article almost use an equal number of simple and complex sentences {17:18}, a very few compound sentences {2}, and complex-compound sentences {9}. Simple sentences are the easiest sentences that most readers can understand because they introduce only one thought; however, complex sentences contain more than one or two clauses that can help the readers understand something that needs a lot of explanation. In the beginning and in the end of every paragraph, it is noticed that engineers rely on simple sentences. They start with simple sentences to introduce a clear idea to the audience and conclude this idea the same way by using simple sentences, and the reason for that is to make it clear to the readers in the beginning and then they review their ideas again simply. In the middle of the paragraph, when engineering authors explain their ideas and support their details, they use complex and complex-compound sentences because readers would not understand their points if they did not explain it throughout the paragraph. Also, when they use complex sentences in the beginning of some paragraphs, they

usually use adjective clauses such as ''questions that asked how'' because this makes their information more clear and more specific, and that is what readers need when they read a scholarly article (Chen & Chong, p.485). This also allows them to include as much information as possible in just one sentence. Of course, their use of a good combination of simple and complex sentences make them more professional to communicate with the audience because when they use simple sentences, they make things less complicated to readers, but it is also effective to use complex sentences because engineering is a field that needs a lot of clarification and explanation of data. For instance, this field includes a lot of charts, numerical data, graphs, and drawings, which makes it really hard for the reader to understand all that just by looking at these materials. That is the reason that makes engineering authors use more compound and complex sentences. Furthermore, the use of direct and indirect quotes is an element that contributes to writing effectively depending on the discipline of the field. For instance, as shown in the software engineering article, the authors use a bit more indirect quotes than direct quotes {9:5}. The use of indirect quotes is when people believe that there is better and more clear explanation than what is said in the quote, so the authors use more indirect quotes because the quotes might not be that clear to the readers. They paraphrase them to convey better meanings. Additionally, the use of direct quotes comes when the quote is perfect, or there is no better explanation for it. The authors use a good number of direct quotes to vary their sentences. The writers demonstrate a good use of quotes, and that makes their article better and variable in terms of the sentence structure. Indirect quotes especially in this field are used more than direct quotes because engineering is a field that needs explanation when working, so the use of indirect quotes might

be more efficient in an engineering field because it can make authors add more of their own details to the quote if they need to rather than just simply copying it. In addition, there are some criteria that can make the article scholarly as in this article. There were many neutral verbs like '' may, can be, could or might,'' and that made them express their ideas in a way that is not biased. Also, in the article, the authors used some reporting verbs that are neutral in tone such as ''noted, expressed, and felt.'' On the other hand, there were some strong reporting verbs such as ''asserts,'' but this was not to be biased, they used strong verbs to insure the audience that the result of the hypothesis is true. Speaking of being biased, engineering authors should not be biased in their field because different engineers come with different results when proving their hypothesis, so if an engineer is biased about his point that can affect him negatively because his hypothesis might not be true. In conclusion, the article ''software engineering'' proves to us that scholarly engineering articles rely on specific structural and linguistic patterns. This can be done by dividing the research into many structural patterns such as, introductions, abstracts, conclusions, and subpoints. The linguistic pattern can be organized depending on how many simple, complex, compound, and complex-compound sentences were used. Also, what makes the research unbiased is how well reporting verbs and neutral language are used.

Reference

Chen, C. Y., & Chong, P. P. (2011). Software engineering education: A study on conducting collaborative senior project development. Journal of Systems and Software, 84(3), 479-491.