Literacy Practices of Computer Science

Yanwu Tong
University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara 93107, US

ABSRACT
Computer science is a discipline that develops quickly in recent decades. The purpose of this
discipline is to create technology and systems to solve the problems related to our lives. As
aSince this discipline that relates to every field in the futuredevelops rapidly, efficiency is
necessary for computer scientists and professional researchers to communicate and share ideas.
Thus, learning literacy practices of computer science is also very important for people to
understand academic writings in this field or those who want to go deeper in this areaa short
time and get useful information from these articles effectively. This paper follows the writing
style and citation format of academic writing in the computer science field to help readers to
get closerclose to the academic writing of computer science. Besides,Also, the part of analyzing
literacy practices include the structure of academic writing, wording formats, evidence will be
the greatest part to show the reason that these literacy practicesthey are important to help
readers to read and effective forunderstand academic writing ofarticles in computer science
field more efficiently.

I. INTRODUCTION
Computers become a big part of today. It is
easy to see that more and more jobs
thatwhich do not belong to the scientific area
rely on computers such as medication, and .
Also, everything may be connected to
computers may relate to every in the future.
As an important role in the future, the
improvements in performance fromof
software and hardware – two major parts of
the computer –of computers are necessary for
computers. However. Besides,
communication and sharing ideas for
computer scientists and researchers in this
area are also very important for helping the
progressingevolution of computers goes fast.
Next several parts will introduce and analyze
In order to show how literacy practices to
show how these literacy practices are of
academic articles are important and effective
for academic writingthe evolution in the
computer science field., next several sections
will introduce and analyze them in detail.
The first partsection will explain the general
structure of the research paper.academic
articles about computer science. The second
partsection will focus on the format of
academic words used in articles. The third
part will talk about evidence which is used to
support main points. The And the last partone
is the conclusion of these literacy practices.
II. STRUCTURE
The structure is unique for paper in this
discipline. Ignoring the contents of a paper,
the easiest way to confirm whether athe paper
about computer science is professional or not
is to go through the paper and see the
structure of this paper. The structure is
unique for paper in this discipline and it is
very helpful for readers to understand
academic articles. The first part after the title
and authors’ names is an ABSTRACT. It
usually introduces An ABSTRACT is the
main introduction of the content for the
whole research paper to, and it give readers a
general idea for what is talking about in the
content of this paperarticle. The length of an
ABSTRACT is not specifieddefined by
authors. Typically, it contains onecan be a
long paragraph or several short paragraphs.
AThe paper about “accelerating BFS via data
structure-aware prefetching on GPU” uses
onecontains a long paragraph to introduce
BFS, show the steps for theirof author’s work,
and conclude with the results of their
research.[2] anotherOn the other hand, the
paper about building data structure uses an
ABSTRACT that divided into with four parts
includeshort paragraphs to introduce
background, results, conclusions, and
keywords.[1] These abstracts are used to
summarize research paperspaper into
relatively short pieces of writing to help
readers to quickly learn about paperscontents
of these articles in general very quickly. Thus.
Based on that, readers can figure out whether
the paperan article is useful or not for them
without reading the whole article. It is
ABSTRACTs are very effective for readers
to selectchoose useful readings by only read
the ABSTRACTbefore reading whole
articles.
ThereAfter the ABSRACT, there will be
an INTRODUCTION part or a quickly learn about the main points of
BACKGROUND part after the ABSTRACT
part.in an academic article. This partsection
usually provides a basic introduction or
background of this research forthe academic
article to readers. Although most of the
readers of these academic research papers are
people who work in this field, some fields
related to computer science, a small group of
readers are not familiar with researchthese
fields. Thus, an introduction section is
necessary to helpfor readers to learn about
the background of researchersan article
quickly. With this section, readers do not
need to spend a lot of time learningsearching
the background by themselves and they can
put more time on understanding the main
process of research.
After these two sections, the rest of athe
paper should be the work or progress of
researchesresearch and the conclusion of this
paper. The process and conclusions of paper.
Readers are the most attractive parts for
readers who are really interested in papers
focus more on this part. In order to help
readers distinguish different steps of works,
these academic articles. These parts of
articles are also divided into several sections.
One research paper divides so that readers
can understand each step of the research
more easily. For example, the “Methods”
partsection of one article is divided into two
sections namedcalled “seq-seq-pan
overflow”, and “setup for comparison
experiments”. These two sections are also
divided into smaller sections with new short
names. This kind of structure will helpis
helpful for readers to locate the sectiondetails
they want to read efficiently,quickly and the
good organization of articles will help
readers to understand the main points
quicklyin a short time.
This unique structure for academic writing
with computer science can help readers to
research and locate different sections where
they need tocan get the most valuable data.
II. ACADEMIC WORD FORMATING
As the structure of an academic paper, the
The format of academic words that used in
athe paper is also veryas important in aas the
structure of the paper. The acronym is aOne
convention that used throughin academic
articles with computer science. is the
acronym. For keywords of thein articles, the
authorauthors may giveprovide an
introductionexplanation of these words
tothem for readers. After that, the author an
explanation of a keyword, authors will use an authors to write paperspaper, and readers to
acronym to represent this word in the rest of read the articles with almost non-negative
the article. In “Accelerating BFS via Data effects since readers already know these
Structure-Aware Prefetching on GPU”[2], acronyms from earlier reading parts or other
the author introduces what a Breadth First places.
Search is in the first sentence.beginning.
Then, “Breadth First Search will” never
appear again even in the next sentence be
used and acronym it is replaced by BFS
replace it in the rest of articles. Some the
article. Besides, some words without anany
introduction will be spelled in full name
when the first time it is used and then be
replaced by acronym such as “Single Source
Shortest Path”.[1] This word occurs“Single
Source Shortest Path” is used in the article Figure 2 Breadth-First Search Tree
only once without any explanation and then
replaced by “SSSP” in laterother paragraphs. III.
SomeIn addition, some academic words that
known by most people include people who
do not belong to this field, even do not have
a full spelling. GPU, graphics processing
unit,the Graphics Processing Unit, is a good
example for this type of words. GPU is a
necessary component of a computer and it is
known by most people who use computers.
This word appearsis used in the article in Figure 2 Breadth-First Search Tree
terms of “CPU” without full spelling and any
explanation. AuthorsOne reason for authors EVIDENCE
to use these acronyms is to shorten the length In order to explain and prove the main points,
of articles. OneAn academic word is usually the evidence is necessary for athe paper that
used for dozens ofmany times in onean related to computer science. When authors
article, and there are many academic words want to prove the works they have done
will be used in onethe paper. AnFor example, during researches, they usually use data and
an unusual word “Program Visualization” figures as the evidence. Data isOne of the
(VP) is used in onean article for more than 30 most common evidence that be used in
times [3], and]. In addition, some well- articles. When computer scientists do
known words such as “Graphic Process Unit” experiments, they will get a is Data. A lot of
(GPU) are even used for more times. Thus, data.Data will be worked out when authors
using acronymThe article will be very long if do the research. These data are usually the
all academic words are used with full primary source to show the improvement of
spelling, and readers will be disturbed by theirauthors’ works and datathey are
these words. Thus, using acronyms can easyeasily to understand forbe understanded
shorten thearticles and save time for both by readers. WhenBesides, when scientists
want to show the improvement in
performance after their workworks, they will
use the results in form of numbers they
getwhich are got during experiments such as
“the power increases 8.3% in average and up
to 11.8%.” [2]. Readers can see “8.3” and
“11.8” in this sentence are used to show
readers the improvement of power directly
with two number 8.3 and 11.8. other. Other
than that, using figures is also a good way to
show the data as evidence to audiences.prove
authors’ works. Figure 1 is the score outcome
resultsresult for moderate-paced students.[1]
It shows the result of the comparison
ofbetween scores of students by using
textbooks and by DP-PITON. It is hard to
show these numbersdata in short words since
the amount ofthere are too many data is large.
Also, readers cannotcomparing with showing
data in
Figure 1
Figure 1
number, showing by graphs can help readers
to see the difference between using textbooks
and using DP-PITON more clearly by
showing data in texts.. Thus, a histogram is
the best way to help readers to understand
thesethe data in this case. Besides, when the
data and words are hard to show the
resultideas, authors will also use figures to
help readers to understand the articles.their
main points. Figure 2 is an example of a data
structure called tree. The numbers on bubbles
(leaves) are the order of Breadth First Search
that explained above.. It is very hard for the
author to explain this data structure in data
and words. Also, readers will spend more
time to understandunderstanding this
structure in words compared with figures.
Thusif it is explained in sentence. For these
reasons, authors usually use
multipledifferent kinds of evidence to show
and prove their articlesideas, and readers can
understand these articles more easily.
IV. CONCLUSION
articlesArticles in the computer science field
have a lot of specialties. These literacy
practices such as structure, academic words
formatting, and different kinds of evidence
will make the communication between
computer scientists more effective and. Also,
it will accelerate the improvement of
computers. Analyzing and learning these
literacy practices can also help readers in this
field to be more professional and let people
who are interested in this area to get in touch
with it.
REFERENCES
[1] Jandrasits, Christine, Dabrowski, Piotr
W., Fuchs, Stephan, and Renard,
Bernhard Y. "Seq-seq-pan: Building a
Computational Pan-genome Data
Structure on Whole Genome
Alignment." BMC Genomics 19.1
(2018): 47. Web.
[2] Guo, Hui, Huang, Libo, Lu, Yashuai, Ma,
Jianqiao, Qian, Cheng, Ma, Sheng, and
Wang, Zhiying. "Accelerating BFS via
Data Structure-Aware Prefetching on
GPU." IEEE Access 6 (2018): 60234-
0248. Web.
[3] Nathasya, Rossevine Artha, Oscar
Karnalim, and Mewati Ayub.
"Integrating Program and Algorithm
Visualisation for Learning Data
Structure Implementation." Egyptian
Informatics Journal 20.3 (2019): 193-
204. Web.