Yazeed K.

Abughaliah ALA Analysis, D2 Jan 31, 2014 ''Software Engineering'' 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 prefers to use specific structural and linguistic patterns in order to make their writing special and different from other academic writing patterns. An article that was written by engineers whose names are Chung-Yang Chen and Pete Chong entitled Software Engineering Education: A Study on Conducting Collaborative Senior Project Development proves to us engineering authors usually depend on a specific structural pattern to express and explain their ideas clearly. They start with an abstract followed with an introduction and then the body also includes main ideas and finally a conclusion. Not only that, but they also have a specific way of writing when it comes to the linguistic pattern. 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 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 tend to provide some information about the dates and when the article was published because people now prefer to use current information to 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 because this will make it easier to understand their points, and that makes the audience keep reading the article. Moreover, engineering authors usually 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 usually give an introductory paragraph about the article, which is important because it is also very 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 might be effective and liked by some readers while others might not like. Some people might like it because it looks more organized to them, so every sub-point is put under the sub-title that belongs to it. Other readers might not like it because it just looks confusing to them. When engineering authors start their main ideas, they initially start with a literature review about their project and give some information about the reliability of their work, so it is also very helpful and effective for the audience because that makes them comfortable with what they reading without worrying. After that, engineers tend to 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. This is important and effective because when providing information about what they did, people can also learn and understand they hypothesis in an easier way, so it is something that can educate people and provide them with more beneficial information. Another thing that engineers usually 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. This is the most important part because if people read the whole research and do not find the overall results, people will not learn as much from the article and there will be a very important idea missing. It is also important for authors to show their results because it is the only way to teach their audience. Another thing that I noticed 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 down on 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 important because people can refer to it and be double sure about the information they are learning. 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 used 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 that does not show any complexity; however, complex sentences provide further details that need explanation, and they are important because they explain the ideas clearly. In the beginning and in the end of every paragraph, it is noticed that engineers rely on simple sentences and on complex 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 of 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 tend to use complex and complex-compound sentences because their details need to be explained in greater details, and 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. 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. 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 used 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 used more indirect quotes because the quotes might not be that clear to the readers. They paraphrased 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 author used a good number of direct quotes to vary their sentences. As mentioned earlier, the use of direct and indirect quotes can contribute to making the article more or less effective, so the writers demonstrated a good use of quotes, and that made 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 more comfortable and add their points if they need to. 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. In conclusion, the article ''software engineering'' proves to us that scholarly article rely on a specific structural and linguistic patterns depending on the field or discipline they are discussing. This can be done by dividing the research into many structural patterns such as, introductions, abstracts, conclusions, and sub-points. 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 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.