Graduate writers handbook by pame120211

By Pamela Ochoa

My name is Pamela Ochoa. I’m from El Salvador, and my native language is Spanish. I started school when I was Six years old. I went to kindergarten through twelve grade at Guadalupano School in El Salvador. When I graduate from high school; I went directly to college. I study five years of college at Matias Delgado University in El Salvador. I studied Marketing, and graduate from college in 2011. When I was at college I was working in as a marketing assistant in a company called Decoralon in El Salvador, I was in charge of doing all the marketing of the company, commercial, billboards, and flyers. After graduation I started working in CECSA an electrical company as a project manager, and I was in charge of doing all the marketing studies. A few years latter I decided to study my MBA so decided to move to The United States. I attended to Northern Virginia Community College for almost two years to improve my English before starting my master. Finally I decided to transfer to George Mason University to study my MBA, and I’m planning to graduate in spring 2017.

Table of contents Introductory Statement

Interview Reflection

Language Analysis

Article Analysis

Journal Analysis

References

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Introductory Statement

Writing has always been something very important throughout our lives, but when we get into college it becomes even more important; because most of the time our work will be in written form, and we will face that we have to be writing many articles and translating our own ideas into paper. Now here is why scholarly writing is so important; scholarly writing involves a lot of things like: Content, organization, grammar, punctuation, citations, and a different style to which we have been used to write. I have learned many things during the preparation of my Graduate writer’s handbook, and what I like most is that I had the opportunity to learn many things from different sources. First of all, I had the opportunity to interview one of my colleagues in my major, and we talked about specific things that are used in the business field in terms of writing, like the citation style, and he gave me some tips in how to improve my writing in college. Moreover, doing the graduate writer’s handbook I had the opportunity to understand a little bit more the type of language that is use in the business field; I have learned that scholarly writing especially in business mostly is formal, and the authors tried to avoid the use of first person pronouns, and the language that is used in business articles is understandable, but sometimes it has some technical language that it can be a little complicated to understand for people who do not belong to that field. Another important thing that I had the opportunity to learn was when I was analyzing a business article; I learned trough this analysis the way that the articles are organized in the business field, which I didn’t find many differences according to other fields like education; the typical structure of articles has an abstract, introduction, method section, results, and conclusion; the article studied has all this sections with the only difference that the sections sometimes are called in a different way. Additionally, I had the opportunity to analyze the journal in which the article that I study was published; analyzing the journal was very helpful for me, because it helped me notice many things that I have learned about academic writing, and many things that I have to take in count when writing, and I can say that everything that study before analyzing my article applies to most of the articles in this journal; all the articles use the APA citation style, and follow the same organization. Doing this graduate writer’s handbook was really helpful, because I had the opportunity to learn, and discover many things about academic writing, important authors in my field, and the way that the articles are organized. All these things are very helpful because every time that I have to write something in college I will have the opportunity to put in practice what I have learned trough this handbook.

Interview and Reflection

Writing has always been a very important tool throughout history, but today is taking much more importance in everyday life and much more at work. For international students learning how to write in a different language can be harder, that’s why we must dedicate enough time to learn how to write in a proper way with the proper grammar and the punctuation needed. The purpose of this interview was to learn about the different techniques that are used in the MBA major. I had the opportunity to interview one of my classmates of my Project Manager class, his name is Jovan Milutinovic he is also an international student, and he is actually working for an international company as a project manager, also he is finishing his second year of the MBA. I had a really good conversation with Jovan and I had the opportunity to ask him a lot of things that I wanted to know about his experience about writing and writing techniques while he is progressing through his MBA. We started our conversation sharing some thoughts in how difficult is for international students to receive classes and write essays in a different language. One of the first things that I wanted to know was about the different formats of writing that are used in the MBA major; according to Jovan there are two different formats that are used in the school of business, but particularly in the MBA major for writing which are: MLA (Modern Language Association) and APA (American Psychological Association); he said that the format that we will use will depend on what the professor states in their syllabus, he said that learning these two different models of writing was one of the hardest things when he just started at school because he didn’t know anything about citations formats. Jovan and I also talked about plagiarism and how important it is for American schools, he said that at George Mason University plagiarism is something that they take really serious, and if they discover that someone has done plagiarism the student can be terminated from the program, so the best advice that I received from Jovan was that I have to learn how to cite the sources that I use for my research papers in a proper way in order to improve my writing. Another important thing that he suggested in order to do a good research paper was that every time that he has to write something he tries to do it in one time seat, so he makes sure to have everything that he needs in that way he can avoid any kind of interruption also he has some steps that he usually follows at the time that he is writing: First read the complete article, second, do some kind of outline to catch the main ideas of the article, third, write a kind of draft with your own words, fourth, go back to the paper and check for some ideas and include them in your paper, and finally cite the source. Jovan also told me that even though the MBA has a lot of math classes we also do a lot of research papers and he suggested me to read as many articles, journals, newspapers, and books that I can, so in that way I can have more vocabulary in order to improve my writing and my grammar. Now that I’m starting my major and learning how to write in a proper way; I have realized that writing is not just putting a lot of words in order to make sentences; writing includes a lot of things like vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, coherence and different citation styles that we have to learn in order to have correct, and formal writing, and now

that I’m starting to write essays and research papers in English I have to be aware of all these features that I had mention above and try to implement them while I’m writing. Having the opportunity to interview Jovan was a really good experience, I learned a lot from him and even though the main point of the interview was to talk about the writing techniques in our major he gave me a lot of advice that I will put in practice during my experience progressing through my major. Another important thing that I have to take in count is that never is enough in terms of learning something new. I really appreciate Jovan’s time and his good disposition in answering my questions and always going forward and giving me a lot of good advice.

Language Analysis

Every author has their own way to communicate ideas through articles, but everything depends on the discipline. Some disciplines have a type of language that is more complex than other ones, and sometimes the type of language that is used in a discipline it can be hard to understand for someone that does not belong to that field. In the business field the language that is used is not very complex, but there are some terms that might be difficult for some people that do not belong to the business field. The purpose of this paper is to review the language and grammar style common in the business field, while analyzing the article “Marketing accountability: Linking Marketing Actions to Financial results” by Stewart (2009). The type of language that is used in the business field is formal most of the time, because the authors are trying to explain the results that they have obtained from their research. Throughout the article we can see that the type of language that the author used is really formal, because: He does not use first person pronouns, he do not use contractions, the author used in text citations; for example: The CMO Council (2004a, p2) concludes that “ Marketing-know more as art than science-has been the last of corporate functions…” Also, as we note the author used quotations marks when he refers about what other authors have done before. Another important thing that we can analyze about this article is the length of words that are in most of the sentences throughout the article specifically in the section 2.4 Data, measurement, and models the section has an average of 17 words for each sentence. In terms of noun phrases we can say that the average of noun phrases included in the sentences are 3 to 6, this depends on the length of the sentence. Regarding this feature I can compare the business discipline and the education discipline saying that most of the articles like: Silva (1992) and his article L1 vs. L2 writing, Biber and Gray (2010) and their article Challenging stereotypes about academic writing, and Lee (2002) with her article teaching coherence to ESL students; the length of the sentences and the noun phrases in the sentences are kind of the same. Additionally, in the business field most of authors refer to studies that other authors have previously done, this is because many authors want often to expand the information that other authors have done before. In this article specifically when the author referred to previous research he usually referred to that with these examples: “Prior data analyses suggest a mixed record of success …” “Indeed, in earlier work I have defined …” “This particular survey was a follow up to earlier surveys…” Stewart (2009). So, as we can see the stereotype that the author used along his article is in accordance to the verb tense he used present tense; also regarding the type or the meaning of the verb he used action verbs, and if we talk about the aspect he used completed aspect, because of the actions that he is trying to describe.

In addition, there are some other important features in writing articles like punctuation; punctuation is something that is really important in order to make the reader understand the message in the proper way. In this particular article the author used many types of punctuation throughout the article in order to make good relations between ideas some of this examples are: “Return on marketing must be a financial metric because: Finance is the language of the company, companies publicly report and are evaluated based on financial measures, financial metrics are a way to compare alternative, financial metrics provide accountability…” As we can see the way that the author used the colon is when he is listing some terms, and giving examples about what he have talked before. Another example of punctuation is how he used the semicolon. For example: Stewart (2009) stated “Decades late, such calls are occurring with increasing frequency and vigor (Chaves, 2006; CMO Council, 2004a,b; Nail et al., 2002; Sheth and Sisodia, 2002; Bush et al., 2002…” Stewart (2009) Stewart used the semicolon in this case to separate the different resources, different important names, and years in this article. Moreover, the author is very explicit in his article, and he have explained and connect all the ideas in detail all these with one purpose to have coherence in his article, and in that way the readers can have a good point of view about the main idea of the article. A really good example about the term coherence in the article it can be found in the section 2.4 Data, measurement, and models the way that the author is explaining and talking about the good measurements in marketing when he said: “Good measurement creates new challenges. Good measurement raises questions about marketing activities… good measurement is not merely about whether there is a positive return or profitability… good measures are not very useful if the organization cannot respond… marketing does not lack measures… Marketing has many, many measures” Stewart (2009). The author is trying to explain what measurements are in marketing so he is using coherence trough the paragraph because he is constantly mentioning the word measurement, in that way the reader can have a really good idea although the paragraph about what the author is trying to say, and the message that he is trying to convey. The way that the author used coherence in his article was a little bit different in other articles that I had the opportunity to read like in the education field when authors used other words to refer to the same term. In this particularly article the author is always calling the term by the name, for example: When the author is talking about marketing he always writes marketing to refer to this term, also when the author is writing about models he used the word models in the whole paragraph, I think is a good way to establish coherence, and also to keep the reader in the same track about what he is talking about. When authors are writing they try to focus many ideas to create one big idea and that is when the key concepts appear, in the business field most of the time the authors cite their key concepts in the abstract or sometimes they have a specific section where they usually list their key concepts. In this particular article the author provides the reader a list of key

concepts which this makes it easier to the reader identify the main idea. In this case I will give an example of a key concept which is “Marketing accountability” and most of the key terms that the author used to refer to this key concept for example: “Marketing investment”, “Marketing measures”, “Marketing creativity”, “Marketing response” Stewart (2009). Is always important to mention the key concept that we are analyzing but in the business field to avoid being repetitive authors try to find different ways to refer to that key concept which is really important in academic writing, because all the ideas need to be related in order to convey the correct message to the audience. Additionally, the author used active voice throughout the article, and this is very typical in the business field, because authors are trying to teach what they have find in their research, this is kind of manual and authors may focus on the reader which is the one that is receiving the information, if we compare this feature with another fields where authors use passive voice to write their articles is, because in other fields the authors are just narrating what they have find in their research, and the performer is less important. This is a curious fact that I found while I was reading this article, because the author in this typical article never changed from active voice to passive voice, and that is completely different in another disciplines like education Silva, (1992); Biber and Gray, (2010); Lee, (2002) where authors change constantly from active voice to passive voice specially when they are trying to describe some results that they got from their researches. To sum up, after analyzing the present article we can conclude that scholarly writing especially in business mostly is formal, and the authors tried to avoid the use of first person pronouns. The language that is used in business articles is formal, explicit, but is also understandable, but is important to mention that there’s always some technical language that is really specific, and sometimes it can be hard to understand for those who do not belong to the business field. Also in business field is very common that authors will support their research whit some researches that have been done before, and the pattern that authors usually use in the business field is the present tense with action verbs and the aspect that they usually used is completed, and they used this pattern, because they are also trying to teach the reader especially in the section of the results, and that’s the main point of why most of the business articles are written active voice. What I have analyzed throughout this article is not very far from what scholarly writing is. Scholarly writing is a type of writing that it has to be formal and implicit, and less elaborated, but this will also depend on which field we are writing, also scholarly writing has to have coherence in order to connect all the ideas to convey one main point which reminds me what Lee (2002) stated in her article “Teaching coherence to ESL students”:“ Coherence is an important quality of effective writing”. The main goal of this study has been to explain and compare how academic writing is really important, but also to show that has many differences between different disciplines.

Article Analysis

Knowing how to write has always been important, but knowing how to write correctly is even more important. Writing correctly involves multiple features like: Correct punctuation, good organization, style, and coherence, all this in order to support, and convey the correct message to the audience. Writing in college is not so different from what we have learned throughout our lives, but it becomes a little bit more formal than before, everything will depend on the discipline. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the organization, and some of the major rhetorical features, while analyzing the article “Marketing accountability: Linking Marketing Actions to Financial results” by Stewart (2009). One of the most important things when you are writing or reading an article is the structure that the article has, and when I’m talking about the structure I am referring in how the article has been divided into sections. This particular article has some similarities, but also some differences with other articles that I have read before like: Silva (1992), Biber and Gray (2010), and Lee (2002). What I can tell about the structure about this article is that the article has an abstract, but is very short while in other articles that I have mentioned before the abstract is longer and just by reading the abstract we can tell what the article is about. Another important thing about the structure is that I can tell that the article has an introduction; because it has three paragraphs that are introducing the main point of the lecture, but it doesn’t say introduction like in the other articles. Continuing with the structure the author has divided his article in five different sections but all of the sections have different names to which we often see in other articles. For example, the section two, is called: State of industry practice; in which we find another sub section 2.4 data, measurement, and models; all the information that has been described in that section is kind of the method that the author used in this article. Another example is in section 4 which is called: three types of return on marketing, just by looking the section I can tell that this section is providing some results from the article, this section is very different from all the articles that I have read before where for results I usually find tables with numbers, or sometimes percentages explaining the results, but in this article what I found was some diagrams explaining the results about the research. The last section of the paper was the conclusion where the author is trying to sum up all the information that he got from the research in the article, and this section is kind of similar in all the articles that I have had the opportunity to read, and I also think that this is one of the most important parts when writing a paper specially in scholarly writing, because is when you have the opportunity to tell the reader in one or two paragraphs the most important results about your article. At the end of the article this author has included the reference section, which is important when we cite other sources from other authors; this section is crucial specially in scholarly writing in order to avoid any kind of plagiarism. Additionally, in this particular article the author mentioned in three occasions some of the work that other authors have done before in the same field; what was surprising for me was

that the three times were cited in section 2 “the state of industry practice” which I considered the method section in the paragraph before. I think the author is citing other authors in this particular section because he wants to include what other authors have done before, and try to avoid doing the same thing, but not taking out importance about what his colleagues have done before, I think this is complete different from the articles that I have read before like Silva (1992), and Biber and Gray (2010) where authors were citing other authors specially in the introduction. Additionally the verbs that the author used to cite other authors suggested and defined which brings us to the type of citation that the author used throughout the article, the author used both paraphrasing and direct quotation. The author used the direct quotation specifically in two sections of the article which are the introduction, and the first section of the article “why financial accountability is important”, and I think the author used direct quotation in this two sections, because he is trying to introduce the topic that he is going to talk about. In the other hand, the author used paraphrasing almost in all the sections of his article like: Introduction, method section, analysis section, and result section, but where he used more paraphrasing was in the method section, and I think this is because the method section is where the author has the opportunity to include what he wants to show to the audience, and show the new things that he is trying to do. The author in this particular article used more paraphrasing that quoting what other authors said, but the author was consistent in the style of citation that he used throughout the article, he used the APA citation style just by putting the last name of the author and the year that the article was published. Stewart (2009) tries to make the reading a little easier, and understandable to readers including some key terms, and some rhetorical features that I’m will describe below. I will focus my description in four rhetorical features: Problem, purpose, relevance, and driving questions. I will start talking of problem of this article, which the author mentioned only in the introduction, and stated: “This paper addresses an issue of critical importance to the marketing discipline and for the larger sphere of management. This issue is marketing accountability” Stewart (2009). The author mentioned twice the word issue in this phrase, and that’s why it makes me think that is the problem that is trying to solve throughout the article. Another important feature is the purpose; that is what the author wants to make readers understand from the article, in this article the purpose is located in two sections the abstract, and the introduction of the article as well, the author stated the purpose “Finally, the article proposes an audit process for selecting and linking marketing metrics to financial performance and for validating these marketing metrics against measures of financial performance” Stewart (2009). The author is defining the purpose in these two sections clearly stating what he wants to achieve with the study of article, the clue words that helped me to identify that this is the purpose was proposes, and suggest, and then the author continues to explain the article. If we focus in another important feature that the author used in his article is relevance, in other words what the author is contributing to the field. In this article we can find the relevance in two places first in the introduction section then in the

conclusion section where the author said, “ Marketing needs to be accountable now. Marketing accountability is long overdue. This article provides a broad framework for doing so. Marketing needs an organization or set of organizations to take the mantle and move forward”. Stewart (2009). The author is clearly explaining in which way his article is going to contribute to the field, and some of the words that he used to introduce his findings was this article provides. Finally the last rhetorical feature that we are going to study in this article is the driving questions, which are the questions that the author is trying to answer with his study. In this particular article we can find some of the questions in the method section for example: “What marketing activities provide outcomes with respect to the source of cash flow? What is the ultimate metric in marketing?” Stewart (2009), as we can see the pattern that the author used for his questions was the word what, which introduced both of the questions. This article has some similarities with some other articles in the education field like Biber and Gray, (2010) in which we can find the purpose in the introduction, the relevance in the method, and in the conclusion section, and the driving questions in the conclusion of the article; the only difference is where problem is located, in this case the problem was located in the abstract of the article. To sum up, after analyzing the present article we can conclude that the organization of the articles in the business field is kind of similar to the other fields like education especially with Biber and Gray (2010). The typical structure of articles has an abstract, introduction, method section, results, and conclusion; the article studied has all this sections with the only difference that the sections sometimes are called in a different way. This makes me think about scholarly writing, and how important is to follow the structure when we write, because in that way it would be easier for the readers to understand our message. Another important thing that I can mention in the analysis of this article is how important is to include what other authors have done before in our writings, including what other authors have done before will make our writing more interesting for readers, and in that way we can show them some evidence about what we are talking in our writing, some of the words that we can use when we use other studies are suggest, and defined, but every time that we used other authors said in our writings we have to cite them in the proper way, in the case of the business field in which we use the APA citation, we just have to include the last name of the author, and the year when the article was published. Finally regarding to the rhetorical features, which are some characteristics that helps the reader to understand the main point of the lecture. In scholarly writing we must include these features in order to have a logical sequence in our writings, and also to present an easy, and understandable structure to the readers.

Journal Analysis

Academic journals are very useful, especially for graduate students that we have to write a lot. Academic journals will simplify our life, because we can find a lot of interesting articles in them. In the business field we have many journals that contain a lot of interesting articles, but for this particular journal analysis Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m going to analyze the Journal of Business Research. This journal has been post since 1973, and it is still active. The Journal of Business Research is focused in many areas of business activities, but specially in decisions, processes, and activities that are happening in the actual business market; the most important areas that they are studying are: buyer behaviors, finance, organizational theory, marketing, and international business. The journal cited many articles, and the pattern that I found in these articles is that many of them talk about: organizational culture, effectiveness and, online consumer experience including consumer behaviors, and e marketing. I think this is something interesting, because even if the journal comes from many years ago now is following a new trend in the market which is the online transactions, and many of the articles published in the last volume of the journal talks about e-commerce, and e-purchasing. If I take a quick look for the whole journal I can say that since the journal began publishing articles the pattern has been the same talking about organization culture, and consumers behaviors, and how these things have been changing throughout the years. This journal contains a collection of special issues, which these issues are a compilation from the editors of the articles in the journal, and the only responsible of the selection of special issues is the author of the journal, in this case the person responsible for choosing the special issues is Arch G. Woodside who is the editor of the journal. In this particular journal some of the main topics that are compiled in the special issues are: marketing and new methods, strategic marketing, globalization, and consumer behaviors; this special issues makes a good point continuing with the pattern of the consumer behaviors with the most cited articles, and I can say that one of the main points of the journal is the consumer and their behaviors. The Journal of Business Research has 12 specific topics in which the journal is focused, in these 12 topics there are about 25 different authors that are very common in the business field; at this time I havent had the opportunity to read any article from those authors, but as my major continues I will get more familiar with these authors and their articles. Moreover, talking a little bit more about the authors I should talk about what the authors have to do, and what they have to take in count when they want to pubish an article in this particular journal. Every journal will have a guide where the authors can find some of the most important features that they have to pay attention if they want their articles to be published. In this journal the authors have to follow an specif style which is:

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first of all, the introduction; in the second section, they journal give to the authors a point called before you begin; in this part the authors will have to take in count the ethic at the time of publlishing , avoid the conflich of interests which means that the authors have to avoid personal relationships with people from other organizations, copyrights, and other important points, the third section is called preparation; where the authors will have to focus in the new submissions, references, format required, key words, and abbreviations; the fourth section is called after acceptance, this particular section is for those articles that have already been accepted, and for the last section which is called author inquires. If the authors want their articles to be accepted, pubished they should follow the guide that the journal is giving . To sum up, analyzing this journal was very helpful for me, because it helped me notice many things that I have learned about academic writing, and many things that I have to take in count when writing. I learned that journals contains many interesting articles, and some of them will follow the same structure as academic writing; most of the articles will have an abstract, introduction, method section, analysis, conclusion, and references. When I was going trough the journal, and I was opening some of the articles, and skiming trough them the most important thing that I figured out was the citation style that all the authors that have published in this journal use the APA citation style which is the one that is used in the business field. Now that I have had the opportunity to analyze a journal I am more interested in reading more articles in my field, in that way I can be more familiar with the authors that are publishing articles in the business field.

References

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2010). Challenging Stereotypes About Academic Writing: Complexity, Elaboration, Explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9 (2010), 2-20. Lee, I. (2002). Teaching coherence to ESL students: A classroom inquiry. Journal of Second Language Writing, 11 (2002), 135-159. Silva, T. (1992). L1 vs. L2 writing: ESL graduate students' perceptions. Tesl Canada journal/ Revue tesl du Canada, vol.10 (1), 27-48. Stewart, D. (2009). Marketing accountability: Linking marketing actions to financial results. Journal of Business Research, vol.62 (6), 636-643.