مجلة الآداب و اللغات
Volume 18, Numéro 1, Pages 221-233
2018-11-25
صعوبات وعقبات البحث العلمي: مشكل إتقان الكتابة العلمية
Authors : Asma Nesba .
Abstract
Scientific writing constitutes an integral part of the scientific research. It enables interpreting the results and the findings of scientific researchers into a written document that aims at communicating the results with the peer experts or with the general readership. However, many researchers fail to transfer their findings into a well written document that satisfy the target scientific genre’s requirements. This can lead to unwelcome misunderstanding and exclusion. Hence, many good researchers miss opportunities of publishing or participating in conferences because they ignore the techniques of scientific writing as well as the distinctive features of the scientific discourse. To investigate what sorts of difficulties face researchers in writing their scientific findings, a study was conducted at the Department of English in El-Oued university. A corpus comprising 10 abstracts composed by 10 Master I students was compiled. A qualitative corpus analysis research method was adopted to detect the anomalies. Results of the study reveal the existence of a breach of the rules and the standards of the scientific writing on different levels. On the lexical level, there had been an overuse of adjectives, adverbs and attitudinal words as well as the use of common words instead of using specific terms related to the domain. On the grammatical level, students opt for long sentences which can be avoided by nominal compounds for the sake of precesion and making scientific language more compact. Personal references are to be avoided by adopting the passive voice or other substitutions; modals can also be used for hedging to reduce commitment since the scientific discourse is characterized by the objective style. Tenses also were not appropriately used. As far as discourse and style levels are concerned, there had been either an omission or a non respect of the distribution of the mandatory moves found in abstracts in general : objective of the study, research problem, research investigation tools, results, implications and recommendations. Furthermore, the absence of discourse markers was detected which can affect the organization of thoughts. Spoken negatives and contracted forms were also present which have to be avoided in the scientific writing since they reduce the formal style of the written document. It had been noticed that students forget that the adoption of simple language, clarity, brevity and precision should be maintained throughout the written scientific document. The present study ends up with recommendations to organize regular study days to equip the students with the required techniques for the scientific writing. Furthermore university decision makers should allot more timing for Research Methodology module and why not to extend it to cover all years of the curriculum.
Keywords
Scientific research ; Scientific writing ; Distinctive features, Writing requirements ; Academic settings.
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