The textbook How to Write a Research Article aims to raise EFL/ESL scholars’ awareness of the conventions of research writing in English and to help them prepare their manuscripts for publication in international peer-reviewed journals.
Who is the textbook for?
The textbook is designed for early-career researchers who have little publishing
experience in English. Learners should:
• be engaged in research and have some results to report on
• have B2+ (CEFR) level of English proficiency.
Learners can come from different discipline areas as the objective of the textbook
is to offer general guidance about the article structure, expectations of the reader
and conventions of research writing in English. However, individual tasks will allow
learners to explore the writing conventions existing in their discipline areas.
What is the textbook structure?
The textbook contains six chapters. Each chapter has three units. Each unit comprises
three stages. The first stage ‘Exploration’ is a pre-class analytical assignment, which
learners are supposed to complete individually. The preparatory tasks at this stage
involve the analysis of the structure, language and argumentation in the articles chosen
by learners from their own fields of study. Learners are expected to select at least three
articles relevant for their research area/topic. We advise learners to choose the articles
from their target journals.
The second stage ‘Practice’ contains various activities, which
aim to raise learners’ awareness of certain important issues in each article section. The
third stage ‘Follow-up’ provides intensive writing practice and peer review.
The three-stage approach fosters not only acquiring general research writing
conventions in English, but also learners’ deep understanding of discipline requirements
and applying them in their own writing.
The activities of the textbook are based on published articles from various journals
and areas (mainly hard sciences). We maintained the language variant and reference
style of the original sources (often American); however, the British variant of English
and the APA referencing style are used in the textbook itself.
What is the approach?
The textbook is based on the reflective practice approach to research writing to
enable learners to become effective scholarly communicators. The textbook focuses
on analysing sections of a standard research article in the IMRaD format and
developing researchers’ writing skills.
Authors:
E.M. Bazanova – is an associate professor, academic writing expert and scientific editor. She holds a PhD degree in TESOL. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Office at the NUST “MISIS”. She is also the president of the National Writing Centres Consortium.
S.A. Suchkova– is an associate professor, teacher trainer and Cambridge ESOL examiner. She holds a PhD degree in English philology. Currently, she directs the Academic Writing Center at the Higher School of Economics, Moscow.