This Writing Activity with Writing Analytics (WAWA) was developed as part of the Academic Writing Analytics project at the University of Technology Sydney’s Connected Intelligence Centre.
The focus is on academic rhetorical moves typically made in scientific, technological and social science articles. AcaWriter highlights these moves in order to help students evaluate their writing and improve the successive drafts with special attention to rhetorical moves. Arts and humanities genres are more variable, and less well tested. The parser is tuned to how ideas are being proposed, referred to, contrasted, and so forth.
The italicised text in the examples below shows a familiar type of move, in which the authors signal their intent:
“The purpose of this article is to develop the idea that the procedures in any given classroom or laboratory exercise should be definitely determined by the specific aim, which the instructor has in mind to accomplish.”
“The perspective I shall use in this essay relies heavily on the view of professionalization presented in Andrew Abbott’s brilliant study, The System of Professions (Abbott 1988).”
“This paper explores social practices of propagating ‘memes’ (pronounced,‘meems’) as a dimension of cultural production and transmission within internet environments.”
In most disciplines, readers (especially reviewers) would be surprised if there were no contrasting moves, e.g.
“We think it timely, with the rising popularity of data science, to call attention to some of the problems that can infiltrate a field like LA if we do not pay careful attention to our underlying assumptions.”
“With an absence of detailed work on masculinities and sport in South African primary schools (for an exception, see Bhana 2002) this paper goes some way towards addressing the issues around young boys’ developing relationship with sport.”
Textual Features: The set of rhetorical moves identified by AcaWriter are as follows:
Background/consensus information / prior work, e.g. using constructions such as:
Recent studies indicate …
the previously proposed …
is universally accepted …
Summarising/signalling the author’s/paper’s goals
The goal of this study …
Here, we show …
Altogether, our results … indicate
Emphasis to highlight significance / key ideas
studies … have provided important advances
Knowledge … is crucial for … understanding
valuable information … from studies
Novelty of some sort / improvements in ideas/contributions
… new insights provide direct evidence …
… we suggest a new … approach …
… results define a novel role …
Contrasting ideas, tension or critical insight
… unorthodox view resolves … paradoxes …
In contrast with previous hypotheses …
… inconsistent with past findings …
Surprising or unexpected findings
We have recently observed … surprisingly
We have identified … unusual
The recent discovery … suggests intriguing roles
Open questions / gaps in knowledge
… little is known …
… role … has been elusive
Current data is insufficient …
Trend / generalisation / tendency
… emerging as a promising approach
our understanding of… has grown exponentially …
… growing recognition of the importance …
Attitude / stance
A compelling argument is that …
The investigation focuses on …
The research has been disappointing …
