tailieunhanh - The Science of Scientific Writing

The group of students with the lowest (best) word reading efficiency scores at the end of fourth grade were monolingual English-speaking students instructed in English. 3 However, there was not a large difference among the three groups of Spanish-speaking students: scores were for the students transitioned at the end of third grade, for those transitioned at the end of second grade, and for those instructed in English only. For all groups of students, pseudoword reading efficiency scores at the end of fourth grade were higher (therefore worse) than word reading efficiency scores. As with. | This Article appeared in the American Scientist Nov-Dec 1990 Volume 78 550-558. Retyped and posted with permission. The Science of Scientific Writing If the reader is to grasp what the writer means the writer must understand what the reader needs George D. Gopen and Judith A. Swan George D. Gopen is associate professor of English and Director of Writing Programs at Duke University. He holds a . in English from Harvard University and a . from Harvard Law School. Judith A. Swan teaches scientific writing at Princeton University. Her . which is in biochemistry was earned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Address for Gopen 307Allen Building Duke University Durham NC 27706 Science is often hard to read. Most people assume that its difficulties are born out of necessity out of the extreme complexity of scientific concepts data and analysis. We argue here that complexity of thought need not lead to impenetrability of expression we demonstrate a number of rhetorical principles that can produce clarity in communication without oversimplifying scientific issues. The results are substantive not merely cosmetic Improving the quality of writing actually improves the quality of thought. The fundamental purpose of scientific discourse is not the mere presentation of information and thought but rather its actual communication. It does not matter how pleased an author might be to have converted all the right data into sentences and paragraphs it matters only whether a large majority of the reading audience accurately perceives what the author had in mind. Therefore in order to understand how best to improve writing we would do well to understand better how readers go about reading. Such an understanding has recently become available through work done in the fields of rhetoric linguistics and cognitive psychology. It has helped to produce a methodology based on the concept of reader expectations. Writing with the Reader in Mind Expectation and Context Readers