IMRaD and Science Discourse

Analyzing the Discourse of Science through Eliza

Scientists have been conducting experiments for years and all data that has been observed, has been recorded. Some data has even been critically analyzed and published into a professional report. The IMRaD format for scientific reports has been developed for both students of the social and natural sciences along with true scientists who conduct experiments. This format allows writers to be very detailed, yet to the point when analyzing data. For readers of these IMRaD reports, they have been organized and labeled such that readers can find what they need and get out without having to file through pages and pages of interwoven analysis, data, and procedures.

A.J. Meadows in The Scientific Paper as an Archaeological Artefact shows how scientific papers have become more organized: “Structured papers, in the sense we would use this description today, appear in the nineteenth century” (27). Reports are broken down into our main headings: introduction and importance, methods, results, and discussion. With the report divided up the way it is, readers who are just trying to get the results of an experiment to compare it to their own can skip to the results section and skim through the discussion section for a deeper analysis of the results. Even if a reader were to read the whole report, it wouldn’t be too time consuming because it is direct and to the point.

This IMRaD Cheat Sheet from Carnegie Mellon University is an artifact that we can use to analyze the Discourse of the social and natural sciences. Discourses as Gee describes in Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction are “saying (writing)-doing-being-valuing-believing combinations” and aren’t simply joined or entered; it takes an apprenticeship (6). The Discourse of science has an emphasis on organization and the IMRaD cheat sheet shows how everything within the Discourse is precise and structure and it can be used to analyze a student’s progression in the Discourse.

The human mind is always learning. From birth to death, we learn new ways to approach tasks and get them done efficiently without sacrificing quality. Christina Haas’s Learning to Read Biology: One College Student’s Rhetorical Development in College follows a student named Eliza through her four years in college on the biology track. Haas analyzes how she grows as a reader, specifically her rhetorical frame. Haas writes that

“In short, much of the real work of science is the creation and dissemination of texts” (Haas 44)

and that is why Eliza’s reading ability, style, and choices are analyzed. Haas’s rhetorical frame includes “participants, their relationships and motives, and several layers of context” of a certain reading (Haas 48). The rhetorical frame is what is involved when a reader analyzes a text and is the underlying meanings and inferences that the reader gets from a work.

Going hand in hand with how a reader reads the text is how the reader chooses their text. A.J. Meadows analyzes the aspects of articles and they have changed over time in difficulty, wording, and how readers get information from the texts. Meadows discusses the challenges readers have when reading more modern papers due to the “increasing condemnation as the years have passed” (29). Over the past years, Meadows claims that the style has become more formal and more difficult to read because of that and the numerous in-text citations littering the page.

Analyzing a Discourse

Using James Gee’s Building Tasks, we can skip past the formality and get right into analyzing the IMRaD Cheat Sheet as an artifact and how Eliza grows and develops to part of the biological Discourse. These seven tasks, “significance, practices (activities), identities, relationships, politics, connections, and sign systems and knowledge,” allow us to analyze an artifact of a Discourse, like the IMRaD cheat sheet (Fiano 66). For example, sign systems and knowledge can be how an artifact may have some keywords or special terms that only those in the Discourse understand.

Though Gee claims that one is either in a Discourse or they are not, he does go in depth with a strategy that one could adopt and enter a new secondary Discourse: apprenticeship. Gee’s idea of an apprenticeship shows how

“we acquire these [Discourses] fluently to the extent that we are given access to these institutions and allowed apprenticeships within them” (Gee 8).

Eliza’s growth as a reader in biology acts as a kind of apprenticeship into the Discourse of biology and more specifically the Discourse of reading and writing biology. Eliza’s freshman and sophomore year was mostly factual reading from the textbook. Haas claims that “students need a metaunderstanding of the motives of science and scientists and the history of scientific concepts” (Haas 45) which really compares with Gee’s idea of meta-knowledge.

Gee’s meta-knowledge makes “you better able to manipulate your first language” to adapt and develop a new basic understanding of a topic or Discourse, much like Haas’s metaunderstanding (Gee 12). Haas explains how in her freshman year, Eliza treated her textbook readings as autonomous texts meaning that she read it with not much deeper meaning than just the facts and an occasional critical thinking problem where higher mental ability is required. Because of these autonomous texts, that’s how Eliza developed as a reader. She read to memorize rather than to learn the concepts themselves.

Entering a Discourse

The process in which one enters a Discourse, an apprenticeship, is one that involves changing of your skills and abilities over time. Eliza’s reading ability did change for the better during her sophomore year. “Reading was always done with highlighter in hand, for instance, and her notes…were labeled and organized” (Haas 62). Though her style of reading didn’t change too much, she did have much more of it which meant a lot more organization was needed to keep track of it. Just like how the Discourse of science or biology is very organized, you can see how Eliza begins her emergence into the Discourse as she becomes more organized, even if it’s just with her notes.

“Eliza seemed to view her own research paper and the articles she read as unconnected to the field of biology as she construed it: autonomous information embodied in textbooks, which she required to learn” (Haas 63).

Little did she know that in the next couple years that this would change and her reports and classes would matter and make more sense along the lines of biology. As She became more organized with her reading, her writing becomes more organized as well. we do not know for sure, but we can assume that her reports were written in a style or format similar to the IMRaD format.

The first section of the IMRaD format begins “by explaining to your readers what problem you researched and why the research is necessary” (IMRaD Cheat Sheet 1). Right off the bat, the reader knows exactly where the paper is going without the writer blatantly saying “this paper will be about…”

The methods section of the report is all about the procedure and what you did in the experiment. Readers often skip this section because they may already know what has been done, or they just want the results, however, still an important section and component of the scientific report.

The next section is the results. There are two subheadings: report and comment. The report section is self-explanatory; you report what happened. The comment section is where you comment on the results by trying to find an explanation for the trends and what they overall suggest.

Discussion is the final section in the IMRaD report where you

“summarize the main findings of the study,” “connect these findings to other research,” and “suggest additional, future research” (IMRaD Cheat Sheet 1).

Eliza’s change in writing to be more conceptual and descriptive would apply to the discussion section of the IMRaD format of a scientific paper. As an artifact, the Cheat Sheet should show examples of relationships from Gee’s building tasks. In order to be an artifact, the work must seek out or enact relationships with others, or in this case other works. The discussion of a scientific paper in the IMRaD format is where the writer will “connect these findings to other research” and compare them to other’s works for accuracy and trends (IMRaD Cheat Sheet 1). By doing so, they can have a fresh new look on their data trends and learn whether their data is correct, wrong, or open up new opportunities for new experiments that can better aide the human understanding of science.

Junior year of college was the beginning of Eliza’s apprenticeship in the Discourse of social and natural sciences. The summer after her sophomore year she attained a work study job growing and developing protein mutants in a lab for one of her professors, a scientist. Eliza working for a scientist is eerily similar to olden times where there’s a master and an apprentice that learns from them. Like Gee’s idea of an apprenticeship

“Discourses are not mastered by overt instruction…, but by enculturation (apprenticeship) into social practices through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have already mastered the Discourse” (Gee 7).

Eliza writes “when I need help or have problems, she guides me through it. Like an apprenticeship,” and this experience marks the true breakthrough-like beginning of her emergence into the Discourse of biology and science (Haas 64). Even better, Eliza was able to gain yet another outlook and point-of-view on the Discourse from a graduate student of biology.

This outlook helped Eliza’s reading skills improve.

“Eliza now exhibited a range of reading strategies — skimming, reading selectively, moving back and forth through texts, reading for different purposes at different times” (Haas 64).

Rather than reading to memorize like previously, Eliza began to read with a purpose. Like in the IMRaD format, the methods section is normally skipped or at least skimmed which exemplifies selective reading, such like the strategy that Eliza practiced in her junior year and beyond. The organization throughout the Discourse of science allows for such skimming. If you know where what you’re looking for and you know where to find it, the process will be very efficient when compared to searching through numerous papers and maybe finding something just similar to what you need.

Senior year was very new and different to Eliza. Haas describes it by saying “she has exams now in only two of her courses, and other assignments included critical presentations of research articles and critiques of others’ interpretations of similar articles” (Haas 65). She now not only had to have scholarly opinions of her own, but she now had to be able to refute or agree with others’ opinions and be able to back it with increasingly specific context, concepts, and critical thinking.

Eliza isn’t in the Discourse when she graduates solely because she hasn’t been practicing biology on her own. Once she lands a job in that field, she will be within that specific Discourse. Haas’s study doesn’t record anything further in Eliza’s career path, but like how she changed and adapted due to her apprenticeship, she may as well moved on and succeeded in becoming fully fluent in the Discourse and maybe having apprentices of her own. Or this small chunk of her life may not be nearly enough enculturation for her to enter the very efficient and organized Discourse of science.

Gee’s paper about Discourses revolves around the fact that an individual cannot simply “pick up” or join a Discourse instantly. It is rather a process that takes time and guidance, like an apprenticeship. Haas’s analysis of how Eliza adapted throughout her years in college to become more organized and precise is a perfect example of how the Discourse of science is. The IMRaD format is a great artifact to analyze to see how the Discourse is like. It is the epitome of organization and efficiency. Scientists can easily locate what they need with little reading (mostly skimming) and get on with their experiments. This Discourse is also very close and connected as others continuously work together, compare works, and build off each other’s works. Much like how Eliza and her supervisor interacted. Overall, the Discourse of science can only be entered through an apprenticeship that not only teaches, but forces you to practice and use organization and efficiency skills to better your work and converse with others.

Works Cited

Fiano, Darcy A. “Primary Discourse and Expressive Oral Language in a Kindergarten Student.” Reading Research Quarterly 49.1 (2014): 61–84. Print.

Gee, James P. “Literacy, Discourse, and Linguistics: Introduction” Journal of Education 171. 1 (1989): 5–17. Print.

Haas, Christina. “Learning to Read Biology: One Student’s Rhetorical Development in College.” Written Communication 11.1 (1994): 43–84. Print.

“IMRAD Cheat Sheet.” Carnegie Mellon University. Global Communication Center, 3 Aug. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Meadows, A.J. “The Scientific Paper as an Archaeological Artefact.” Journal of Information Science 11.1 (1985): 27–29. Print.