Language Analysis

The article that I want to analysis is Effects of Classroom Context Variables on

High School Students Judgments of the Acceptability and Likelihood of Cheating

which is written by Tamera B. Murdock, Angela Miller, and Julie Kohlhardt (2014).

The reason that I choose this article to analyze is to learn how to write a research paper

in a formal language in my discipline.

The authors used we to represent themselves, such as we sought to clarify the

mechanisms and we focused our studies on high school students because

(Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2004, p.765). Auothors use we to represent their idea

is want to make their idea more clearly, and maybe this idea have not been researched

before. The authors used the first-person pronoun, we, to express their idea more

directly to the readers.

Next, in the article the authors used passive voice to show their methodology, for

example, as shown in Table 3 and as can be seen in Table 3 (Murdock, Miller,

& Kohlhardt, 2004, p.770). They wanted to show the methodology in a more clearly

way to the readers. Also, they wanted to show the information to the readers but not

making them to read it. Thus, choosing passive voice can make the article more

academic.

The authors used indirect questions in the paper, such as a mechanism to

explain why some classroom (Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2004, p.774).

Indirect questions can let the readers know the direction of the study. However, they
also used direct question in the article, why would students approach a teacher for

help (Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2004, p.775), it showed the specific part that

they were trying to research on. Both direct and indirect questions can point out the

ideas of the research to the readers.

In this article, the authors did not split the infinitives by adding an adverb between

to and the infinitive, they always put the adverb in front of the sentence or after the

infinitives, for instance, empirical attempts to understand cheating fall largely

(Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2004, p.765), theoretically, we believed that these

variables (Murdock, Miller, & Kohlhardt, 2004, p.767). This is the most common

way to write in the article, it makes the information more persuasive, and the readers

can notice what the authors wanted to emphasize in the research.

In conclusion, for writing articles in my discipline, it is significant to write an

article that makes the article clearly, academically and persuasively. Because of this, it

can make the article logical and understandable. Logic is the most important part. Using

appropriate academic language can help readers understand the article more effectively.
References

MurdockB.Tamera, MillerAngela, & KohlhardtJulie. (2004). Effects of Classroom

Context Variables on High School Students Judgments of the Acceptability and
Likelihood of Cheating. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(4), 765-777.
SwalesM.John, & FeakB.Christine. (2012). Academic Writing for Graduate Students.
Michigan: University of Michigan Press.