Compare the differences between Azuma (1997) and Xia et al (2008)

After perused these two articles, I found the authors of these two articles used distinct writing skills. For myself, I found reading Azuma (1997) is easier than reading Xia et al (2008), and I also observed many other differences between these two articles. I will show-Style, Rhetorical Structure and Audience- those three aspects that I think are different between these two articles in the following paragraphs.

Style

        There are colloquialisms and casual expressions being used in Azuma (1997). For instances, there is a paragraph using the sentence like "Why the hell am I doing this?" Also, other examples like “I would have no regrets because I had given it my best shot and was not able to make it” and “Don't take them for granted”. These three sentences are using colloquial words and they are informal. Furthermore, the writer often uses “I” as a subject, which would only appear in the informal writing. There is a paragraph about “I got the Ph.D. because I wanted to get a research position after leaving graduate school. I wanted to work with the state of the art and extend it. I did not want to bring yesterday's technology one step closer to tomorrow. I wanted a job that would I find interesting, challenging and stimulating”, I think the statement is too lengthy. The author also uses the words “good” and “bad”, those are all belongs to casual expressions. In contrast, in the composition Xia et al (2008), the writer states his points confidently and offers his argument firm support.

Rhetorical Structure

It can tell that the structure used by Azuma is informal as compared to Xia et al. In my opinion, the reason why the structure and the word used in the article are simpler and easier is because this article is written to help prospective or novice graduate students as it states in the beginning that this article is a guidebook. Also, I think this article is more casual because the writer provides many experiences, resolutions to the problem that the reader might face and even tells the reader what is going to talk about in the next section.

As compared, it is obviously that Xia et al (2008) is a business academic literature. The article starts with an abstract that states what the article is writing about and what the main result is, also, there is an introduction to let the reader know about the topic, the reason for the author to write this article and how the author completed this research. For the following several sections, the author talks about some models and means researched by others, the advantages of using those models and how are they different from the previous literature. After the discussion of methods and means, the author gives some examples to support the assumption. In the last paragraph, there is a conclusion and some references of this literature as the formal academic writing will do at the end.

Audience

These two articles focus on distinct audiences. For Azuma (1997), as the author said in the beginning paragraph-this is a computer science graduate school survival guide-we can affirm that the audiences are more general audience and are focus on those people who have decided to study in the field of computer science. The author himself is already a doctor, so the audiences can get to know more about this field and can be well prepared after finishing this article. What's more, the writer answer some of the complicated problems that the audiences might face in their future road, it will make the audiences feel less stressful and less confused.

The audiences of Xia et al (2008) differ from those of Azuma (1997). The audiences of this article might use to study in this field and might be familiar with the content that means the audiences can be the students, theorists, professors or practitioners working related to the supply chain management. While reading Xia et al (2008), the readers could compare with their own methods or means and gain additional professional knowledge.

In a nutshell, after comparing three aspects between these two articles, I found that depends on several aspects of every writing can tell whether this is an academic writing or informal writings. I also learned that the structure can be varies by different intentions and recognized who are the audiences for the article matter the writing too.