Revised Blog Assignment

In the speech “The route to a sustainable future”, the speaker, Alex Steffen, gave his lecture focusing on one word－sustainability. He discusses the waste created by humanity and unfair usage of natural resources to reach through his point about why we need “world changing”. World changing is a bit of new service we adopt to change the future, for examples, tools, models and ideas.  He gives two solutions that researchers are still studying for in order to reach this goal. One is building up a bright green city by enhancing the living quality and the population density in a city such as Vancouver. Another solution is about implementation for collaboration, it is particularly talking about once people have their chances to cooperate and innovate, and distinct solutions will come out. In the end, the author believes that one day the humanity will make the world better through the ideas of world changing.

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

After perusing 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 three aspects that I think are different between these two articles in the following paragraphs.

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. Also, we can know that the author 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 be used 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.

Style

There are colloquialisms and casual expressions being used in Azuma (1997). For instance, there is a paragraph using the sentence like "Why the hell am I doing this?"(P.2, 3). Also, other examples like “I would have no regrets because I had given it my best shot and was not able to make it” (P.3) and “Don't take them for granted.”(P.4). 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, 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. Azuma (1997, P.3). I think the statement is too lengthy. The author also uses the words “good” and “bad”, those are all belong 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 is obvious that the structure used by Azuma is informal as compared to Xia et al. In my opinion, the structure and the word used in the article are simpler and easier. The reason 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.

As compared, it is obvious 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, as formal academic writing, there is a conclusion and some references of this literature included.

In a nutshell, after comparing three aspects between these two articles, I could easily tell whether this is an academic writing or informal writings. Furthermore, I learned that the structure can be varies by different intentions. Also by recognizing who are the main audiences for the article matter the writing too.

 1.

This is a thesis.

Reference:

Aloe, A. M. (2009). A partial effect size for the synthesis of multiple regression models (Order No. 3373964). 

Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text; ProQuest Education Journals. 

2.

This is an article.

Reference:

Allore, H., Tinetti, M. E., Araujo, K. L. B., Hardy, S., & Peduzzi, P. (2005). A case study found that a regression tree outperformed multiple linear regression in predicting the relationship between impairments and social and productive activities scores.Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 58(2), 154-161.

3.  

This is a book.

Reference:

Lin, C. (2009). Evaluating the transactional theory of coping as a psychosocial adaptation model for taiwanese with spinal cord injury: A multiple regression analysis