Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Project Description:
Project 2 introduces students to the expectations of graduate-level academic writing in the U.S.
through a close analysis of the conventions of scholarly writing in the disciplines.
In preparation for Project 2 and for academic and professional writing career success, this
assignment requires that students become familiar with discipline-specific writing as it is
presented in professional style manuals, understood by established department at Mason,
prescribed in guidelines for publication in field-specific journals, and put forward by current
graduate student writers in different fields.
Students will write two drafts of each assignment. The final drafts will be complied and
presented as an online handbook for international graduate student writers in the disciplines,
displayed in the final digital portfolio.
Write a paper summarizing and explaining these findings. Dont just report answers to these
questions. Explain what this information suggests about being a scholar in your field.
Journal Analysis (2 double-spaced pages)
This component will require a close analysis of a scholarly academic journal in the students
discipline. Students will include a visual aid to show findings or their analysis and write a data
commentary on the basic features of their chosen journal as well as other information that is
interesting, relevant, or significant to the students discipline. At the end of the paper, students
should answer the following question: What does this academic journal suggest about the
writing conventions and expectations of my field? Some of the important data collected may be:
1) How are key words and key terms carried throughout the text?
2) How formal/informal is the language in the scholarly article? Please include three to
four sentence-level analyses to support your claim.
3) What specialized vocabulary is used? Please include three or four word-level analyses to
support your claim.
4) What do you notice about verb tense and verb forms?
5) What other language features do you notice?