Deconstructing Research Articles: How to Read and Write a Research Paper

Expand your toolkit of academic skills with National Tsing Hua University

Rigorous research is useless unless it can be clearly communicated and successfully interpreted. That makes academic literacy a vital skill for researchers working in any discipline.

On this eight-week course from National Tsing Hua University, you’ll hone your writing, reading, and critical thinking capacities. You’ll learn how to construct and deconstruct an academic article so that the findings of your research reach as many people as possible.

Learn how research articles are structured and organised

Although different disciplines have different conventions for research articles, all share the same core structure and sections. Being familiar with this common structure will make both reading and writing research articles easier.

This generalist course will draw on examples of articles from a wide variety of areas and disciplines. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of how researchers present their data and organise ideas within an article.

Practise writing fluently, descriptively, and analytically

Once you’ve understood the structure and sections of an academic article, you’ll begin training yourself to write your own.

You’ll develop strategies for maintaining flow in academic writing, presenting and commenting on data, and telling a compelling story through research.

Get practical guidance and feedback for your own research articles

Throughout the eight weeks of this course, you’ll get feedback from other peers and practical guidance to help hone your own writing and research.

Covering introductions, literature reviews, methodology sections, and article abstracts, the course will walk you step-by-step through the article writing process.

You’ll finish the course with a toolbox of writing tips and a deeper critical understanding of academic research as a whole.

This course is designed for anyone required to read or write academic articles for their studies or work.

It will be particularly suitable for graduate students and early career researchers.

• Research and research writing
• Welcome to the Course
• Features of research writing
• Considerations in research writing & Effective research writing
• [Instruction] on self-selected articles in your field
• Structure and organization
• IMRD structure
• General to specific pattern
• Problem – solution text
• IMRD and its variations
• FLOW: Let’s read for writing
• Old-to-new information flow
• How to maintain the flow
• Data and Materials in writing
• 7 Moves in Methods
• Common phrases in Methods section
• Condensed and extended styles
• Data & Results
• Data commentary
• Elements of data commentary
• Each Elements illustrated
• Introduction and Discussion: From descriptive to analytical writing
• Introduction and discussion
• Moves in Discussion
• Tense in literature
• CARS model
• CARS Model : Tell a good story in research writing
• CARS model
• CARS examples
• Abstract: The last ingredient
• Some basics
• Abstract
• Recap and Warm-up