OCG533, Fall 2001
Homework assignment 13, due 12 October 2001
Effective paragraphs III
Let’s do some real research on writing scientific paragraphs. The question to address is whether the structure of scientific paragraphs matters, that is, whether paragraphs with complex, difficult sequences of sentences are noticeably harder to understand than paragraphs with the classical, straightforward structures we have seen in class. To address this question, I suggest that each of you find two or more scientific paragraphs (published or unpublished) that you find hard to understand, two or more than you find easy to understand, compare their structures in the way we have done in the last two assignments, and see whether the hard paragraphs have more complex structures than the easy paragraphs. Now, I understand that variables other than structure can contribute to comprehensibility, such as lengths of sentences, the technical nature of the article, and the choice of words. To remove these other variables, you might take your paragraphs from the same article. That way, the same person wrote all the paragraphs. If you can’t find clear and difficult paragraphs in the same article, you may have to draw them from different articles. On Friday we will compare results and see if any general principles emerge. The main hypotheses we will check will be (a) classical structures make paragraphs easier to understand, (b) structure has no detectable effect on comprehensibility, and (c) this experiment is too simple to yield any useful conclusions. I surely hope the answer isn’t (c)!