COMPARING THE RHETORICAL STRATEGIES IN THE RESEARCH ARTICLES OF TWO COMPUTER SCIENCE JOURNALS

Recently, the development in the academia necessitates the English teachers to teach research article writing. While the grammatical elements are constant, regular and predictable, the rhetorical strategies of research article writing are more complicated. Not only the technical content is difficult to decipher, the rhetorical strategies used in research article writing is also unlike the regular writing for social communication. Rhetorical strategies in the research articles are distinctive and atypical from the conventional academic essays. Therefore, even though writing models are there to be used as guidelines, language teachers often faced with difficulties in recognizing and valuing the rhetorical strategies particularly in extracting the representation of the exact practice in technical disciplines. Furthermore, previous studies have indicated that rhetorical strategies in research article writing may differ in practice between target journals and discipline hence the existing writing guidelines must be imparted with care. While regular writers are aware of the different structure requirement set out by the various journals, the novice writers are untrained and unacquainted on the different requirements therefore more evidence is needed in pointing out the exact differences. Taking heed from the problems, this paper looks at the rhetorical strategies in the research article introductions of two journals in Computer science discipline. A total of 52 research article introductions were analyzed using Swales (2004) model. Findings shows that the research articles in both journals conform to CARS model in establishing the territory of the research, establishing the niche of the study and presenting positive justification for the research. However, the results indicated that differences between the two groups are in presenting the present work and indicating the research gap. In conclusion, despite the existing writing models available as guidelines, the teaching and learning of research article writing must also be responsive to the requirement of the target journal so that the writing would be at par with the ways of writing by the research community pursued.