Though graduate students may have read hundreds of journal articles, they are typically reading for content rather than to understand the construction of the writing. This relatively simple worksheet guides students to notice the way a journal article in their field is constructed. Using this worksheet, students consider questions like:
How many paragraphs long is the introductory section?
Does the introduction include an explicit statement of purpose?
If the article includes a typical methods section, about how many sub-headings or sub-sections are included?
If you pick a random page, how many citations do you count on the page?
If you pick a random page, how many sentences are in the longest paragraph?
 
This worksheet was designed by Dr. Rick Fisher. © 2024. It is shared under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 Creative Commons License.