ESCI 325: Fundamentals of Ecology Fall Term, 2024
During this course, you will be asked to complete four short writing assignments. Each assignment is intended to familiarize you with a different type of scientific writing task.
First Writing Assignment
Title: Writing an abstract
Topic: Kettlewell, H.B.D.. 1955. Selection Experiments on Industrial Melanism in the Lepidoptera. Heredity 9:323-342. (on reserve in the Huxley Library)
Other Papers on Reserve: Selected Chapters from A Short Guide to Writing About Science by David Porush (on reserve in the Huxley Library)
Purpose: To familiarize you with the structure of a scientific paper and to have you summarize the content of a paper efficiently.
Audience: Other scientists
Process: Read the paper carefully. You might find it helpful to discuss the paper with other students to make sure you understand the key points. Break the paper down into the four main sections (Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion). Summarize the key points in each section. Initially, you might do this as an outline without being concerned about format. When you are sure you have all the important points down, transform your notes into a coherent document. Revise it again and again and again. Then revise it again. Strive for efficiency and clarity. Reading your paper OUT LOUD is often helpful. Reading your paper OUT LOUD to a dog, especially a retriever of some sort (Golden or Labrador), is often particularly helpful. They provide great feedback at this point. I've never found cats to be at all helpful for this. Then again, I’ve never found cats to useful for much of anything.
Format: Formatting issues are always a pain. I am much more interested in content, organization and clarity (see below). Nevertheless, failure to pay attention to formatting details can interfere with comprehension. It also tends to make me surly. When you leave here and get a job – this happens – a report full of typos, grammatical errors and misspelled words tells your boss that you are sloppy and lazy. Is this really the message you want to convey with your documents? Get used to paying attention to these details.
The assignment must be typed. As with all assignments you turn in, it should
be double-spaced with one-inch margins with no less than a 12-point font. All
of this makes it much easier for me to read. It must be written using standard
written English. Go have a chat with the folks in the Writing Center if you
need help with this. If you are not using some sort of word processing package,
you are making your life much too difficult. Run the spell-checking function
before you turn it in! Papers with grammatical errors or spelling errors
will be returned ungraded. When they are ready for my review, you can turn them
in again but you will be penalized for a late
assignment (5%/day). I AM serious about this!
In the interest of saving a few trees, you are encouraged to print out this assignment, and all others, on previously used paper. By this I mean a piece of paper with something else printed on the other side. I don’t care what color the paper is and I don’t care if the other side has an advertisement for a used waterbed on it.
Evaluation: Abstracts are short. Shoot for about 250-300 words.
Organization (25 pts.) An abstract should be organized just like a scientific paper. The abstract should not be broken up into discrete sections with headings but there should be a recognizable Introduction (with a statement of the hypothesis to be tested), Methods, Results and Discussion sections.
Completeness (50 pts.) Do each of these sections tell me what I need to know?
Clarity (25 pts.) Is each section clear and concise?
Submit your homework assignment via email directly to to the Teaching
Assistant for this class Colby Rand at: randc@wwu.edu THE SUBJECT LINE OF YOUR
EMAIL SHOULD INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING TEXT AND NOTHING ELSE!
ESCI325: Homework #1
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