Academic Writing

Part 1:

The Writing Process
which the interviewer can later process. As King states: ‘gathering a large volume
of cases does not guarantee the credibility of a study’ (King, 2004: 16). Most writers
agree that two one-hour interviews per day are effectively the maximum for one
interviewer, given the time needed for preparation and subsequent processing.
Moreover, if audio or video recording is used, there is more content to be analysed,
for instance in terms of facial expression. The analysis of one interview can take up
to three days’ work. In order to answer the question, clearly much depends on the
research topic and the time the researcher has available.
3 Practice B
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Read the next section on ‘Possible ethical issues raised by this kind of research’.
Decide how it could be improved, and rewrite it in the box below.
Any organisation that allows researchers to interview its employees runs a big
risk. The interviewees may complain about the boss or about other workers.
Another danger for the researcher is that employees may feel obliged to give
positive answers to questions instead of their honest opinions, because they
are afraid of their bosses finding out what they really think. Also, the reputation
of the organisation may suffer. I believe that researchers should make sure that
this does not happen. They must make it clear why they are doing the research,
and keep everyone’s name secret by using false names. If this is not done,
there’s a good chance that the validity of the whole research project will be
threatened.

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4 Proofreading
Proofreading means checking your work for small errors that may make it more difficult for
the reader to understand exactly what you want to say. If a sentence has only one error:
She has no enough interpersonal skills to handle different relationships . . .
it is not difficult to understand, but if there are multiple errors, even though they are all quite
minor, the effect is very confusing:
A american senate once say: ‘Truth is frist casualty off war.’
Clearly, you should aim to make your meaning as clear as possible. Note that computer
spellcheckers do not always help you, since they may ignore a word that is spelt correctly but
is not the word you meant to use:
Tow factors need to be considered . . .
5 Practice C
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Examples of the most common types of error in student writing are shown below. In
each case, underline the error and correct it.
(i)