Writing Across Disciplines: Expanding a Writer's Potential
Writing through disciplines is essential for developing a writer's potential in areas such as critical thought, analysis, and broadening the possibilities for gaining information through data integration. Furthermore, the practice familiarizes an individual with various writing skills from various fields of education. For example, by defining a certain subject of interest and investigating how it is discussed by various scholars, a student not only studies the various details but also the manner in which respective topics can be addressed. This paper, therefore, delves into writing across disciplines by focusing on the topic of marriage as presented in different journal articles in the educational fields including humanities, social, and natural sciences.
Identifying Discipline-specific Articles
Besides the clues in the journal titles in relation to the topic marriage that is of interest for purposes of this paper, there are two additional ways of telling that an article could belong to a respective field of interest for a study. These are Key words and the abstract. For illustration purposes, humanities disciplines while addressing the topic marriage would be interested in certain specific words such as gender which relatively denotes both men and women where marriage could possibly come in aspects of historical associations and statistics. In regards to applied sciences, specific search words would include marital satisfaction, marital therapy, and family problem-solving approaches, which mean using the knowledge of humanities and social sciences to intervene in family challenges hence the application. On the same note, expected key words that would form the basis of writing social science journal are the interaction and correlation among economic contexts affecting couples hence details such as marriage rates, demographics, welfare states, and trends. Whereas key words suggest what to expect within a journal article, the opportunity to go through an abstract solves the problems of further searches. An abstract just as it is called summarizes the contents of the journal article from the introduction to conclusion. The audience, thus, readily grasps what is to be found in the paper. Knowledge of what the respective aforementioned fields would be interested in while discussing the topic marriage then gives one an opportunity to know that he or she has landed on the right journal.
Organizational Patterns of Journal Articles
Responding to the general organizational pattern of each article, it is noted that all the three are organized in ways to present the issues regarding marriage by settling on specific patterns. For example, while reading in between the lines of each of the respective articles, it is clear that the authors of the articles are concerned with highlighting the contents of their articles through stating what they have covered within the papers in nutshell as can be inferred from the abstract, they each state the problem of the study and provide the rationale for the study in the introduction part of the article. Preceding the introduction is the approach taken to solve the stated problem or problems hence the exemplary explanation of the methodology and the materials used. Subsequently, the authors present to their audience what they have found out in the results and analysis section and eventually help the reader to digest the findings by writing the clear and easy to read discussions for an effective conceptualization of the information. Last parts identified to be constituting the general organizational pattern are necessities of including those who contributed to the completion of the study as revealed in the acknowledgment section and referring the ready in case of further need to research by noting down all the used sources from which information is drawn in the work cited page. Additional and necessary information such as figures and tables are included in the appendices section.
Differences in Organizational Patterns
On the other hand, comparison and contrast of the three articles point out certain differences in view of the general organization. For instance, while the articles comprise the highlighted sections, the manners in which they are presented to the audience significantly differ. The main difference is that the articles "Marriage Formation in Context: Four Decades in Comparative Perspective," by Geist and "Effect of family problem-solving on marital satisfaction," by Ahmadi et al., are scientific journals, which follow a specific scientific organizational pattern while the journal "Problems in the pipeline: Gender, marriage, and fertility in the ivory tower," by Wolfinger, Mary, and Marc is a humanities article which does not follow the scientific pattern yet the organization is made sequential to permit easy reading and flow of the information.
Lessons for Effective Writing
Concentrating much on the journal article "Marriage Formation in Context: Four Decades in Comparative Perspective," by Geist, there are several lessons that a writer can learn. The lessons emerge inform of strategies that constitute good and effective writing. First, a writer learns that it is very important to identify and understand the particular audience to whom the writing is meant. Secondly, a writer learns that an effective writing requires detailed information that is achievable through wider and thorough research of the subjected prompting the writing. Third, the information should be presented in a clear and concise language that is easy to read and understand. Finally, a writer must know and understand his or her field in order to follow a recommended organizational pattern to meet the expected standards of review that save time by not creating room for revisions.
Purposes and Styles of Writing
Correspondingly, the purpose of writing changes across the three disciplines in aspects of authors' intentions. In particular, Geist in his article "Marriage Formation in Context: Four Decades in Comparative Perspective," intends to generally inform the audience of the fact that marriage perceptions are changing with time through conducting comparative analysis. Wolfinger, Mary, and Marc in their article "Problems in the pipeline: Gender, marriage, and fertility in the ivory tower," write with the purpose of providing explanations for certainly observed gender disparities. Nevertheless, Ahmadi et al., in their article "Effect of family problem-solving on marital satisfaction," write with the purpose of persuading the audience on the effectiveness or rather the importance of solving problems among families faced with marital satisfaction challenges.
Subsequently, the purpose for writing the articles dictated the styles, the language, and the formats which the authors used. For example, the authors for the natural science, social science, and humanities articles Ahmadi et al., Geist, and Wolfinger, Mary, and Marc respectively use a writing style that relies on words that align to respective fields of interest Narrowing down to language, it is a gain vivid that all the authors employ proper language that is simple to read and understand. In regards to format, the two science articles take on a scientific format which includes key sections like abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, acknowledgment, and works cited. On the contrary, the humanity article has the American Psychology Association format (APA) sequentially structured to achieve order and flow of information.
Conclusion
To sum up, writing across disciples significantly builds a student's capacity for learning. The exercise fosters the opportunities to become effective at conducting research to identify the required study material. Scrutiny of the identified materials, ability to integrate the information and finally present the conceptualized information through identifying respective organizational patterns, the difference in the patterns, the purposes of writing, variations in styles, language use and format collectively contribute to the learning process and achievement of the desired objectives.
Works Cited
Ahmadi, Khodabakhsh, et al. "Effect of family problem-solving on marital satisfaction." Journal of applied sciences 10.8 (2010): 682-687.
Geist, Claudia. "Marriage Formation in Context: Four Decades in Comparative Perspective." Social Sciences 6.1 (2017): 9.
Wolfinger, Nicholas H., Mary Ann Mason, and Marc Goulden. "Problems in the pipeline: Gender, marriage, and fertility in the ivory tower." The Journal of Higher Education 79.4 (2008): 388-405.
