My first draft about the two assigned articles for this week talks about their structures. After reading chapter 7 in our books this morning on what the overall structure of our papers should conform to, I got a clearer understanding on the purpose of our assignment. The structures of the different sections play a big role in the flow, clarity and what we want our reader to know is important. In this draft, I would like to compare the introductions of both of the articles. Before doing that, I would like to point out the biggest difference between these articles. The article from the Ecology Matters journal is about an experiment performed by the researchers that includes a materials and methods section. The authors of the other article (the Biological Invasions publication) have not performed an experiment but rather have formulated a hypothesis, collected information from other articles and tried to "answer" their hypothesis. Therefore these articles will have different structures because of the underlying purpose of each. However, since I am comparing introductions, I am going to assume that they are similar since all introductions serve the same the purpose such as to contain the background information, state the hypothesis and introduce the purpose. Some things that our textbook points out that sound be included in the structure of the introduction are: funnel-shape organization with the known, first paragraph to be the background, the second to last paragraph to be unknown and the last paragraph to be the question/purpose and maybe the significance.
The first paragraph of the introduction in the article from the Ecology Matters journal starts with very general background information such as why one should study non-native species, funnels to a more specific background such as why/how this is being studied and by whom. The second to last paragraph contains phrases that are lead to be the unknown such as "should be." The structure of the last paragraph contains the the purpose and the hypothesis. However, it doesn't contain the experimental approach which I am going to assume is probably in the methods section. I liked the structure of their introduction but it would be helpful to know how they approached their question.
The first paragraph of the introduction of the other article also begins off broad and then the subsequent paragraphs become more specific with information that pertains to their research. It is interesting how their first sentence underlies their purpose just like in the other article. The second to last paragraph doesn't contain any unknowns which is probably because this is not an experiment. The last paragraph is very short and contains only the experimental approach.
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