An Analysis Of English Science Research Papers From The Perspective Of Accuracy, Clarity,Conciseness And Cohesion

Researchers all over the world work to discover problems and solve them, ormake new discoveries. Their findings are shared in journals through English, thelingua franca.In China, the central government and local governments sponsor scientists andprofessors by different types of grants. That has generated a growing number ofpublications each year. Some institutions even use the number of published papers inforeign journals as the criteria for evaluating researchers and also for their promotion.In spite of the increasing number of published papers, they still have troubleexpressing in English. It is said each year some papers are returned by foreignjournals just because of their English. So there is a good reason for studying theirpapers.In this study, the author uses100English science research papers written byChinese researchers with English revisions by English editors and they have all beenpublished in journals. Then, the author analyzes the samples in terms of accuracy,clarity, conciseness and cohesion. Research questions are proposed as follows:(1)what are the proportions of problems in terms of accuracy, clarity, conciseness andcohesion?(2) In which aspect, errors and inappropriateness are more likely to bemade in terms of accuracy, clarity, conciseness and cohesion?(3) What are thepotential reasons for the problems in the research papers?The research contains both quantitative method by analyzing and presenting thefrequency of each kind of error and inappropriateness in terms of accuracy, clarity,conciseness and cohesion, and qualitative method by analyzing the data and results.The results show that the proportion of accuracy problems ranks highest,79.69ï¼…,while proportions of problems in clarity, conciseness and cohesion are much lowerwith3.35ï¼…,7.66ï¼…,9.30ï¼…, respectively. Accuracy errors like wrong article use andimproper word use (adjectives, nouns, adverbs), account for30.64ï¼…, and39.55ï¼…, larger than other kinds; in terms of clarity, problems of omitting necessary words takethe largest proportion of68.67ï¼…; in terms of conciseness, redundancy problems andwordiness account for46.32ï¼…and40.79ï¼…, larger than inappropriateness of otherkinds, and in terms of cohesion, problems made by omitting conjunctions take thehighest proportion,48.76ï¼….