Hedging in Data Commentaries

Dear Professor,

I noticed that the results of regular exam and makeup exam were quite different last time. The average score of students during a regular exam was 86 in comparison with the 72 score of makeup exam. The discrepancy between both exams may be explained by various factors. One of the most significant difference was an administered time. The regular exam took place on Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. in contrast with the makeup exam which took place on Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. The results may be explained by the level of attention on different day and at different time. It seems like the middle day of workweek might be more appropriate to retain attention of students as well as the evening time. Friday afternoon does not seems appropriate at all, because students are already concentrated for upcoming weekend. Another factors could be a number of students in the class and the room environment. In the higher concentration of peers, students might feel more comfortable. In the case of makeup exams is interesting to note the omission of board examles. All these factors may play a role in the student’s results and should be taken into account.

Best Regards

Information flow

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the story of King Lear and his daughters was popular. By the time Elizabeth died, at least a dozen available books offered the story to anyone wishing to read it. Making the story a simple narrative that stated an obvious moral, however in most of these stories the characters were undeveloped. When he began work on Lear, perhaps his greatest tragedy, Shakespeare must have had several version of this story available to him. Even though the characters were based on the stock figures of legend, he turned them into credible human beings with complex motives.

Graph description

The graph shows a circulation of people in DC metro during a day. The amount of people using a metro spikes two times a day, at 8 am and 6 pm. It points out the time people commute to work and back home. After the morning peak, occurs a steep decrease till 10 am and after begins a slow rise till 12 pm. Between 11 pm and 2 pm, there is a plateau, which could be due to a lunch break people have at work. Between 2 pm and 4 pm, the number of passengers falling to 100 000 people by 4 pm. The second rise of a day occurs after 4 pm when the number of people soars to a peak of 400 000 at 6 pm. After this time, begins the steady decline in number of people using the DC metro.

Methodology Section

This research project is going to investigate the elderly Chinese living in the US to find out whether the ,,prevailing myths“ that Chinese communities would always look after their elderly, is still truthful. The subjects were found due to contacts on friends and friends of friends in the local Chinese community. Primary were used face-to-face interviews to ensure one-on-one situation. The purpose was to assure a private mood without a family members, to have a truthful information about their feelings and experiences. There were not any significant problems and interview method were usually quickly approved. Only about ten persons have been interviewed, because there were not enough time. Not all of contacts worked out and also there were some refusals. We are aware that ten interviewees is not enough for statistical analysis so this was just a small-scale pilot study. Every interview last about an hour. Always not all questions were used, because data could be based on semi-structured interviews. The strong aspect of interviews was the possibility to chose a language for the interviewees. They could chose the language the most comfortable for them, like English, Mandarin or Taiwanese. Due to this aspect was possible to achieve a desired outcome.

Literature Review of Introductions

Recently, there has been growing interest in examining of academic article introductions. Research area of linguistic is broad and expanding in last decade, especially with the focus on structure of academic articles. A central issue of the research is a linguistic examination of academic articles with focus on introductions. The CARS Model is a central theoretical framework of linguistic research focusing on introductions, because provides a comprehensive steps to examine single steps of introduction with a logic order. However the CARS Model may be problematic to apply in non-English countries or in non-humanities sciences. This article investigate a structure of academic introductions in a different languages and different areas to determine where the CARS model is relevant and where is not.

The main theoretical framework used in researches had been a CARS Model. Few researches had been done during the nineties, but majority of researches were conducted after 2004, when the CARS Model had been revised. The previous researches have a similar structure. Mostly quantitative methods were used with the focus on corpus of academic articles ranging from six articles (Liao, 2009) to two hundreds articles (Mahzari & Maftoon, 2007). The domains of investigated articles differs from social sciences to natural and computer sciences, so the extent of research is extensive. As well as representation of different languages is broad and range from English to Chinese and Hungarian.

The most of the articles uses the CARS Model as a central framework of research and there is almost no comparison with another framework. CARS Model is thus in a position as the only correct model for examining the structure of academic articles. Also the corpus of examined articles is quite narrow and the result of research may be misrepresenting. There is also a narrow range of examinated languages. Languages as a Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French and Hindi are used by the majority of the world but in the research are represented minimally. There are still a gaps and place for further research.