User:Hemridhu/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Academic Discourse Socialization

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this topic because this is my main area of research interest. It matters to me because I have been reading on this topic for over a year now. And improving it for those who are novice or just begin to research on this topic is really important to me. The article should provide the readers a good list of sources.

Evaluate the article
Lead: It does have an introductory sentence that describes the topic, however, it does not provide the source from which the definition has been taken. Plus, it describes the topic in one sentence and then jumps on to the heading Academic discourses. The lead should provide introduction to the Academic Discourse socialization and not Academic discourses.

Content: The content is not directly related to the topic. It describes academic discourses and why there they are so popular. The last three paragraphs under the heading popularity of Academic discourses should be in the lead paragraph. The content is also not up to date.

Tone: This is certainly another issue. As a reader I found the tone quite personal throughout as the ideas are not backed up with sources. They seem more of personal opinions than facts.

Sources and References: It does not contain many sources. In line citation only include two references. There are many facts for which the in line citation is missing. There are just a couple of source which are current, for example Morita (2009) and Hyland (2009). The article should have referenced Dr. Patricia Duff who has coined the term "academic discourse socialization".

Organization: This definitely needs improvement. (also see my comment above in the Lead section). It is broken down into topics but it needs a good introduction and some more paragraphs.

Images: No image included.

Talk Page discussion: Yes, it is a part of Wiki Project as I can see that talk page says that the article has multiple issues, especially in terms of references and the tone.

Strengths & Weaknesses: I would say that after reading the article, the reader would get a general sense of what academic discourses are and why they are important. But it does not touch much upon the main topic: Academic Discourse Socialization. It is poorly developed and needs improvement in almost all areas

Comments from Dr. V
Hello, Thank you for your work on this evaluation. This article is in a very poor state of development, as you have noticed. While it isn't explicitly related to rhetoric, I do think that it has implications for rhetoric and literacy. I am also thinking that it is just a really good article for YOU to edit given your research interests and knowledge of the topic. You have already demonstrated a strong understanding of the topic in your evaluation. So I would like you to choose this article for your editing project.

You already have listed a number of areas where you can improve the article. I have a few more ideas. You're right that it is missing in line references. There are also a number of sources listed under the References section that aren't properly formatted. I can show you hot to fix those. It may be that some of those references already listed support claims in the body of the article.

Discourse community theory: it seems critical that the article make some connection to discourse community theory. There's also a lack of understanding/demonstration of where academic discourse socialization fits in terms of academic field/discipline.

You have a great grasp on the topic and the article, overall, and I know you will do good work on this.

DarthVetter (talk) 12:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)