Английский язык для магистрантов научная деятельность. English for master students academic activity. Учебное пособие

BEFORE YOU READ

You are going to read the text entitled HOW MASTER STUDENTS CAN EFFECTIVELY TELL THEIR RESEARCH STORY. Answer the following questions:

1.Do you know any effective techniques of presenting your research findings?

2.Why can research talks open doors to business and scientific opportunities?

READING

Read the text and check your answers.

How Master Students Can Effectively Tell Their Research Story

Master students should be able to communicate their research in ways that are accessible and meaningful to both academic and non-academic audiences.

This requires researchers to deliver content that is clear, concise and jargon-free, and more importantly: entertains, engages and inspires their audience. Such research talks can open doors to mentorship and business opportunities.

Getting people to understand and be excited about your research can make potential employers understand and get excited about having you on their team.

All narratives are based on this basic story arc formula: Introduction + Rising Action + Climax + Falling Action.

The following outlines how to identify these components within the context of your research:

1. Introduction: setting the stage

The problem: All research focuses on fixing something, such as a knowledge gap in radioelectronics, negative attitudes to some theories, malfunctioning brain cells. Start here. Setting up a clear and obvious problem gets your audience’s attention and tells them why they should invest the time and energy in listening to you.

Why you are doing it: What motivated you to pursue this inquiry: a personal experience as a student or your love for understanding how

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things work? It may feel uncomfortable but taking the risk and revealing something about yourself tells your audience that you trust them.

2. Rising Action: what are you doing (or planning to do)?

When thinking about your research methods, think of them as of something challenging. You are a prospective scientist, you know a lot, so describe existing ways of doing things, taking risks while experimenting. Tell your audience why what you are doing is daring, different or new and they will root for you.

Although technical or field-specific words are a handy way to communicate a lot with a little, they risk excluding a large portion of your audience. However, try not to over-simplify your content. Adding key details to convey advanced concepts demonstrates that you recognize your audience’s intelligence.

3. Climax: the discovery

What did you find or what do you hope to find? We all love learning new things. This moment of revelation is the gift you are presenting to your audience. So, present the results to your audience in an exciting way.

4. Falling Action: making it bigger

Why does the rest of the world care about your research findings? Loop back to the beginning of your story and explain how your revelation will address the problem you already outlined and how that will impact the world of science. This leaves your audience with a perfect ending and also will make them feel like they are part of something much bigger.

AFTER READING TASKS

Answer the folowing questions.

1.In what ways should master students be able to communicate their research?

2.What can you say about the content of the speech about your research

work?

3.Should you use a lot of technical or field-specific words to communicate your ideas? Are they a handy tool?

4.What can you say about over-simplifying the content?

5.What should you do to leave your audience with a perfect ending?

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Match the words with their definitions.

Read the stories written by post-graduate students/professors about their research work. Try to analyze them from the point of view of the scheme and advice given in the text above. Translate the phrases given below each passage.

a) My name is Mark West. I am interested in cultural-historical activity theory and developmental work research in general. Currently, I focus especially on co-configuration as a new way of organizing work, and expansive learning in multi-activity settings.

I am Professor of Adult Education and Director of the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research at University of Birmingham. I am also Professor of Communication at University of California, San Diego, where I served as Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition from 1998 to 2008. I am Honorary Professor in the School of Education at University of Birmingham, UK.

I work within the framework of cultural-historical activity theory. I am known for my theory of expansive learning. I study transformations in work and organizations, combining micro level analysis of discourse and interaction with historical analysis and modeling of organizations as activity systems working through developmental contradictions.

My research groups use intervention tools such as the Change Laboratory, inspired by Vygotsky’s method of dual stimulation, to facilitate and analyze the redesign of activity systems by practitioners. My current research is focused on health care organizations, a bank, and a telecommunications company striving toward new forms of coconfiguration and networking.

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My recent books include Cognition and Communication at Work (edited with David Middleton, 2016), Perspectives on Activity Theory (edited with Roger Sanders, 2019), and Between School and Work: New Perspectives on Transfer and Boundary Crossing (edited with Travis Lee, 2019). I have just finished a new book, Collaborative Expertise: Expansive Learning in Medical Work, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

Translate the following expressions:

1.I am interested in…

2.Currently, I focus especially on…

3.I work within the framework of…

4.I am known for…

5.My research groups use… to facilitate and analyze…

6.My current research is focused on… striving toward…

7.My recent books include…

b) My name is Jeffry Stone. My current research has liaisons to the beginnings of Developmental Work Research two decades ago. Since then, my colleagues and I have used reflexive methods of data gathering and analyzing, such as stimulated recall interviews, online video interviews, and interactive ethnography. My interest in reflexivity has expanded in the context of social science to questioning: what are the theoretical and methodological tools with which we can approach and operationalize reflexivity – not only related to people’s accounts of their lives and activities but also linked to the researchers’ role and research practices. In the field of situated communication, my studies aim at intertwining practical-discursive and developmental-reflexive dimensions of activities, and at elaborating the epistemology of change in studying culture in interaction.

The possibilities of working with such interests in mind are favorable in the context of an interventionist methodology called the Change Laboratory. The approach has been developed by researchers at our center (including myself) in Developmental Work Research projects in varied fields of working life.

I work to further develop my expertise in institutional discourse, genre studies and interactive ethnography, and employed epistemologies like Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism, ethnomethodology and phenomenology, intersecting them with activity theory (see ‘the method of voices’ 1995, 1999). The basic design of the Change Laboratory keeps concerning me with institutional transformations, configuration between the practitioners and

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researchers, distributed work order, and discussions related to neoinstitutionalism. In the context of institutional change, my current work on reflexivity draws from the analysis of experiencing and agency. When one puts on the 'eyeglasses' of activity theory, experience is not only internal and subjective but expands to include collective artifact-mediated activity.

The central contents of my research and special expertise arise from our research sites. In the field of health care (from the perspectives of organizational studies and medical sociology), our studies concern negotiated care, collaborative artifacts, boundary crossing between primary and specialized medical care and, at once, the patient’s participation in the joint construction of a comprehensive view of disease management.

My other field of interest is school education and knowledge work in new information technology environments. Like in health care, our central focus here is on new forms of work and collaboration which are enabling the object of school work to expand beyond the information given in curricula and texts. We integrate paradigmatic thoughts into questions concerning how to make pedagogical changes from procedure-oriented drill to problemand principle-oriented knowledge production, and from encapsulated classroom work to networked learning in partnerships between the school and other organizations.

Short Biography

From the 1990s to the present, I have been employed mostly by the research projects funded by the Academy of Sciences and conducted research at the University of N. Between 1997 and 2009, I worked for five years as a visiting scholar at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, the University of S. in S. In 1999, I received my Ph.D in sociology from the University of S. Currently I am a Senior Researcher at the Center of Excellence and a mentor of a group of Ph.D students.

Translate the following expressions:

1.My interest in … has expanded…

2.In the field of …, my studies aim at smth./ doing smth. …

3.The possibilities of working with … are favorable in…

4.The approach has been developed by researchers…

5.I work to further develop my expertise in…

6.The central contents of my research and special expertise arise from…

7.My other field of interest is…

8.Like in smth., our central focus here is on…

9.We integrate smth. into smth.

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READING

Read the text and check your answers.

HISTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

The discovery of the scientific method is not credited to any single person, but there are a few notable figures who contributed to its development.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle is considered to be one of the earliest proponents of logic and cycles of observation and deduction in recorded history. Ibn al-Haytham, a mathematician, established stringent testing methodologies in pursuit of facts and truth, and he recorded his findings.

During the Renaissance, many thinkers and scientists continued developing rational methods of establishing facts. Sir Francis Bacon emphasized the importance of inductive reasoning. Sir Isaac Newton relied on both inductive and deductive reasoning to explain the results of his experiments, and Galileo Galilei emphasized the idea that results should be repeatable.

Other well-known contributors to the scientific method include Karl Popper, who introduced the concept of falsifiability, and Charles Darwin, who is known for using multiple communication channels to share his conclusions.

AFTER READING TASKS

Answer the following questions.

1.Can we state that the discovery of the scientific method is credited to s single person?

2.Who is considered to be one of the earliest proponents of logic and cycles of observation and deduction in recorded history?

3.Who emphasized the importance of inductive reasoning?

4.What did sir Isaac Newton rely on to explain the results of his experiments?

5.What kind of idea did Charles Darwin propose?

Match the words with their opposites.

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Match the words with their translations.

Fill in the table and translate the sentences from Russian into English.

1.Формирование основных идей методологии науки начинается

вэпоху Возрождения и особенно интенсивно происходит в Новое время. Развитие производительных сил общества стимулировало опытное исследование природы, возникновение и развитие экспериментального естествознания.

2.И математика, и в особенности естествознание этой эпохи не могли довольствоваться ни старой логикой, ни прежними методами познания. Они нуждались в новых средствах и методах исследования, разработкой которых занялись выдающиеся ученые и философы того

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времени. Исследование и анализ проблем логики и методологии научного познания велись по двум основным направлениям.

3.Первое направление соответствует линии создания индуктивной логики и разработки экспериментальных методов исследования. Родоначальником классической индуктивной логики принято считать Фрэнсиса Бэкона, который рассматривал свою логику как инструмент для открытия новых истин в науке.

4.Основоположником экспериментального метода исследования природы является Галилео Галилей. Его заслуга состоит в том, что он заменил умозрительный, дедуктивный метод античных мыслителей эмпирическим, экспериментальным методом. Галилей считал эксперимент важнейшим средством не только проверки гипотез и теорий, но

иих обоснования.

5.Второе направление исследований в области научного метода ставило своей целью разработку приемов познания в абстрактных, теоретических науках, прежде всего в математике. Характерной чертой этих исследований является стремление использовать дедуктивный метод математики в качестве универсального метода познания.

SPEAKING

Make an outline of the text HISTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.

Get prepared to speak about history of the scientific method.

HOME ASSIGNMENT

Prepare a short speech about the scientific methods used in your particular field of study. Present it to your groupmates.

Lesson 2. Principles and Steps of the Scientific Method

VOCABULARY

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