How to improve the ability of scientific writing in English--Professor Shi

As a scientific researcher, publishing scientific papers in international academic journals is the only way to communicate with peers and achieve international influence. Some domestic scientists, the experiment is very beautiful, but often distressed at the writing of the paper, become a major obstacle to international exchange. This article from the blogger's first-hand experience, to doctoral, postdoctoral, and young Pi to provide a reference. The article concludes with a brief summary.   My classmates at college knew that my English was not good at that time (the English level four exam was only "fine") and writing was especially bad. At the beginning of the United States, the English environment is very poor adaptation, read a JBC article to five or six hours, but often do not understand the meaning of some of the key words, the pressure of the heart is great.   Luckily, when I was studying for my doctorate at Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins University), I met my brother and my mentor John DesJarlais in April 1991. After listening to my distress, John told me, "spend minutes every day reading Washington Post, and you'll be cruising with your written 中文版 in Two years "(spend 45 minutes a day reading The Washington Post, and you'll be able to write your writing skills in a couple of years). This advice is my idea-I was interested in the news! So, every morning after the first batch of experiments, I will spend an hour or so at 10 o ' clock reading the Washington Post, mainly see a version (News version). At first, I could only read two or three short message or a long report in one hours, and I had to look up the new words in the dictionary often. But unconsciously, my reading ability obviously improved, 1992 Bush and Clinton ran for president, I followed the news, often one hours to read a few pages of the news or four or five long reports, and sometimes the news I just saw vividly told elder sister.   Reading has directly improved my English writing ability. After reading some news, I often have the impulse to write my own thoughts. The 92 Barcelona Olympic Games, the Chinese swimming team made four gold five silver good results, the main U.S. media have accused this is Chinese athletes take illegal drugs, but there is no evidence of any testing, completely with the feelings of American athletes. It made me angry, for the first time in my life, I wrote a letter to The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun (The Baltimore Sun), commenting on the unfairness of the report. Unexpectedly two days later, "Baltimore Sun" actually left my letter in the "Reader Letter" column, colleagues congratulated, I also complacent. Encouraged by this, I have been writing for more than three years, and some articles have been published in the press (most of them have not been submitted), and have also represented Chinese students in their letters to the schoolThe interests of Chinese students. Sometimes there are unexpected surprises. One day in 95, a friend called me and told me: "The Baltimore Sun Today" has my review article! I hurried to the streets to buy 5 newspapers, and sure enough, in a version of the penultimate page, 15x15 centimeters of space to publish one weeks ago I sent to the newspaper, I thought will not be published an attack on Wu Hongda article.   Above is a brief description of my personal English writing promotion process. However, the research paper is different from the reader's letter, has its professional characteristics, even the fixed format. The first time I wrote a research paper in 1994, I felt bad. Finally finished the article, even I do not want to read the second time, reluctantly modified, handed to the boss Jeremy Berg. He dragged for three weeks did not read my article, I really can not help, to urge him, 9 o'clock in the morning, Jeremy told me: see Today! 11 o'clock, I went to his office to urge, the secretary stopped me, said Jeremy is handling important matters, not to disturb before two. My heart zhuizhuide, do not know what Jeremy is doing. 1:30 P.M., Jeremy hurried to find me, took a stack of paper, "This is the draft." Know what do you think. We can aim for a science report. " (This is the first draft, you see how, we can try "science") I look carefully, God! A total of 7 pages, four hours Jeremy has finished writing the whole article, but the lack of method and references. What makes me depressed is that he didn't use my first draft.   "In fact, writing articles expensive in one go. I also follow the style of Jeremy. In October 2006, in the fierce competition of our disadvantage, two subjects faced the danger of being scoop, and I had two times and one night to catch an article. October 15, around 8 o'clock in the evening start writing, all night, the next day 10 o'clock in the morning completed a paper in accordance with the "cell" magazine format, including abstract, introduction, results, discussion, read it carefully once again at 4:30 P.M. completed online submission. This article was finally published in the December issue of "structure and Molecular Biology" in the journal Nature (electronic version published on November 10). Another article, October 18, 6 o'clock in the evening, began to write, all night, the next day 8 o'clock in the morning completed, 9:30 A.M. completed the submission, and finally published in the December 15 "cell". Of course, to complete an article all night, there is an important premise, is very familiar with the field of research, the overall idea of the article is considered, all the figures have been done beforehand. These pre-work will take 3-4 days even if you devote yourself to it. The   from 1994 to write their first research paper difficult to write now handy, at ease, I summed up the following experience:  1. To write a good research paper, you must first develop the habit of reading English articles, strive for 30-60 minutes a day. At first you can choose to read English newspapers, English news-oriented, gradually into a professional magazine. I will write a blog post in the near future to introduce a set of effective ways to enhance the ability to read professional magazines.  2. Writing research papers, the most important thing is logic. The formation of logic comes from the overall analysis of the experimental data. Must first discuss a set of clear ideas, and then follow the idea to do the diagram (figures), the last to be written.  3. In the specific writing, first according to the idea (ie figures) write a subheading-based framework, and then began to write specifically. The first draft, should not pursue every sentence of the perfect, not to pursue the gorgeous words, but the main attention to logic (logic flow), pay attention to the logical relationship between the sentence, the two adjacent paragraphs of the logical relationship. When writing, go all out, as far as possible from outside things interference (off mobile phone, landline), in the shortest possible time to come up with the first draft. Also note: A sentence should not be too long.  4. Learn to divert. No one is born to write good research papers, they are learned from others. To learn other people's articles to pay attention to the different areas of expertise, some areas (including my structural biology) has its inherent writing laws. Some of the words in scientific articles are stereotypes, such as "to investigate the mechanism of ..., we performed ...", "These results support the former, and not the latter , hypothesis ... "," despite recent progress, how ... remains to be elucidated ... " Wait a minute. After two times, I gradually learned to use it flexibly. When learning from others, avoid plagiarism. In some American institutions, 7 consecutive English words together are exactly the same as others, and are in principle considered plagiarism (plagiarism).  5. After the first draft is finished, give yourself no more than one day's rest time and start revising the second draft. Change, or logic-based, but for each sentence to be refined, the abstract and the text of the key statements to carve. Learn to use "thesaurus" (synonym substitution) to avoid excessive repetition. The revision of the second draft is extremely critical and will not be changed in the future.  6. After the second draft revision, the main focus on specific words, will not change the overall logic. Before submitting, be sure to read it all over again and make a few changes to the individual words. Remember:academic journals generally do not reject an article because of a specific grammatical error, but must reject an article because of a logical confusion. This approach works, and I teach all the students and postdoctoral fellows. My first postdoctoral fellow was Chai Jijie, who joined my lab at Princeton University in 1999. He was very poor at his English reading and writing skills. My first suggestion to him was, "spend half an hour reading English newspapers every day." The commendable is: he insisted! After several years of efforts, 2004, after Jay has been able to write a good grant proposal,2006 year his first independent research paper published in the "Molecular Cell", followed by "Nature" published two, in other first-class academic journals published more than 10 papers. Writing ability is beginning to mature. It is a pleasure to publish a paper, but to understand: the paper is only a carrier, is to announce to the peers your scientific discoveries, is the scientific field of communication important tool. Therefore, in the scientific research paper writing, must remember in the heart is: the simplest words to express the most clear meaning, but must be logical rigorous! In fact, both Chinese and English papers are so! from:http://blog.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=46212&do=blog&id=349932

How to improve the ability of scientific writing in English--Professor Shi