Source Comparison

In your group, examine the two texts I gave you. Note that you may need to make educated guesses for a couple of the questions below, and that's better than not attempting to answer those questions. You may print up this page and write out your group answers or copy/past this into a word document.

Be prepared to answer the following questions about the texts I gave you.

1. who is the audience?

2. why do they read the source?

3. who is the editorial board for this text? What are their credentials for doing this kind of work?

4. is there a statement of editorial policy or a submission statement? If so, what does the submission statement say about articles published in this text?

5. what topics are covered in the issue you have & what do these topics suggest about the needs of the readers of each text?

6. how will readers use the information provided?

7. Describe a typical article.

• How does it begin? Describe the introduction.
• What sources does it use?
• How does it introduce those sources?
• How long are the sentences and paragraphs? Can you describe the sentence patterns that are used the most? (simple, compound, complex, compound-complex)
• What is the article about?
• Where do you first find out what the article is about?
• What can you say about the title of this work?
• Does the article have footnotes, end notes, works cited, acknowledgements, pictures, graphs?
• Describe the writing style.

Remember that you will need to answer these questions about both the magazine and the academic journal I gave you, so judge your time accordingly.