Comparative Genre Analysis

Analysis
of “The influence of fitness and exercise status on mood changes associated
with 10 and 30 minutes of cycling”, “Psychological factors related to reasons
for exercise: A comparative study between Chinese and American college students”, and “Subjective well-being, sport performance, training load and life
experiences of college athletes”

Overview

This is a genre analysis of three theses taken from
OhioLINK, “The influence of fitness and exercise status on mood changes associated
with 10 and 30 minutes of cycling” from Nicole Serene (2006), “Psychological
factors related to reasons for exercise: A comparative study between Chinese
and American college students” from Zi Yan (2008), and “Subjective well-being,
sport performance, training load and life experiences of college athletes” from
Tyler Masters (2009). All three theses were written for fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of master of education for BGSU. Serene’s thesis
examined the role of fitness and exercise status on psychological changes
associated with 10 and 30 minutes of cycling. Differently, Yan’s thesis tried
to find the factors that may influence exercise participation between Chinese
and American college students. On the other hand, Masters’s thesis explored the
interrelationships among subjective well-being, training load, life
experiences, and sport performance.

This genre analysis will report the theses’ audience, format, organization, research,
documentation, and style.

Audience

The audience of theses usually
consists of a small group. It may include undergraduate students, graduate
students, professors, researchers, or practitioners who work in that field. Undergraduate
students, who want to go to graduate school, may be curious about the studies that
they will pursue in further. For designing research, graduate students need
examples or ideas from former graduate students. Additionally, professors who
are interested in the related area may study students’ research. In order to
applying the results into the real world, practitioners may read theses to
explore the interesting findings.

Format and organization

In a thesis, it usually consists of nine
parts, which includes abstract, table of contents, introduction, literature
review, method, results, discussion, references, and appendix. A thesis
approximately has 100 to 150 pages including references and appendix parts. The
title page will provide the title of the study, the author’s name, the purpose
of the study, expected graduate date, and the committee member list. The title
of the study will be centered, and not italicized.

Visual aids are provided to the
readers both in the appendix and in the text, such as result data. Normally,
all the parts of theses were written in black and white, and the font usually
looks the same. The classic font for the thesis is Times New Roman and number
12.

The abstract part provides the
overview of the thesis research, which includes the purpose of the study, methods,
results, and conclusion. Designed to create interest in the problem, the introduction
part of a thesis is to persuade readers of the significance of the problem,
provide background information, bring out areas of needed research, and then
skillfully and logically lead to the specific purpose of the study. In general,
the reviews of literature stimulate inductive reasoning. For the thesis, the
review will be more focused, directly addressing the questions and method for
the study. In the next part, the purpose of the methods is to explain how the
study was conducted. The standard rule is that the description should be
thorough enough for a competent researcher to reproduce the study. Results are
what you have found in the study, and discussion explains what the results
mean. Usually, the tables and figures can be used to display the results. The
next important part of thesis is the reference page, because it tells where the
related information comes from and shows the respect to the other researchers. Finally,
the appendix provide more details about the study, including exact instructions
to participants, samples of tests and answer sheets, diagrams and pictures of
equipment, sample data-recording sheets, and informed-consent agreements.

Research and documentation

The three theses which I found were
all primary research, because the studies were designed by the researchers
(graduate students) and they collected the data and analysis the results. The
authors paraphrased the sentences from the other resources and provided the
information about the resources in the literature review, such as the author’s
name and year. Direct quotations were not used frequently. In our department,
students follow the APA format.

Style

In the three theses, the authors
usually use the active voice which is more formal and understandable. Meanwhile,
first person, second person, or third person is not used in the text. Also, the
contractions and questions are not used in three theses. The authors used the
subtitles to connect each session. Between the nine parts (abstract, table of
contents, introduction, literature review, method, results, discussion,
references, and appendix), there was no obvious transitions. However, transitions
are used between paragraphs and within paragraphs. Overall, the authors
discussed the studies following professional and formal style through the whole
theses.

Conclusion

From these three theses samples, all
the authors used formal format and tone to discuss their study. Thesis writing
is following a specific pattern. As a graduate student, I should use the
similar pattern to write my thesis in the further.