Graduate students are commonly required to read many research from various well-known

journals. And it will be beneficial for them to obtain abundant and useful information in their
disciplines. However, they are unable to read the whole article to determine whether the article is
needed for them, which will reduce their efficiency. Thus, mastering a skill of extracting key
information is significant. When we start reading an article, we are supposed to firstly find out its
overall structure and know the types of research presented. And then we are able to use the
Harris Rhetorical Elements to understand authors thought. We are also able to find out
important information when we only read the part of introduction by using moves 1, 2, and 3. In
the following, I will take an article as an example. The title of the article is The effect of
accounting academics in the boardroom on the value relevance of financial reporting
information.

The article is designed in these parts: introduction, research design, empirical findings and
conclusion. When you read these headings you will find the article follows introduction,
methods, results and discussion (IMRD) pattern. In the part of introduction, the authors provided
the background of this article and the shortages of the previous research. They summarized the
existing study. Then they pointed out their research direction and the features which the useful
setting must meet to explore this research question. Finally, the authors gave the predictions of
the findings and the contributions of their paper. After the introduction, the authors raised the
hypothesis which is ceteris paribus, the value relevance of reported earnings is higher among
Chinese listed firms with accounting academics as outside directors, and this effect is more
pronounced among firms that use lower quality auditors (p. 21). And the authors designed
research with the method of regressions to test the hypotheses. Then the authors use the tables to

show their findings. At last, the authors concluded the research. The type of research presented is
analysis of existing studies. Then they used tables to show their data. They collected the data of
firms with all firms listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock Exchanges from the years 2004 to
2012 that are included in the China Securities Markets and Accounting Research (CSMAR)
database.

After being familiar with the structure of the article, we are supposed to understand what the
article mainly about. And Harris Rhetorical Elements are a good way to help me analyze this
article. The object of the study are Chinese state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned
enterprises. And the purpose of the study is to examine whether those from the accounting
discipline on the board of directors per se can influence their firm's financial reporting quality.
Because people increasingly pay attention to the financial experts in the board of directors to see
whether they indeed contribute to corporate transparency. The main driving question of the study
is that Whether the regulatory demand for financial experts in the board of directors can
potentially be supplied by accounting academics and whether the expertise of accounting
academics can possibly contribute to corporate transparency (p 18). After all, the scope is that
they not only excluded the observations with board of directors having financial experts from
both accounting academic and other backgrounds but also excluded firms from financial sector
and those with stock price data for less than 1 year. The article is relevant to the corporations and
scholars.

Finally, we could use the moves 1, 2, and 3 to analyze the introduction. Firstly, Move 1a
showed the importance of this article. This is evident when the authors stated There is

increasing attention...contribute to corporate transparency (p 18). Secondly, Move 2 is

indicating the gap of the previous research. This is obvious when the authors stated Two
interesting research gaps stem from the accounting and finance literature above (p 18).
Finally, Move 3a is outlying the purpose of this article. This is clear when the authors stated
Specifically, we evaluate iftheir role as outside directors (p 18). Move 3d is stating the value
of this article. It is apparent when the authors stated Our paper has the following
contributionsand investor confidence (p 19). Move 3e is indicating the structure of the
research paper. We could find it when the authors stated This paper is organized asconcludes
our paper (p 19).

To sum up, we are supposed to use the aforementioned method to reduce our reading load. It
is difficult for us to read the whole article to decide whether we are able to use this article. And it
will also contribute to improving our writing skills.