Introduction:
This Week’s Lecture:
In this week’s lecture, we focused mainly on the basic fundamentals of writing introductions and conclusions. Whether for a report, a journal paper, a dissertation, or a thesis, there are three essential components that need to be achieved. These are:
- A clear understanding of the research topic undertaken and why
- What information, data, learning informed the research and findings
- A conclusion restating the objective and connecting findings
Even though introductions and conclusions play opposite roles, they connect together to create a “bookend” or a “sandwich” for all writing frameworks.
Orientate the reader
- An introduction should define the topic of research informing the reader of the purpose and motivation of the research and a guide or orientation to the inquiry undertaken
Inform the reader of the outcomes
- A conclusion reconnects the reader to the topic objectives, appraising the learning and summarising information for readers and consideration of a significant contribution to established knowledge or foundations for further research.
Introduction:
To help us take the right approach when writing an introduction, our lecturer gave us a few examples of how to hook the reader’s attention.
1. Our lecturer suggested:
- State an interesting fact or statistic about your topic
- Ask a rhetorical question
- Reveal a common misconception about your topic
- Set the scene of your story: who, when, where, what, why, how?
- Share an anecdote (a humorous short story) that captures your topic
2. After hooking the reader’s attention, we are advised to state our focus topic by writing a sentence or two about what our paper is about, and why is the topic important. This part of the introduction can include background information to help establish context.
3. Lastly, we need to state our thesis, which should include our specific topic, the main points about that topic, and the points of discussion we will include in our paper. Our thesis should be clear and easy to find, typically the last sentence of our introduction
Conclusion:
The purpose of a conclusion is to remind the reader of the main points and to summarise what you would like the reader to take away from your discussion. Our lecturer suggested a few tips when writing a conclusion.
1. Begin with your rephrased thesis statement to remind the reader of the point of your paper.
2. Summarise the points made throughout the paper, showing how they support your argument, tieing all the pieces of your paper together.
3. Inform the reader what the significance of your argument may be. Why is the discussion important? Do you want the reader to think differently or question something? Make a recommendation of what your reader should “do” with the information you just provided.
During the second part of the lecture, we focused on tips on structuring a literature review. We went over this subject again as we were required to write a literature review draft, as mentioned in last week’s blog. We recapped the purpose of a literature review and its basic guidelines. Our lecturer also went over organisation tips as he exaggerated the importance of a literature review structure. To help us understand more, our lecturer showed us an example, portraying the concerns about sentence level. We read and looked at how it impacts readability, sentence strength, focus, placement of citation, active vs passive voice, and transition. To gain further understanding, our lecturer then gave us a task to do during the lecture, whereby we had to look through two different literature reviews and compare them, seeing how the revised version impacted readability and clarity.
This Week’s Task:
We didn’t get given a task to do in this week’s lecture; however, our lecturer advised us to read two papers about conducting a literature review if we have spare time on our hands. Moreso, our lecturer would like us to further prepare for our one-to-one session with him next week, meaning we had to further research our chosen topic. He suggested that we start our literature review if we can, so he’ll be able to have a read through it during our meeting and give us early feedback.