academic writing 08 constructing a research paper II

Finally, it's that last unit. Since Unit 7 has paid attention to writing results, unit 8 therefore focuses on introduction sections and discussion sections.

One of the important functions of introduction sections is creating a research space. There are three moves to follow: establishing a research territory, establishing a niche, and occupying the niche. The obligatory steps are following:

1. Establishing a research territory by introducing and reviewing items of previous research in the area.
2. Establishing a niche by indicating a gap in the previous research, or by extending previous knowledge in some way.
3. Occupying the niche by outlining purposes or stating the nature of the present research.

(There are some more optional steps in each move.)
There are some "skeletal" sentences to give a strong opening:

• Recently, there has been growing interest in ...
• The development of ... is a classic problem in ...
• Knowledge of ... has a great importance for ...
• Many researchers have recently turned to ...
• Numbers of recent studies have focused on ...

One of the other important language focuses is the tenses of citation:

• past: researchers' activities in a single reference
• present perfect: an inquiry or a finding
• present: current knowledge

In occupying the niche, there are two main variants:

• purposive: indicating the main purpose(s). For example: The aim of the present paper is to ...
• descriptive: describing the main feature of research. For example: This paper reports on the results obtained ...

If the author refers to the type of text, such as paper, article, or report, he should use present tense. On the other hand, is the author refers to the type of investigation, such as experiment, study, or survey, he should use past tense.

(Swales, J. M. and Feak, C. B. 2007, Academic Writing for Graduate Students, University of Michigsn Press, Ann Arbor.)