FYP Research Skills Module: Defining a Project Lawrence.cleary & Íde O’Sullivan Co-Directors, Regional Writing Centre, UL www.ul.ie/rwc

Good writers… assess the context into which they write, and plan follow a process have strategies for reaching their research and writing goals Context: occasion: (academic context/argumentative/disciplines-specific conventions/assessed), topic (gap in knowledge or point of contestation), audience (those in the literature who talk about the gap or contested point/assessors and programme directors), purpose (to get an A/to demonstrate good scholarship), writer (what topics interest me/what are my strengths and weakness relative to research and writing?) Planning: Time (how much time do I have to do this?)/ Space (how many pages do I need to fill? Word Count?) Process: Writer-based writing (pre-writing and drafting), reader-based writing (revising, editing and proofreading) Strategies: cognitive, procedural, metacognitive, affective and social (What strategies do I use to achieve my writing goals? Why do strategies used to begin my paper not work when finishing my paper? What thoughts, feelings or people stand between me and my writing goals? What do I do? Is it working?)

Five minute free-write Respond to this prompt: What are some things that people in my discipline argue about and which might hold my interest throughout this long project? Write for 5 minutes without stopping Do not edit or censor This writing is private. No one but you will see it. Address the prompt, but if you find yourself veering off the topic and feel it fruitful to do so, let yourself go. This is, after all, free-writing. When finished, put the gap or point of contestation in the form of a question that your paper might answer. Then talk about some ways that you might go about answering that question. How could you defend your position or fill portions of that gap? What would count as evidence or lead to the knowledge needed to fill that gap?

Assessing the writing situation What is the FYP measuring? Whether you can locate a challenging point of contention or gap in the knowledge field of your discipline(s) (research question(s)) Whether you can defend your position on that contested point or fill that knowledge gap by using valid, reliable evidence (methodology) Whether you can produce good scholarly research (do good science) What can you bring to this project from the modules you completed over the past four years?

The FYP Context It is not what you know, but whether you have demonstrated that you are a good scholar…a good scientist. We want to get to the bottom of things: good scholars choose problems that are difficult to solve, questions that may even be unanswerable—still, we try to understand the truth/nature of things. It is not about being right, it’s about coming to know the truth or nature of things, that view of things that the evidence supports.

Regional Writing Centre Writing a ‘page 98 paper’ My research question is … Researchers who have looked at this subject are … They argue that … Debate centres on the issue of … There is work to be done on … My research is closest to that of X in that … My contribution will be … (Murray 2006:104) Early: to establish direction/focus Associate your project with the literature Distinguish your project from the literature Build on research question/hypothesis Focus reading/thinking Manageable writing task: 325 words To develop thinking about your thesis thesis? Late: to focus thinking as you draft conclusion and revise your introduction (Murray, 2006: 105) Regional Writing Centre

References Murray, R. (2006) How to Write a Thesis, 2nd ed. Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.