Writing introductions FV11A8900 Academic Writing in English

Basic structure (IMRaD) Literature review Data collection Data analysis Image source: accessed http://sana.tkk.fi/awe

Intro: Create-a-Research-Space model (CaRS) Establish a territory – what exists already? Establish a niche – what’s missing? Occupy the niche – how does your research fill this gap?

Exercise 1 2 introductions Find the 3 basic moves of the CaRS model.

Exercise 2 Switch the article you brought to class with the person sitting next to you. Read through the article to see if you can indicate the 3 moves in the CaRS model. Show your neighbour if/how the authors make the 3 basic moves in the introduction. Spend a few minutes talking about the paper’s topic and why it was chosen as the ’reference’ paper for this class.

Exercise 3 Look at your sample of writing that you brought. Does it have an introduction? If not, why? Does the intro follow CARS? If not, re- work it. If it follows CARS, does it have the academic writing features mentioned in chapter 1.1 of the textbook? If not, re-work it.

Homework 1/3 Go to ns/intros/index.html ns/intros/index.html Read through the more specific details of CaRS – different sub-moves. Practice using the exercises. There are 3 of them and they each take about 20 min.

Homework 2/3 Also at the AWE website, read about ’abstracts’ ns/abstracts/index.htmlhttp://sana.tkk.fi/awe/style/reporting/sectio ns/abstracts/index.html Think about the differences between abstracts and introductions

Homework 3/3 Continue working on paper topic. –Consider what the title might be. A two-part title (title:subtitle) helps to keep your topic specific (narrow). –Brainstorming – mind map, outline, free writing –Topic should be confirmed week 4.