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• Welcome

• Navigation guide

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• Configuring Netscape and downloading files

One of the greatest efforts that you ever make as a writer could be your thesis or research report. Are you reflecting on this already? Each researcher has a unique report to write, in spite of the seemingly endless rules and conventions you may feel surrounded by as you begin the task. Our aim is to support you in this task.

Research Writing Skills invites you to journey and browse as an independent learner through an orderly maze of information that can be entered from one of many points, depending on your need at the time.

You will discover in this set of materials a number of steps and processes, as well as suggestions and information, that will help you to construct your thesis as an entity made up of interlocking parts. At each step you are building on what you already have or can do, in order to move towards an envisaged end point. We hope that you will use these frameworks to devise and consolidate an approach of your own to writing your report. Each part can be surprisingly manageable when carefully structured to follow certain paths of logic and good communication.

Research Writing Skills:

• reminds you of academic conventions
• suggests useful approaches to thesis or report writing
• provides active planning sheets for you to use for your own unique information and ideas

You can save your entries in the planning sheets directly on screen. You can then print these completed sheets out or print out blank sheets and fill them in by hand. During the processes involved in completing these sheets, your thoughts should gain clarity and your report greater cohesion and communicative power.

The five main topics outlined below represent some key approaches and requirements to writing up your research. Currently, in these materials, we are focusing on the review of literature and you will find that each topic that we cover will be applicable at all stages while you are working on the review.

1. The research report

• format and overview of its parts
• purpose and function of each step in the research process and the way this is reflected in writing the report
• help in choosing your topic
• the review of literature as the central module in Research Writing Skills

2. Writing in the Health and Biomedical Sciences

Certain conventions and preferred approaches to Research Writing Skills are characteristic of your discipline or professional area. Here the focus is divided among particular areas.

3. Organising your ideas

Once you have formed a mental picture of how large amounts of information or complex ideas fit together, it is very much easier to organise your writing. You will find a series of organising principles and corresponding concept framework activities in this section. Whatever ideas or information you are dealing with may be positioned logically within certain maps, charts, tables, grids and guidelines provided here. The very process of working through the decisions concerning relative placements will help you enormously to clarify your own thinking, and thereby to write with greater structural control and precision.

4. Academic writing skills

Precise control of ideas through language is desirable for reasons of academic credibility, and especially so in thesis writing. Information, guidelines and planning sheets are provided in this section to help you to practise and master techniques of:

• summarising, critiquing and reviewing ideas from other writers
• description, explanation and discussion of your own ideas

In writing, depth of analysis also determines the way you write. Academic writing is nearly always formal and controlled. In this section you will learn about the organisation of paragraphs and sections, precision through vocabulary, control of voice and degrees of certainty.

5. English language tips and online resources

Not everyone is familiar with the grammar of English language, but we do know that there are certain ways of writing a sentence that are sound, balanced, stylish and that communicate well. While the topic is endlessly complex, it has been possible to reduce some key aspects of the language down to a few essential points that you will need to be aware of in formal academic writing. In this section you will find information on: parts of speech and the function of words, sentence structure, punctuation and vocabulary development.

 

Navigation guide

This site should be viewed with a web browser that supports tables. The University uses Netscape as its browser. You can download Netscape now - version 4 is recommended; if you have version 3 and want to stay with that,  the instructions below for configuring Netscape and downloading files are for both versions: 3, and 4 (PC or Windows only, not Macintosh).

A note on colour: in order to view this site accurately, you need to make sure your personal choice of colours is not overriding the colours used in the this web site. Look for  the area in the menu bar of your browser where you select preferences, and specifically colour, and make sure you have not chosen to override the given colours with your own choice.

• Bookmark
  Use the bookmarking facility on your web browser menu bar: Bookmarks/Add Bookmark (Internet Explorer uses 'Favourites'). This enables you to find material easily in Research Writing Skills when you go online.
• Left-hand column navigation bar
  On the left-hand column of the Research Writing Skills web site you will see all the sections listed. You can use these section titles as hyperlinks to go to the specified section.
• 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons
  Use the 'Back' and 'Forward' buttons on your web browser menu bar to move around in the Research Writing Skills web site, and to move back from another site.
• The 'Contents' page
  The section titles and subtitles are hyperlinked from  the 'Contents' page. Use the links down the left-hand side of the page to go to the sections. Use the highlighted subsections within the contents list to go to subsections.
• Headings at the top of the page
  Headings at the top of the page will take you to subsections within that page.
• Icons within a page
  The triangular icons next to major headings within a page are hyperlinked to the top of the page.
• Icons at the bottom of the page
  The icons at the bottom of the page will take you back to the top of the page you're on and to the Flexible Learning Centre home page.
• A word or phrase in the text
  Occasionally a word or phrase in the text will be hyperlinked to take you to another section within a page or to another web site.
• University logo in the banner at the top of the page
  You are able to go to the University's home page by clicking on the logo in the banner at the top of every page of this web site.

Feedback message

Research Writing Skills is in continual development. We'd appreciate your feedback. Email us your ideas, suggestions, inquiries - even complaints if you should have any. Please remember to leave your name and a contact phone number and/or postal details: helen.johnston@unisa.edu.au (Depending on how your browser is configured, you may have to copy and paste this address into your email software in order to send a message.)

Configuring Netscape and downloading files

Introduction

The 'planning sheets'  throughout Research Writing Skills are downloadable Word 6 or RTF (Rich Text Format) files so that you can download them to a computer and open them in word-processing software to work on them as worksheets. (However, there is one Word file that is an annotated journal article that had to be kept as a Word file so you can view the annotations.)

RTF files open across platforms (PC or Mac) and retain their formatting.

There are also some read-only files in the Writing in the Health and Biomedical Sciences section. These read-only files are PDF (portable document format) files which retain their original formatting and you cannot interact with the material the way you can with a Word file in word processing. They are viewed with Acrobat Reader which has to be downloaded if you do not already have it on your computer.

Word/RTF files

We recommend that you print out this page if you are unfamiliar with
saving (or downloading) files to your computer from the Internet.

You may need to change the configuration of your browser (Netscape) before you save these files. (See also the University's Web authoring site.)

Whether you view and/or save them once you click on the link is determined by the way your browser (Netscape) is configured.The files can be accessed through your browser, even though you may not choose to view them from within your browser.

Netscape  gives you the opportunity to view and/or save such files on your computer or on disk. You can then treat the file as you would any other file on your computer.

Configuring your browser in Windows (for Netscape version 3)

• Select Options / General preferences / Helpers from the menu at the top.
• Select application[to suit file type] under File type (you may need to scroll down).
• In the File Extensions box make sure you have doc or rtf typed in.
• Next to Action: select Save to disk.
• Click on OK.
• Note that you may have to specify where the  'exe' file is on your computer with the 'Browse' button.

Configuring your browser in Windows (for Netscape version 4)

• Go to Edit/Preferences.
• Under Categories, select Applications.
• Highlight file type.
• You have a choice of selecting Save to Disk, Applications and/or ticking the box 'Ask me before opening downloaded files of this type'. If you tick this box, a message will come up while you are online in Netscape for you to decide on the spot whether to open or save to disk.

Configuring your browser for a Macintosh (for Netscape version 3)

• Select Options / General preferences / Helpers from the menu at the
  top.
• Select application[file type] under Description (you may need to scroll
  down).
• Click on Edit.
• In the box next to Suffixes: make sure you have doc or rtf typed in.
• Select Save to disk.
• Click on OK, then click on OK again.

Save
After following these steps for either Windows or your Macintosh computer,
your computer should be set up to recognise the files. Save the   files to your hard disk (C drive) or to a floppy disk (A drive),  where you would normally save working document. Open up the RTF files from within your   word-processing software.

PDF(portable document format) files

PDF files are  read-only files. To view them you need Acrobat Reader.
If you don't have this software on your computer it is available for installation
free of charge from part of the University's Information Technology Services site.   Click on 'Office tools and business software'.

Save
Once you have downloaded Acrobat Reader, you can click on the PDF files and they will open up in the Reader.  You can then save the files to your hard disk (C drive) or to a floppy disk (A drive),  where you would normally save working documents.

The preparation of materials for this site was funded by a DEETYA Quality Round 3 Grant awarded to Helen Johnston, Associate Professor Margaret Sharpe and Dr Esther May, and is a result of collaboration between the Flexible Learning Centre and the Faculty of Health and Biomedical Sciences.

Project Coordinator  Helen Johnston
Writer  Trish McLaine
Online developers   Moya Costello, Loene Doube and Rebecca Miller
Designer   Kelly Martin
Produced by the FLC

Copyright ©1998 University of South Australia
Last update August 1998
URL: http://ww.roma.unisa.edu.au/flc/sls/publictns/researchwrite/welcome.htm