 Welcome 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.
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
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