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: G1112, Scientific Writing I
: 2006
: v 1.0 rev 1
Module 6
Drafting a Scientific Paper
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What’s inside
1. Drafting Introductions
2. Drafting Body Paragraphs and
Integrating Sources
3. Overcoming Procrastination and
Writer's Block
4. Drafting Conclusions
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Introduction
Before you begin writing, you should have
a thesis or question that you're
comfortable with and an outline that gives
you structure on what you need to say and
where. Now just take pen to paper or
fingers to keyboard and write. "Sure,
easier said than done," you might be
thinking. Fair enough, but we aren't asking
you to come up with polished prose. It can
be as rough as you want it to be. And with
practice, it does get easier and faster.
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Most Typical problems
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You don't have any clue what you should
be saying (in which case you don't have
a focal point or outline yet and so are
starting too early!) or . . .
You're revising while you draft so that
you end up with one sentence an hour.
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Writing an Introduction
• Introductions are important. They arouse a
reader's interest, introduce the subject,
and tackle the So What? factor. In short,
they're your paper's "first impression.“
• If introductions give you trouble no matter
when you do them or how you begin,
sometimes it helps to construct several
mini-outlines just for that paragraph and
try each out to see which works best.
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Writing an Introduction
• A good introduction, generally speaking, does two things: it
"Defines" for the reader what the essay (or other written work) is
going to address; it "Divides" the topic of the essay into the parts to
be "Discussed." Naturally, there are a great variety of ways to
accomplish these two tasks, and they may require writers to use
more than a simple "one paragraph" introduction. But the point is
that a good introduction leaves readers with a good idea of what the
essay is all about and how the writer intends to "attack" his topic.
• The introduction is the place where the essay has to make a good
impression, informing the reader what is to come and encouraging
him or her to read further (but without rendering the succeeding
paragraphs repetitious). If the introduction is tedious or fails to make
the rest of the essay sound interesting, the reader will not wish to
continue.
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Writing an Introduction
There are some different ways to start that first sentence
• Begin with a quotation. Just make sure you explain its relevance
• Begin with a question
• Begin with an acknowledgment of an opinion opposite to the one
you plan to take
• Begin with a very short narrative or anecdote that has a direct
bearing on your paper
• Begin with an interesting fact
• Begin with a definition or explanation of a term relevant to your
paper
• Begin with irony or paradox
• Begin with an analogy. Make sure it's original but not too far-fetched
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Writing an Introduction
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A simple model for the relationship between the introduction, the body, and
the conclusion is the old newspaper maxim:
"You tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em you tell 'em, and
then you tell 'em what you told 'em.“
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In an introduction, you lay out a plan for what will follow. However, there is
more to writing an introduction than merely summarizing the points of your
essay; you must find a way to open discussion of the topic. There are
several ways to do this, but a simple and effective method uses the analogy
of a triangle.
Imagine an inverted triangle:
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Writing an Introduction
• In this model, your introduction begins with the general and moves
toward the specific, as the sides of the triangle narrow toward a
point. Ask yourself how the specific question you are addressing in
the essay relates to a greater issue or field. For example, if you are
writing about how Waiting For Godot subverts traditional notions of
plot, you might want to begin by explaining what a traditional notion
of plot is, or by discussing the characteristics of Beckett's work in
general.
• The question you take up in your essay does not exist in a vacuum;
it arises out of a greater set of concerns. Your introduction can
provide this background so that the reader is not coming to the
discussion cold: ask yourself what your audience knows already,
and what it needs to know in order to understand the context for
your thesis.
• By the time you reach the end of your introductory paragraph, you
should be ready to state the thesis of your essay. The introduction
need not give away all your opinions and conclusions, but you
should give your reader a clear idea of what you will be discussing.
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Writing an Introduction
Example:
"I’d walk a mile for a camel."
"Come to Malboro Country."
"You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby."
Practically every consumer, including those who do not smoke and would
never even consider taking up the habit, can easily identify each of the
above slogans as an advertisement for cigarettes. Advertising is all around
us, bombarding us on every level. It is so widespread and pervasive that we
rarely give it a second thought. However, the images presented in these
advertisements are etched in our minds whether we choose to admit it or
not. Even children in our culture are not immune to the effects of
advertising. In fact, children and adolescents are now targeted in Cigarette
campaigns as potential purchasers of tobacco products. Our children are
potential victims of unscrupulous individuals who would use a cartoon
character such as Joe Camel to sell cigarettes to adolescents. Cigarette
advertisers use all their wiles to deliberately seduce the buying public,
including children, to purchase deadly products. Since their only real
concern is their bottom line they clearly do not act in the best interest of the
consumer.
http://www.csuohio.edu/writingcenter/introeg.html
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Drafting The Body
Moving through your essay should be like strolling
through hilly terrain. At the hill peaks, you introduce your
readers to the 'bigger picture' with more general, abstract
words. Then you descend the hill from these heights of
generality to the examples down in the valleys. Here you
explain in concrete terms what you mean by your lofty
claims and show them in action. Eventually, you make
your way back up again so that readers can see the
examples in their context, that is, what they mean to the
bigger picture. This is how your essay should flow: up
and down and up again. If, on the other hand, your
valleys mutate into vast prairies, readers begin to lose a
sense of the original general assertions. Or, if your peaks
become heady plateaus, the audience will get dizzy from
the high altitude and long for examples in the concrete
world. Therefore, you must always achieve a sense of
balance between the general and the particular.
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Drafting The Body
According to Bell and Corbett's The Little English Handbook, the three most important
features of a paragraph (and unfortunately the most common errors as well) are unity,
coherence, and adequate development.
• ACTIVITY: see if the above paragraph on essays like hills fits the following three
criteria. If not, how would you fix it? Unity is the development of a single controlling
idea usually presented in the topic sentence. Each sentence should somehow
develop that idea and no other. A paragraph on the role of midwives in child-birth
should not digress to child-rearing in the same paragraph. Thus, if you're typing a
sentence in your draft that doesn't seem to fit where it is, keep it in but flag it
somehow. During revision, you'll see whether there isn't a better spot for it or if it
ought to be scrapped.
• Coherence is a quality where the writer makes it explicitly clear what the connections
are between thoughts. In Latin, coherence basically means "to stick together." Make
things stick together for your readers. You won't be there beside them saying "oh, this
is what I meant." Tell them what you mean in writing! Don't think "but, that's obvious"-make it obvious by saying it. Bell and Corbett include the following tips for achieving
coherence:
• Repeat key words. Using synonyms may be great for creative writing but in research
papers, key words are markers!!
• Use pronouns for important nouns. Of course, you can't always be saying the
same words over and over again so luckily the English language has a device called
the pronoun to refer back to the same word. If you say that 'the educational system is
troubled' in one sentence and begin the next with "it," the reader knows the 'it' here
refers back to educational system.
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Drafting The Body
• Use demonstratives. "This policy . . . ," "that event," or " . . . these
examples" are great ways to, again, point back to a previous
sentence.
• Establish some logical order to the sentences in your paragraph
such as cause to effect, or general to particular.
• Use transitional words. Transitional words like "therefore,"
"moreover," "however," aren't just great links between paragraphs
but also signal the type of relationship one sentence has to another.
Here is a link to a list of transitional words and phrases.
• Adequate development is what it sounds like: fulfill what you
promise in your topic sentence. If you say you will discuss several
unusual items found in drugstores, then discuss several. Give your
readers enough meat to chew on about the topic. What is adequate?
Well, it's quite subjective but remember this little saying (sexist
implications aside) from one of my early English teachers: "An essay
or paragraph is like a woman's skirt: it should be long enough to
cover the topic and short enough to be interesting."
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The Writer’s Block
Procrastination (a.k.a. "putting things off" or "waiting 'til the last
minute") is a habit, because students are afraid of how slow or
imperfect their drafting is and therefore wait for pressure to become
the ultimate motivator. As a result, students typically hand in firstdraft quality material. If pressure keeps you cooking, there are other
ways to create it besides waiting until the wee hours of the morning
on a paper's due date. A week or two before deadline, try:
• pretending your first draft is an essay exam. Set a timer, consult
your outline, and write. Have a friend or relative in the room watch
you so that the timed aspect becomes real.
• setting small goals for yourself. Pressure is ultimately about goals:
getting such-and-such done by such-and-such time. Give yourself a
ballpark time limit for each paragraph in your paper. Reward yourself
for each completed goal.
• imagining that you have to give an oral presentation on your subject.
You have 10 minutes to get the main points across coherently. Go!
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Drafting Conclusion
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Don't depend on your conclusion to sum up the body paragraphs. Your
paragraphs should flow naturally into one another and connections should
be made among them. Summary can be an important function of
conclusions but keep this part brief; readers know what they've just read.
Don't simply regurgitate your introduction. Try to talk about your topic in a
new way now that you've presented all that you have about it.
Point out the importance or the implications of what you've just said on an
area of societal concern. Again, this is the so what? factor stated perhaps a
bit more dramatically.
For analytical papers in particular, you could mention the lack of conclusion
in the field. This demonstrates that you understand the complexity of the
subject matter.
Perhaps propose what you feel is a natural next step to take in light of what
your argument is attempting to convince people of.
Don't end your conclusion with a quotation or with a statement that could
very well be the subject of another paper. The former deflects attention
away from you as writer and thinker; the latter deflects attention from what
you're saying in your paper.
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