0.8 Manual for writing mentors  (Page 4/11)

Features of Introductions

Introductions serve two purposes: creating readers’ interest in the subject and providing them with enough information to understand the article. Generally, introductions accomplish this by leading readers from broad information (what is known about the topic) to more specific information (what is not known) to a focal point (what question the authors asked or what claim they made). Thus, authors describe previous work that led to current understanding of the topic (the broad) and then situate their work (the specific) within the field.

Features of Methods

The Methods section tells the reader what experiments were done to answer the question stated in the Introduction. Methods are often difficult to read—they are loaded with technical language and a level of detail sufficient for another researcher to repeat the experiments. However, students can more fully understand the design of the experiments and evaluate their validity by reading the Methods section carefully.

Features of Results and Discussions

The Results section contains statements of what was found and reference to supporting data in figures and tables. Normally, authors do not include information that would need to be referenced, such as comparison to others’ results. Instead, that material is placed in the Discussion—placing the work in context of the broader field. The Discussion also functions to provide a clear answer to the question posed in the Introduction and to explain how the results support that conclusion.

Atypical Structure

Some articles deviate from the conventional structure. For instance, Letters to Nature do not contain section headings. Often the abstract contains introductory information as well (for the purpose of catching the attention of a wide audience).

Therefore, when a student begins to read an article for the first time, he/she should skim the article to analyze the document as a whole. Are the sections labeled with headings that identify the structure? If not, he/she should note what the structure is, decide which sections contain the material that is most essential to understanding the article, and then decide how to approach the reading.

Strategy 2: distinguish the article’s main points

Because articles contain so much information, it may be difficult to distinguish the main points of an article from the subordinate points. Fortunately, there are many indicators of the author’s main points:

Document level

• title
• abstract
• keywords
• visuals (especially figure and table titles)
• first sentence or the last 1-2 sentences of the Introduction

Paragraph level: words or phrases to look for

• surprising
• unexpected
• in contrast with previous work
• has seldom been addressed
• we hypothesize that
• we propose
• we introduce
• we develop
• the data suggest

Strategy 3: generate questions and be aware of your understanding

Reading is an active task. Before and during reading, a student should reflect on these questions:

• Have I taken the time to understand all the terminology?
• Have I gone back to read an article or review that would help me understand this work better?
• Am I spending too much time reading the less important parts of this article?
• Is there someone I can talk to about confusing parts of this article?