Academic Writer
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academic writer: organization: introductions: how or why
How or why you wrote the text
This may be an interesting way to start a text as it allows
the reader to make a connection with your particular point of interest or point of view.
You might for example want to explain how you discovered your particular topic. However,
in writing situations where you have been given a research title to work on, this type of
introduction would be less interesting to the reader (presumably your teacher - who will
know full well why you are writing on this topic!) You will need to decide what kind of
tone you adopt. This may be an opportunity for using a more personal tone but note that ‘I’ and ‘in my opinion’ should not
generally be overused in academic writing.
EXAMPLE Using a personal tone
| Was the USA's intervention in the Gulf War
justifiable? In January of 1991 I was working as a research assistant at the University of Cambridge. Through CNN television broadcasts I watched the war unfold. It had a particular immediacy that made it seem as though the barriers of space between myself and the action in the Gulf were dissolved. I followed the action in the Gulf with a heightened sense of involvement, caring about everything that went on. The image of a war fought over oil stayed with me long after the war was over and the flags that hung from balconies in my apartment complex vanished. When I was in high school I had predicted that wars would be fought over energy sources and it seemed to have come true. Thus I jumped at the opportunity to research the question and the facts behind the images of burning oil wells that had been so deeply burned into my brain |
Find out about other types of Introductions
Academic Writer 2000