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Today’s Agenda. Review Library Session What new resources did you find? Discussions and Conclusions Activity: Evaluate a student paper from the UH Writing Center Language Focus
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Today’s Agenda • Review Library Session • What new resources did you find? • Discussions and Conclusions • Activity: Evaluate a student paper from the UH Writing Center • Language Focus • Activity: Use today’s lesson to write some Discussion “points” about your own research, OR about today’s student paper
Discussions and Conclusions ELI 83 University of Hawaii Aurora Tsai
Today’s Goals • To notice the important “points” written in the “Discussion” and “Conclusion” sections of a research paper • To learn some common expressions and phrases used in discussions and conclusions and integrate them into our own writing
What are important “points” to address in a Discussionor Conclusion? • e.g., • Answer the research questions • Summarize the main results
3 Moves in the Discussion Section • Move 1: Summarize the most important findings and give explanations for why you think you obtained these results (and interpretation) • Common in all disciplines • Tends to be longest part of the discussion • May refer back to the introduction (theories, framework) • Move 2: Indicate the limitations of your study. • optional, but common • Move 3: Identify possibilities for further research • optional, common in some disciplines but not others Swales and Feak, page 270
Conclusions How do they differ from Discussions? • There may not be a difference, depending on academic field/discipline • They are often optional (^^) • When researchers have a large amount of “points” to make in the Discussion, they may write a separate Conclusion • Establishes the overall message they want to convey with the study by highlighting the most important “points” • For the reader, not the writer! • However, content often overlaps . . .
Discussion and Conclusion “Points” • What were the answers to the research questions and what do the answers indicate? • Discussion section • What are the implications of the results, and how do they relate to the field as a whole? • Discussion or Conclusions section • Which conclusions follow directly from the results and which ones are more speculative? • Discussion or Conclusions section • What questions arose in the course of doing the study that might be useful for future research? • Discussion or Conclusions section • Brown, J.D. 1991. Statistics in a Foreign Language—Part I: What to look for in reading statistical language studies. Tesol Quarterly 25(4), 569-586.
Activity:Let’s evaluate a student paper • What “moves” or “points” are made in the student’s paper? • What improvements can be made?
Language Focus: Opening Phrases for Discussion Points • Restate/Summarizing sentences • “This study examined how . . ." • “A major goal of this experiment was to assess . . .[research question]” • “Experiment 1 demonstrated that . . .” • Answering Research Questions or Hypotheses • “Consistent with our predictions, . . .” • “The research hypotheses from this study were [confirmed/remain unconfirmed] in the . . . analysis” • “While it was true that . . ., this was not true for . . .”
Opening Phrases • Interpretive Statements • “The finding that . . . suggests that . . .” • “This study has shown that . . .” • Connecting to theories, framework • “These {results} are consistent with the view that . . .” • “These findings confirm earlier studies from . . . “ • Future research • “One key question that remains is whether . . .” • “Future research should examine
Activity 2:1.) Let’s revise the student paper by inserting our own “points” into the discussion/conclusion2.) Use the skeletal phrases we talked about OR think of your own way to add to the paper.