okay in this video I'm going to look at the
introduction section and how it's organized
the introduction is the first major section
of your paper
now there are five things that the
introduction should do
first it should get the reader's attention
and interest
second it should give the reader a summary of
previous research
what is already known about the topic
next it should set up your research by formulating a clear problem to be solved
that's what you what we don't yet know
about the problem
four: you should propose a hypothesis to test
with your experiment
and in five you should state the main
purpose of your study
now let's have a look at a couple
introductions from real research papers
and see what they have
introductions can be a bit different depending on the topic so
we're going to compare two examples
okay first here is a study that examines the effect of different chemicals
on preventing the browning of apple
slices and here's the introduction
first it starts with some facts about
preserving fruit
that shows us why this topic is
important
and then it introduces the topic of browning right here
okay and then it introduces the
the problem that we need to solve
that a replacement technique for
preventing fruit from browning has
urgently been sought
next it reviews previous research
that shows what kind of chemicals
prevent browning
okay now we get to the problem that this
paper's going to address okay right here
that most of the reported a activities
were measured
individually at different conditions okay
and right here this is the
the main problem that this study is going to try to address
the overall relative inhibitory activity
of individual compounds is not clear
and then we have the main purpose of the
study here
the main purpose a study was to find the
most effective anti browning agents for
apple slices
by comparing the anti browning activity
of commonly known compounds under the
same conditions
so we started by getting the reader's
attention
and then reviewing the history of the
problem and
what is known about the problem then we
get into the
what we don't know and then finally they
have the
statement of the purpose of this research
now you notice this
introduction does not have a hypothesis
um because they don't really know which
one's going to
which chemicals going to stop browning
the most
they just have a lot of evidence that
different chemicals do
into going to compare them so depending
on the study
sometimes you won't be able to state
hypothesis
that's why introductions are sometimes different
okay next let's look at this paper about
referees being the reason that athletes
who wear red win more
now in this case the introduction starts
directly
with background information about the
research
about previous research so it doesn't
have anything to get the reader's attention
like the Apple paper did and did this
whole
first paragraph is reviewing what we
already know about
um wearing red sports attire has a
positive impact
and what are the
reasons that other people have suggested
that this happens
okay so that's the review of the pre- of what we already know
then we get to this part um we disagree
with both interpretations
this is uh kind of the hypothesis of
the paper but it's also um
explaining the problem it's explaining
that
they don't think that these reasons are true
after that day explain
the reasoning behind it why do they
think the
this hypothesis is true okay and then
finally they come again to
repeating the hypothesis right here
therefore we believe that is the
referees who the actual
cause of the advantage competitors
have when they wear red
and then finally just like the other
paper the last thing in your introduction
should be your statement of purpose
because the effect the red clothing on
performance and on the decisions of
referee's may well have been confounded
in the original data
we conducted a new experiment and found
okay now one more thing the that I want to
talk about is
citations okay what are citations? well
citations are
these things and these things here
an example is this sentence okay
referees and umpires exert a major
influence on the outcome of sports competitions
that information they cite
this paper Plesner and Haar 2006
to as evidence that this statement is
true
this is very important in your research
paper you can't
write from your head you need to back up
everything you say
with evidence and that evidence either
comes from
a logical argument or it comes from
your own experiment or it comes from
previous research papers
everything needs to be backed up with
evidence now it might seem reasonable
referees and umpires exert a major
influence on the outcome of sports competitions
but without the reference
that's just your opinion and your
scientific paper
needs to be 100 percent justified so
that
other people will believe what you write
now if we want to know what this paper is
we can go to the list of references at
the end of the paper
and here is all the details you have the
names of the authors the year the name
of the paper
the name of the journal that it comes
from the volume number the pages
okay and your research paper will also
have to have
a reference list at the end like this
you can use the book that I gave you in class
this one to find out how to do these
references and also I have another video
that explains how to do this in Word
okay let's just go back here for a
second
two ways you can put citations in your
paper one is to
say the point and then put this at the end
in parentheses family names of the
authors and the year
the other way is if you use the names of
the researchers
in the sentence like this Hill and Barton
showed that wearing red sports attire okay
then in this case you just
put the year in parentheses after the
name
okay one last point about citations as I
said
don't write from your head for example
you might know from maybe uh high
school science class or maybe you
saw something on TV you might know that
honey
can be used to prevent apple slices from
turning brown
but just because you know that you can't
write it in your paper
you need to find a trustworthy source of
information
to be evidence for your statement that
honey can
stop apples from turning brown okay so
in your introduction
you're going to be doing a lot of
summarizing sources
a couple other things to note: don't
copy from your sources
this is considered plagiarism and will
get you in big trouble
okay don't copy more than let's say
three words in in a row you have to
change
what's written in the sources into your
own words your own way to explain it
next don't quote from your sources
don't use quotation marks just explain
what the sources say in your own words
and lastly
this is the third time I've said this now
 summarize in your own words a good technique for
doing this
is read your source read the research paper
and make sure you understand it
keep reading it until you understand it
then close the book or put the paper away
and write notes then when you write your
paper
use your notes instead of looking at
the
original research paper when you're
writing okay so just to review when you're
writing the introduction you want to start
by getting the reader's attention
you want to organize it properly with a
summary of previous research
the problem to solve, your hypothesis and your statement of purpose
and you want to back up your statements
with citations don't write from your head
summarize your sources don't copy or quote and
format your citations and references correctly
