A key function of any introduction is to present your argument in such a way that your audience can enter the conversation and properly engage with your paper. Key questions to think about as you ...

Require many reliable sources to back up your thesis/claim. Take up a position and support it with evidence. Usually about events (historical or current), textual arguments, or personal interests.

Our Essential Lessons are a sequence of lessons that form the backbone of the Writing Program curriculum, illustrating what we want all students to learn across our program’s diverse course topics.

What is a Research Paper? In law school, a research paper is a piece of academic writing that engages with previous scholarship on a topic, analyzes key evidence, and advances an argument, offering an ...

To help students understand the traditional structure of an introduction to a scientific paper. This exercise can focus on reading skills and comprehension, writing a research paper for a lab class or ...

Review the structure of an introduction (for instance "inverted funnel," i.e., general to specific topics). An introduction should teach readers enough about the subject to read the paper, and should ...

What makes a good introduction for a dissertation? Graduate students practice critiquing one another’s thesis chapters, but they rarely read the introductions — usually because those are written to ...

Writing, Research, and Inquiry falls under the Communication Capacity. Writing as both a means and an expression of inquiry and research is essential to personal, professional, and civic life. In ...