In this chapter, I will discuss the implications of fruit flies on orange production in South Australia after 1980. What’s more, they are anonymous peer reviewers or external examiners, they really don’t know what you did or how you got there. Your reader has never been where you have gone. If you are doing original research, no-one has ever done this exact thing before. You think this was an absolutely fine taxi ride. After cutting across 4 lanes of traffic, the driver drops you at your destination and charges you $37.50. You go through a toll tunnel that takes you to the wrong side of the river and then seem to loop back over a bridge. What do you think?”Īgain, the driver takes you along a freeway, and then through some windy backstreets. There’s a bend in the river there, so it’s actually quicker for us to cross on the tunnel and come back on the bridge–and you’d have to pay about $3 on idling fees anyway, because the main road where your hotel is just gets chock-a-block after 4.30 when all the schools get out, so it’s a saving. It’s an extra $2.50 toll, but it will save you about 30 minutes in this traffic. The fastest way into town is the freeway, but there are roadworks after Junction 10 so I’ll take you through round the back roads to cut through to the tunnel. Now, let’s reimagine the driver had first said something like this: “No worries. You go through a toll tunnel that takes you to the wrong side of the river and then you seem to loop back over a bridge. The driver takes you along a freeway, and then through some winding backstreets. That will bring you straight to your hotel.” We’ll go through the tunnel and over the bridge. “I’ll take you out the airport, we’ll go left, then right, then through the back ways. You have looked up the hotel on the map and you want to be sure you are going the most direct route. You are on a tight schedule and a tight budget. Now, you are an anxious passenger who has had bad experiences with taxis in other strange cities. “No worries,” says the driver (we are clearly in Australia). You have just arrived at the airport and you catch a taxi, and give the driver the address of your hotel. This metaphor is one that my colleague Roger regularly used with his students, and I found it a helpful one. To help explain the difference, I’m going to use a metaphor that’s really a kind of parable. (If you’re not sure if the information is actual enough, use the banana test–the paragraph above fails.) Topic sentences, introductions and conclusions should contain actual information. Tell me what you are actually going to say in the section or paragraph. Not: “Explain what kind of paragraph this is”. On the blog, I’ve made it clearer: “ You can’t over signpost your argument“. Not: “You can’t over signpost which kind of section you are in”. ‘I know this stuff,’ I would think, ‘but why aren’t you telling me what you’re doing?’ Finally, I will outline the major implications for the industry as a whole.Īnd I would feel the rage. Then I will describe the findings of my research. Then give me the conclusion and its implications.” Then you’ll explain your argument in some steps, perhaps include a description of your methodology here. So what you need to do here, I would say, is to write “in this chapter, I will discuss X, you know, this part of my overall scope. When they were writing, they were doing exactly what I told them to do. But I’ve found that isn’t clear enough, and they come back with terrible writing that is boring and repetetive, but has lots of signposting in it.Īfter a few of these crossed my desk, and I was trying to explain what they were doing wrong, I had an ‘ahah’ moment. I’ve often said in talking to candidates and students and researchers I work with, “You can’t over signpost”.
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