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A clearly written purpose statement is the soul of a paper.
It is the point in which everything converges in the writing.
If well written,
the purpose statement becomes the climax of your research publication.
The purpose statement in your manuscript can represent the chance to bring
your readers to the edge of their seats, and leave them there while you carefully
unveil the answers to all the mysteries in the remainder of your article.
Certainly this is exaggeration, but
some of the best academic writing manages to do precisely that.
Present the purpose of the research publication in such a way
that readers cannot help themselves.
They simply have to read the paper to learn more about the paper.
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The first part of every paper is an introduction of some kind,
which always contains at least three elements,
necessary background, purpose statement, and scope.
These three elements give readers everything they need
to know about what the paper will contain, from the context to the content, and
from the purpose to the limitations of the data or methodology.
The purpose statement is to the paper as the topic sentence is to the paragraph.
The purpose statement tells the reader
with broad brush strokes what the paper will contain.
Purpose statement is in some ways a misnomer, because this
statement really constitutes a broadly written overview of the paper's contents.
It tells the reader that the paper will analyze this, explore that or
disagree with some theory or theories.
In other words, this one crucial sentence frames and
contextualizes the entire paper.
A purpose statement is always general,
leaving the rest of the paper to live up to its promise by filling in the details.
It usually begins with either, this paper examines,
investigates, analyzes, or the purpose of this paper is.
These are some of the sample purpose statements.
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This paper identifies, say,
the number of major factors involved in studying something.
Or this article compares something.
This article describes how you can use something to improve something.
This article deals with something.
This paper presents a comprehensive study on something.
The purpose of this paper is to develop and analyze something.
Or the purpose of this paper is to analyze something and to indicate something.
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While the proper statement is always one sentence putting the entire purpose
of your paper into only one sentence need not be daunting.
You may then follow it with more details in a sentence starting with a phrase such
as, more specifically, in addition, or in this sense.
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With practice, you will be able to write powerful statements
that make your reader back to read the remainder of the text.
To start with, write as many variations as you can of the answer to this question.
What is the purpose of my paper?
Remember, that most often, the purpose is to do something.
Answer a question, or test a hypothesis, compare findings across studies, argue for
a better solution, examine a problem in depth, or analyze data in a new way.
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As much as possible, keep your purpose statement active.
In other words, always use verbs to describe your purpose, not nouns.
After the one sentence purpose statement, the authors announce two main arguments
using first, second, consequently hence to frame them.
Framing is essential to the writing of any academic text.
Framing, which means the art of introducing and contextualizing everything
you write is to your argument what a topic sentence is to the paragraph and
the purpose statement to a paper.
Framing makes logic out of unconnected sentences.
Framing fills in the gaps that other linguistic
communities may allow, but thatEnglish never does.
In English, good framing signifies not only good writing,
but also sophisticated thinking.
Framing occurs on many levels.
One is the simple use of transitional adverbs from therefore,
to however, from on the one hand, to as previously mentioned.
A second level is that of letting the reader know what will happen and
when, so the writer can make a transition without losing the reader's attention.
Framing, at all times, works well even with longer phrases such as,
third, and more relevant to the main argument of this article.
A typical framing sentence looks like this.
We intend to answer these three questions in this article by empirically
relating X characteristics to control variables to various aspects of y.
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These are absolute models for framing adapted from sentences and
high ranking international journals.
However, before analyzing these theories,
we will review the literature on something.
Or we briefly review the literature on this and that,
refine our hypothesis and then present the results of our analysis.
I argue and present evidence that finally and clearly open for
discussion is the issue of why something happens.
Elena BazanovaDirector of the Language Training and Testing Center
