Unit 1 Considerations in Academic Writing 1
1.1 Overview of Academic Writing 1
1.2 The Nature of Writing 2
1.3 The Nature of Academic Writing 3
1.4 The Rationale of Academic Writing 4
1.5 Approaches to Reading Critically 5
1.6 Important Characteristics of Academic Writing 7
1.7 Guidelines for Academic Writing 22
Unit 2 Selecting a Topic and Writing a Research Proposal 27
2.1 Guidelines for Selecting a Topic 27
2.2 Finding a Literary Topic and Framing a Thesis Statement 31
2.3 Writing a Research Proposal 40
2.4 A Sample Research Proposal 49
Unit 3 The Literature Review 57
3.1 The Nature and Role of a Literature Review 57
3.2 Definition of a Literature Review 59
3.3 Organization of a Literature Review 60
3.4 The Format of a Literature Review 64
3.5 The Process of Writing a Literature Review 66
3.6 Suggestions for Writing a Literature Review 67
3.7 FAQs on Writing a Literature Review 69
3.8 A Sample Literature Review——Literature Review of the Research on Complimenting 73
Unit 4 Research Design 78
4.1 Qualitative Research 78
4.2 Procedures for Conducting Qualitative Research 80
4.3 The Uses of Qualitative Research 83
4.4 Experimental Research 84
Unit 5 Documenting Sources:The MLA Style 100
5.1 Why Document Your Source? 100
5.2 Avoiding Plagiarism 101
5.3 MLA:In-Text Citations and Works Cited 102
5.4 A Sample Research Paper in MLA Style 119
Unit 6 Constructing an MA Thesis 124
6.1 The Structure of an MA Thesis 124
6.2 Writing Skills for Some Key Parts 129
6.3 Writing the First Draft 144
6.4 Revising and Editing 147
6.5 Strategies for the Beginning Thesis Writer 151
Works Cited 154
Appendix A:Sample Thesis Title Page 157
Appendix B:Foreign Words and Phrases with Popular Abbreviations 158
Appendix C:The Most Common MLA Scholarly Abbreviations 160
Appendix D:Resources for Writing a Literature Review 162