Writing Strategy: Provide Background

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Strategy: Provide Background 

You might recognize this strategy from its various uses in the Introduction, Methods, and Results sections. In Discussion and Conclusion sections, Provide Background helps to set the stage for a broad reflection on the study. Providing background gives theoretical, empirical, or informational background about the study topic as a means of situating the study or the results more specifically in the broader context of the field. You can also use this Strategy to briefly reiterate the research problem(s), re-visiting key sources already cited in your Introduction or Literature Review sections. Importantly, the information here should not simply repeat or rearrange information from the Introduction. Where, in the Introduction, the intent was to argue for the study’s relevance, in the D/C, the intent is to substantiate claims of the topic relevance by leading the reader to a better understanding of how the study moves the field forward. While serving slightly different functions in D/C sections, Language Use patterns for this Strategy are similar to patterns previously discussed for other sections, so we will move on to the next Strategy in D/C Sections.