How to Write a Good Introduction?

Whether you are writing a research paper or conducting an academic thesis, introduction is the first part of your final document.

The aim of writing introduction is providing a bigger picture of your research for the audience. A complete introduction should answer to the following questions:

1. What is the problem going to be solved?
2. How it is going to be solved?
3. Why research problem and outcomes are important?
4. What will be the final use of the outcomes, and who can use them?

Different researchers and different academic institutes follow various structures for writing introduction, but most of them use sections:

1. Background:

The aim of this part is making your readers ready for the big story. Like a good movie, you need to warm up your audience by creating an interesting scene. One of the common ways is reviewing other researchers work on the same scope in a chronological way, from the 1st to the last.

2. Importance of Study:

In this part you have to show that your title is worthy. Showing the novelty of the study can do this; also you might link your work to the previous literature and try to improve their results and limitations.

Overall, this section tries to show the gap. What is missing that you are going to clarify? Or what are you going to reach?

It is also important to tell your readers who will use your research. To whom it will be useful? Is it only for academic people or also for practical use in businesses?

3. Research Questions and Objectives:

The core of your research lies here. Clear objectives and research questions let your audience know what you are exactly going to achieve at the end of the research. Some people make mistakes in this part, as although it seems simple, putting your goals in words might become tricky. Any change in the words will change the forecasted outcomes of your research.

4. Limitations:

Some researchers put this section in the last part, discussion. Whereas, others may put it in the introduction. In any of the ways, limitations as the name suggests tries to clear the problems and limitations in the path of conducting research. This can be unachievable data or limited tools.

5. Assumptions:

Research is all about justifying your every single word. For example, you should tell the readers that your study is based on only workers in Malaysia, or you may assume that all students at the same school are from a very similar socio-economic background. In fact it is for preventing misunderstanding of your readers and supervisors!