62 Science Research Writing too little. By the time you write up your research you will probably have repeated your experiments or simulations many times and so you are very familiar with the materials, quantities, equipment, soft ware, the sequence or steps in the procedure and the time taken for each step. Because of this familiarity, specifi c details (the size of the bottles in Sentence 5, for example) may seem obvious to you, but those details may not be obvious to every reader. If you want another researcher to be able to reproduce your work and obtain similar results, you should include every specifi cation and detail. Note that in this sentence, the writer uses thoroughly, fi lled to the top and tightly to communicate to the reader that the work was carried out with care. Remember that your aim in writing the paper is not only to say what you did and found, but also to make sure that your reader accepts the conclusions at the end of your paper. In order to do this, the reader has to accept your results — but to accept your results s/he must fi rst accept your methodology. For this reason, it is important to present yourself as a competent researcher who carries out procedures accurately and with care. Notice the use of 25 ml in Sentence 4. ml is the SI (Système International d'Unités) symbol for millilitre. Check the SI to make sure that you are using the correct symbol. Th ere is oft en a space between the quantity/number and the SI symbol; in addition, although SI symbols look like abbreviations they are not, and therefore should not be followed by a period. In Sentence 5 'The filled bottles were shipped directly to two separate laboratories at Reading University, where they were analysed using standard methods suitably miniaturised to handle small quantities of water.5' the writer continues to describe what was done in detail, using language which communicates that care was taken. Can you see which words in Sentence 5 communicate to the reader that care was taken? Th e writer could just have written Th e fi lled bottles were shipped to two laboratories and analysed using standard methods miniaturised to handle small quantities of water, but including words like directly, separate and suitably communicates reliability.
Methodology — Writing Task 63 In Sentence 6 'Samples 10–18 were prepared in our laboratory using a revised version of the precipitation method established by the ISF Institute in Germany.6' the writer describes what was done by referring to existing methods in the literature. Why should I refer to other research; why not just describe the method I used? One reason is that it is unlikely that you created the entire method you used all by yourself. In many cases part of it will be taken from a method used or discovered by someone else and their method may be very well known, so if you give the research reference you do not need to give every detail. Giving the research reference, therefore, provides you with a shortcut. You will fi nd vocabulary for this in Option 1 in Section 2.4. But if the reference is available in the literature, why does the writer need to give any details? Why can't readers just go to the library, fi nd the reference and read it themselves? In this case, the writer provides basic details of the method because some readers may not be familiar with it and it is not always appropriate to send readers to the library or Internet to look up a reference. It's a matter of professional courtesy for writers to describe the procedures, tests, equipment or materials they used even when they are used in a way that is identical to the reference. Remember to use the Present Simple for this kind of background information (Th is method obtains) and to switch back to the Past Simple when you return to describing what you did. Comparisons between your materials and methods and those of other researchers in the same fi eld are a legitimate topic for the Methodology section. It is common to keep previous or current research procedures clearly in your readers' view so that they can see how your work is diff erent from other work in the area. Either your method is identical to others you mention (Option 1 in the vocabulary list in Section 2.4), or it is similar (Option 2 in the vocabulary list), or it is signifi cantly diff erent, in which case the diff erences between your materials/method and those of other researchers in the same fi eld may even represent the actual contribution of your paper/thesis itself (Option 3).