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Okay let's move to the middle paragraphs and in these paragraphs your goal is to give an overview of

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the relevant scientific literature and lead towards your research question.

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And if you finished your outline then you should have a lot of ammunition for that.

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And now it's basically a matter of putting it into word. So to inspire you a little bit for that already,

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here are some common expressions that you usually find in the middle paragraphs. Several studies have

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shown that... and so on. While some studies suggested that X

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other studies pointed in the opposite direction.

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Three lines of research are relevant to this question.

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First.... Second... Third... Overall it has remained unclear whether... and so on.

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So this would be a sentence that appears a little bit later in your introduction and more explicitly

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leads towards your research question. Because it says that there is a gap in the literature and then

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your research is gonna save the day by filling that gap.

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Okay now let me give you an example again

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what this can look like in text. Here you see the little example that I wrote and it starts with the paragraph

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that you already saw in the last lecture.

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Now let's have a look at how the text continues after the first paragraph. Recent research has shown

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that depressed people suffer from various cognitive biases. First, depressed people tend to pay more attention

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to negative aspects of their life compared to healthy people. Second, depressed people also tend to interpret

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their experiences more negatively. Third, depressed people tend to have better memory for negative aspects

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of their life. It has been suggested that these cognitive biases could play a role in both causing and

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maintaining depression.

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So notice here that right at the beginning, the paragraph introduces cognitive biases which means that

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right away after the first paragraph, this paragraph narrows down the topic from "general depression"

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to "cognitive biases and depression". And that's what you want to do.

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You want to start a relatively broad and then narrow it down... narrow it down... as you go further in the

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text.

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In addition this sentence uses for the first time the expression "cognitive biases" which you could see

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as an example of scientific jargon.

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Now remember that you should use scientific jargon but you should also explain it in the text. And that's

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what happens in the next sentences.

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So here it is explained that cognitive biases involve paying more attention to negative aspects, interpreting

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things more negatively, and having better memory for negative aspects.

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And then the paragraph ends by speculating that this could play a role in causing and maintaining depression.

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Now notice how the next paragraph starts: As yet there is no treatment that is designed to address these

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cognitive biases... Which immediately creates a conflict: On the one hand we have evidence of all these

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cognitive biases and think that they may play a role in causing and maintaining depression.

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But on the other hand our treatments don't really do anything about that. And that's a conflict and that's

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what we usually want to create in the middle part of our research paper.

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We want to point out that there is something that still requires further investigation to justify our

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own research.

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OK.

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Then the text continues: Existing treatments of depression often assume that depression is caused by an

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unprocessed trauma and that the key to treating depression is to enable the patient to process that

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trauma.

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However recent evidence shows that the effectiveness of these treatments is limited.

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In fact if depression is caused by cognitive biases there is the danger that these treatments further

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encourage attention to negative past events and thus maintain cognitive biases.

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Now notice how this whole paragraph helps to further increase the impression of that conflict in the

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literature.

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There are also key words like "however" which signal conflict. And also the keyword "in fact" which signals

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that it's even worse than I just described.

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Okay.

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And then in the next paragraph I say: Based on these considerations the refocus treatment has been developed

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which trains people to focus more on the positive aspects and less on negative aspects of their life.

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Now in the following I could describe in more detail how this treatment works.

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I could also describe existing research on that treatment and then at some point I would point out

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what has NOT been investigated yet and what we still definitely need to know. And that would lead to

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my research question.

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So that is how you write the middle part of your introduction section.

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You want to narrow your topic down and create conflict as soon as possible to justify your research

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and depicted as important, novel, and timely.

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Okay so hopefully that gives you an idea how the middle paragraphs of the introduction section work.

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Also don't forget the resources that you got earlier because they can give you some common expressions

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that are usually used in these paragraphs and also some general expressions that can help you to express

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what you want to express and hopefully with all of that together you are well armed to write the middle

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part of your introduction.

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All right that's it for this lecture and I see in the next one.