Page 308 - English for Writing Research Papers

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17.1 What’s the buzz?

Look at these football results from the World Cup.

Vatican City 0 Vanuatu 1 Germany 7 Brazil 1
Malta 2 Liechtenstein 1 Italy 4 Senegal 4
Monaco 0 Maldives 2 South Korea 2 England 1

Think about the answers to these questions.

1. Which ones are readers most likely to be interested in? Why?

2. Which results would you just put in a table, and which in both a table and in

the main text?

3. If you were Brazilian, would you avoid mentioning the result?
Moral of the story: Don’t tell the reader ALL your results – just the most relevant
and / or the most unexpected. Unless you were actually born in one of the countries
listed in the first column (six of the smallest countries in the world), you are highly

unlikely to be interested in reading details about them. However, they could still be
listed in a table, but with no need for comment in the main text.
The results in the second column represent your three big results, i.e. your three most
important findings. Such results should be i) put in a table, and ii) commented about.

Even if a result goes against what was expected (e.g. the Germany vs Brazil result),
you should still include it.

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Not all journals require a separate Results section, often it is integrated with the
Discussion, under the section title Results and Discussion.

If you have a separate Results section then the standard procedure is to present them
with little or no interpretation or discussion.

The key skill is fi rst to decide what results are representative, and then to organize
them in a sequence that highlights the answers to the aims, hypotheses or questions
that you set yourself at the beginning of the paper. In many disciplines this involves
the use of figures and tables, which are commented on in the text. In other disci-

plines, findings are only reported in text form.