Academic text means a text that is specifically written for use by college instructors or students, or it is

a textyour instructor has assigned because of its usefulness in your college course.
The Structure of Academic Texts
An important feature of academic texts is that they are organized in a specific way; they have a clear structure.
This structure makes it easier for your reader to navigate your text and in that way understand the material
better, but it also makes it easier for you to organize your material. The structure should be clear on all levels of
the academic text: the entire text, each section, every paragraph, and even sentences.
The Structure of the Entire Text and of Each Section
Most academic texts in the sciences adhere to the model called imrad, which is an acronym for introduction,
methods and materials, results, and discussion. Imrad is often illustrated with the following image (see
explanation below).
The model should however be complemented with sections for aims and research questions, as these make
up the very backbone of the academic text. They often appear towards the end of the introduction, but
sometimes after a separate heading.
Below is an overview of what should be included in each of the sections of the academic text, as well as advice
on how you can make the text coherent and how to structure your text.
Aim
The aim determines the entire academic text and the content in all its parts. The aim captures what you intend
to achieve with your study. One example could be that the aim was to investigate how effective nursing
interventions are for smoking cessation. It is crucial that the aim is the exact same in every part of the
academic text. The title should highlight the same aspects as the explicit aim, and all the subsequent parts
should have the same focus.
Research questions
The aim is often rather general, and may have to be narrowed down with research questions. Research
questions are, in other words, specific questions that will enable you to reach your aim. For the example
above, the research questions could be What nursing interventions exist? and How many patients are still
smoke free after one year?. Remember that there must be a clear link between your aim and your research
questions, but they should not be identical. Only ask questions that will help you to fulfil your aim.
If you have several research questions, you should consider the order of these. Is there a logical order, so that
some questions may only be understood after having read others? Are some questions more important than
others? Place the research questions in an order that makes sense to you and then keep to the order in the
rest of your thesis.
Your aim and your thesis must be delimited and narrow, as we can only research a small part of the world in
our studies. That is the reason that the parts that concern what we have done in our study methods and
results are narrow in the imrad model above.
Introduction

In order to make our narrow research interesting to others we must however place it in a larger context. For
that reason the introduction of the text must start with something much more general than your research
questions. It is often said that the introduction should be shaped like a funnel (as it is in the imrad model
above) that means that you should start in a broad and general manner and then gradually zoom in on your
own specific and narrow topic. The text needs to start with something that your reader can relate to, and
something that shows what field your research will contribute to, and how.
The introduction should provide everything the reader needs to know in order to understand your aim, but also
to understand why the aim is important. Convincing your reader that your aim is important often entails
showing that there is something we do not know, but that we would benefit from knowing perhaps in order to
provide better care or develop a new drug or a new treatment method. It could also entail indicating that there
is a problem with an existing method and that alternative methods are needed. When you have accounted for
the context and pointed to the importance of new knowledge in the field, your reader will be well prepared
when you present your aim and research questions towards the end of the introduction. (As mentioned above,
the aim and research questions are sometimes placed under a separate heading, which may be placed right
after the introduction.)
Please note that the introduction may also be called background. Sometimes the two terms are used for the
exact same thing, but sometimes there is a difference. There may be a short introduction that raises interest
and gives a very short introduction to the field, and which is followed by a more extensive background section.
Sometimes your instructions specify what parts your thesis or assignment should include, and what should be
included in each part but if not, you could ask your teacher. If you are writing a thesis you can also examine
previous theses from your field in order to get an idea how they normally look. (Just remember that theses may
differ from each other significantly, so in order to get a good perception, it may be a good idea to look at
several theses.)
Methods and Materials
In the methods section you should show your reader exactly how you have conducted your research, that is,
what you have done to be able to fulfill your aim and answer your research questions. Firstly, your reader
should understand how you got the results you did, and secondly, they should be able to duplicate your
research. But what do we mean by exactly how you conducted your research? You do not need to tell your
readers that you went to the library or that you talked to Barbro the librarian. Neither do you need to tell your
readers about all the ideas that you had but did not use. The most important thing is to focus on what you
actually did in your study, as well as account for the choices you made, when necessary.
It is helpful if you begin your methods section by writing something overarching about your method, mentioning
your study design. If you tell your readers right away that your work is a literature review or that your method is
to interview nurses using a semi-structured interview, it is easier for the readers to understand than if you go
straight to the details about your search process or the study group, without telling your readers what you
intend to do with them.
Results
In the results section you should account for your results in an objective manner, without interpreting them (that
you do in the discussion part). If you study several aspects related to your research questions you should
account for the results in the same order that you posed your research questions; the consistent order makes
the text coherent and helps your reader follow your points.

It may help your readers if you use illustrations such as tables and charts when presenting your results. The
illustrations should be clearly linked to your text, but you should not repeat all the information provided in the
chart. Instead you can account for the most important aspects, that is, tell your reader what you want them to
observe. Please note that tables and charts should be understandable without reading the body text, so it is
important that you have a caption that indicates what your picture illustrates.
Discussion
The discussion part is the part in which you interpret your results, and it is also the part that takes longest to
write. The reason is that you do not merely write about something that you have already done you actually
write and analyze at the same time. All parts of your discussion should focus on the analysis of your results
there should not be too much repetition from your background, your methods and materials, or your results
(sometimes you may need to remind your readers about things that you have accounted for in these parts, but
there cannot be too much focus on them). Please read the section about the principles of paragraphing and
topic sentences and make sure that each paragraph except the very first one contains some analysis of
your topic. A common outline of the discussion is the following:
The first paragraph reminds your reader about the aim, preferably hinting at how you will contribute to the field.
You may for example write This is the first study to examine the correlation between Then you briefly
account for the most important parts of your results, perhaps linking them to your hypothesis if you have one.
You may say that the first paragraph makes for a shortcut into the discussion: it should enable your readers to
understand the discussion without reading all the sections of your thesis.