Providing background information or details on the topic (optional) (Move 1, Step 2)

Read this topic to learn about how to provide background information to your topic once you have established its importance (for resolving real world issues and/ or advancing research in the area). See the Language focus section in the next tab to find out what language is used to write this part of the Introduction.

Once the importance of the topic has been established, many authors may feel compelled to provide some background to the topic. For example, this can be done by explaining or clarifying theoretical assumptions, highlighting important historical events, describing properties or features of objects under investigation, etc. Background statements can span one or a few sentences in length.

Background facts and details normally come from research studies and may thus be followed by references to those studies (also citations), although this is not always the case. Note that whenever background details are presented more as common knowledge or accepted facts, they may not contain references to any studies.

While prominent in certain fields, background information is absent in many studies. Including background information or facts is up to the author and can thus be regarded as an optional step. This is particularly true when the author is certain that his or her readers share the same background knowledge on the subject.

Examples:

Here are short extracts from Introductions to research articles in the fields of political science, economics, and applied linguistics. The “background statements” in each extract are highlighted in a different color:

Over the last three decades, electoral reform has moved center stage in both new and established democracies. In Europe, the post-1989 democratization wave brought important debates about electoral system choice and free and fair elections. However, electoral reform also emerged on the agenda in a number of established democracies. In common with other countries, declining political participation, corruption scandals and party finance irregularities put the management of the democratic process on the political agenda (references) (Buckley & Reidy, 2015) Political Science.
In logistics, the emergent technologies represent an important link in SCM (references), because they can help organizations to achieve interesting results in terms of eco-friendliness and competitiveness. In particular, green technologies can contribute to face the global competition thanks to a general costs reduction, a better SCM, a risks’ reduction (references), and the development of sustainable distribution system (references). These technologies can also lead to a concrete innovation of logistics, focused on environmental burden reduction policies, mainly oriented to pollution, gas emission (references), economic and material inputs optimization (Cosimato & Troisi, 2015) Economics.
It has been recognized for some time that the processes of reading and writing are inextricably intertwined, with writing helping to support cognitive demands made upon the reader whilst processing a text (Crisp & Johnson, 2007) Applied Linguistics.

What kind of “background” information can you identify in the "background statements" in these examples?

Language for providing background information

This section suggests typical language to use when giving background information to your study. We encourage you to complete follow-up self-check language activities in the next tab to have more practice with key vocabulary from this section.

Verb & noun collocations

Here are some verb and noun collocations that can be used in “background statements”:

to attend to smth (e.g., information)
to attract one's interest toward smth
to associate smth/smb with smth/ smb
to be faced/ confronted with smth/ smb
to be the key to smth …
to center/ concentrate/ focus (one's attention) on smth/ smb
to develop an interest in smth
to draw one's attention to smth/ smb
to direct one's interest to smth/ smb
to draw on/upon smth
to expose smth/ smb to smth/ smb
to have an interest in smth/ smb
to revive one's interest in smth/ smb

Adjectives & noun collocations

The following adjective and noun collocations are also common:

Analysis	careful, comparative, comprehensive, critical, detailed, in-depth, serious, systematic, thorough
Concept	basic, central, complex, core, essential, fundamental, general, key, innovative, intellectual, novel, original, sophisticated, underlying
Criterion/ criteria	inclusion, objective, primary, selection
Framework	general, comprehensive, conceptual, existing, theoretical
Model	conceptual, proposed, mathematical, working, traditional
Notion	(broadly) accepted, basic, common, conventional, general
Phenomenon/ phenomena	common, complex, contemporary, economic, novel, observable, rare, recent, well-known, unique, universal
Stance	broad, natural, rigid, strong
Viewpoint	alternative, critical, diverse, objective

Task 1

Task 2

Task 3

Task 4

Task 5

Task 6

Prepositions

Choose the correct preposition:

1. Recent work by Mosse (2005) draws attention a number of common fallacies in social science.
2. Memory-based frequency may not spontaneously estimate the frequency with which events occur unless they have a particular interest doing so.
3. Although the main lines of debate reveal conflicting views about the best way to address the accountability deficit, it is agreed that the key further consolidation is in Latin America.
4. When confronted the question of how the government would cope with such a problem, Jim Bolger, said the Employment Contracts Act (ECA) would be changed.
5. This article draws a combination of archival materials, published primary sources, and secondary research to offer an answer to this question.
6. One might unknowingly selectively attend information that suggests others should not be trusted.
7. Project leader assessment system leads to the selection of competent leaders and associates its presence better output service quality.
8. Participants were, therefore, exposed a broad range of physical activity interventions.

Nouns

Complete the gaps with one of the given words. Type each word into the spaces:

notion

viewpoint

models

phenomena

stance

criteria

framework

concepts

analysis

1. The pipeline , Xie contends, inherently limits the scope of how we study gender disparities.
2. While the variations that appeared in this analysis could generally be explained by like the target model of speech production, larger issues cannot be answered with such a small data set.
3. The idea of mass threats from the populace is most emphasized in of democratization in the literature on political regimes.
4. It is in line with the common that there is some correlation between the markets in Singapore and the financial stock indexes in US and Japan.
5. Rosenbaum (2007) has asserted that this effort has greatly distorted the matter at hand, as both sides attempt to present their as being most favorable to society.
6. Unfortunately, Spear’s has not been much extended in the past 15 years.
7. Since tracking and maintaining information variables entails a cost, it is reasonable to discuss variable selection .
8. The subject of static electricity is meaningful to students because students encounter these on a daily basis.
9. Through his Summerhill provides useful information about the existing transportation costs in Brazil.

Adjective & noun collocations II

Complete the gaps with one of the given words. Type each word into the spaces:

universal

inclusion

fundamental

working

comprehensive

conceptual

accepted

1. Although there has been a surge of interest in adolescent career development among developmental and vocational psychologists, there has been no analysis of the processes involved in preparing youth for adult careers.
2. Shannon's entropy has played an important role in clarifying concepts which were to the study of quantum mechanical systems.
3. Perhaps the changes which we attribute to globalization could be explained within the framework of the product or industry life cycle.
4. Another criterion for a paper to appear in our review was that it should describe research on software development effort or cost estimation.
5. In information technology, an ontology is the model of entities and interactions in some domain of knowledge or practices, such as electronic commerce.
6. This concept implies going beyond the well-established and broadly notion of the web as an infrastructural communication network serving both the global community and the single individual.
7. As these studies imply, the sense of loss and nostalgia is not limited to Japan but is a phenomenon.

Use of tenses

Choose the most suitable verb form: present simple, present perfect, past simple, or present perfect continuous:

The use of information communication technologies (ICT) (1) in recent years, and studies measuring the effects of technology instruction on language learning (2) in number. Yet, despite the increased role of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in curriculum and instruction, its effects on language development and grammar learning, (3) an area that requires further exploration. Technology is used to perform many functions in the language classroom. One function (4) to create the main characteristics of a communicative classroom by engaging learners in real and meaningful communication. Another major function (5) to provide opportunities for learners to practice the language through mechanical activities that are not normally used in the classroom.

Source: Baturay, M., Daloglu, A., & Yildirim, S. (2010). Language practice with multimedia-supported web-based grammar revision material. ReCALL, 22(3), 313–331.