With the discussion section written, my paper is finally complete. Completing all the pieces separately and now watching them combine to form a final product is exciting. While it feels like we have come a long way, there are still definitely things to do.
I think one major strength of my paper is that the language does not appear too technical or complicated, especially in the literature review. I like how I was able to transform the literature review to make it easier to understand, and, consequently, easier to connect to the rest of the paper. I like the topics in the literature review and I think covering the different types of treatment and the difference between adult and child ADHD are vital to understanding my study of NFT. I think I do a good job of pointing out the gap in the research and articulating the significance of this study.
The results section, for me, is also one of the highlights of the paper. I think I was able to graphically represent the data in a visually clear way. Mrs. Haag helped me to think of ideas to present the various pieces of my project through different types of graphs and tables. With the information being laid out in ways which the reader could distinctly point out the difference between adult and child scores or severity levels within the population, readers could be more involved and invested in the research. I like how my results section is very clear and comprehensive while communicating the surprising findings I discovered and the interesting nuances of the study.
I think the parts that need the most work are the methods and discussion sections. I worry the methods section is not as fully explained as it should be, but I need my classmates to point out specifically if there are places where I am too vague about what I did or the term was not defined in the most concise way. The methods section feels much longer than it could be as I repeated the same steps for both the adults and child groups. In terms of justification of finding if the values are within normal distribution of each other, I don't think I do a great job of fully fleshing this out. The method section can be greatly cut down and made more focused.
The discussion section possessed a different problem. The discussion section may be too detailed and trying to pack as many possible future directions and speculation for justifications of conclusions than was necessary. I think I got a little excited with all the reasons for why adults did better than children and what this prime age bracket means that I got carried away. This section can definitely be cut down and I need help including only the most relevant, interesting explanations and future directions, so the end of the paper does not get bogged down by the many possible research studies that could be conducted.
While I feel the way my literature review is written is clear, I need people to verify whether the order in which is it is written makes sense for the rest of the paper. Is the transition from talking about the ADHD in general and then going into the differences between adult and child ADHD seamless? Or does it seem disjointed, especially in transitioning to the different types of treatment? And then in my discussion section, I don't know if I evidently connected back to the literature review as best as I could. Was the justification of NFT over other treatments in the discussion section relevant at the very beginning, or should I put it at the end of that section? Are there other ways I can connect back to the literature review without having to state/remind the reader I did. I tried to mention the inattention symptom of children as being one of the possible reasons the child group did not improve as much as the adults during therapy and I used the same sources in the discussion as I did in the literature review. Is this a viable way of connecting everything together? Did the conclusion at the end of the discussion section manage to tie everything together? And then I also always worry about my transitions between sections as this has commonly been my downfall. I believe I consciously tried to transition between each section and topic change, but it would be really helpful if you guys can confirm.
Ultimately, while I am done with the bulk of the writing and the researching, there still a lot to do in terms of editing and refining. My entire paper is around 1,500 words over the word limit so I have a lot of cutting down to do (most likely done in the methods, literature review, and discussion section). I hope with all your help I will be able to make it the best it can be.
(825)
Sunskruthi -- I'm so glad that you see the value in now having others interrogate your paper. It's true -- at this point you are (and even I am) way too close to the topic to tell what parts don't make sense. Thus, we move onto peer editing. Also, kudos in cultivating specific questions and focuses for your classmates to hone in on when giving you feedback.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I really like the new graphs. Would it be possible to do something that looks at the average growth between the two groups?
Hi Sunskrithi! I really liked your idea of making a copy of the doc, so you can find very detailed (i sincerely apologize that some are like a paragraph long) comments.
ReplyDeleteI think the order of the literature review is good, but you need a little bit more of the "why we are looking at this," as in i want you to focus on showing the reader why the parts interact and the implications. Often times your sentence structure was short and choppy and that limited your ability to fully bring the reader into the paper. Even though I want you to expand on these ideas, you can combine sentences to still be okay for word count. But you are right that the ideas are very clear and easy to understand; in doing so i think you oversimplified a little and left out some implications.
I think your paper looks very professional and you have all of the pieces it is just a matter of refining the style and organization. A lot of my comments revolved around sentence structures and making transitions/ connections between points that I know you are making, but just not explicitly saying.
Let me know if you have any questions! I may have copied the wrong document so half of my comments are on the copy in my folder while the other half are on the actual doc. I am so sorry for the confusion.
Sunskruthi,
ReplyDeleteYou've done a really good job so far on your paper. I commented about specific parts on your paper, so go check that out for more specific feedback from me. I will give some overall feedback here for you to use in general as you edit the paper. There are a lot of sections that you go on and on about, while it is very interesting, by cutting out some quotes and condensing explanations together, you can keep the reader focused and attentive to your paper as well as cut down words. When you talk about the other treatment methods, you can cut down so much, especially with the behavioral one, since that is not a factor, you could just briefly overview it and then move on. No need to spend 3 paragraphs on it. With the methods section, you go into great detail about the stats but you can condense that a little as well. I think overall my main advice is to condense a lot of sections that either go into too much detail or repeat themselves numerous times. If you can do that, you should get to the word count without losing too much important content. Good luck, you are doing great!!
Hey Sunskruthi! I'm sorry this is coming at 2 am lol.
ReplyDeleteSo first, I really enjoyed your paper and your topic is so interesting and I'm really happy for you that you got to work on something like this!
So for me, your discussion is the strongest part of your paper. It was really great and easy to follow - I didn't question any of your interpretations and I think part of that has to do with the fact that this section in particular was so concise. Most of my comments are on your literature review, so let me just say really quickly that your methods section was good. There were just a couple of times that I was hoping you were going to give me some definitions on some tests that you ran, but other than that, it looked good.
So your literature review: the content was perfect; I loved it and it was so interesting to me. But, you repeat yourself a lot. I would find myself feeling like I was reading the same paragraph twice. Also, just clarify the section where you talk about the efficacy of the combined vs. just the meds or vs. without the meds because it all kind of started to feel jumbled to me and a couple times you ended up contradicting yourself. Make sure you stay away from that.
Another thing: make your transitions meaningful. A lot of the time I felt like you were pulling me back into the paragraph rather than pushing me forward to the next one. You kind of just summarized what you just said without introducing me to what you're going to say next.
I think you went off on some tangents sometimes? For example: the bit about the medication leading to prescription drug abuse and illegal drug abuse felt like a really far leap to me. I didn't really see the place of dependence disorders in your paper and saying that it can lead to drug abuse just sounds really accusatory.
Last thing ok I'm so sorry. Reading through your paper, I felt like I was only getting two things: the information and the source. Almost every sentence had some sort of citation in it and it seemed like I couldn't read any of it in your voice because there would always be an "according to" or a full quote. If there are things that you learned or things that could be considered common knowledge to the audience you're getting at, make it sound like you. Show the readers your thought process.
Again, I love your paper and I'm eager to watch your presentation in a month!
Thanks for all the really great feedback, guys! I think something that all three of you pointed out I do, and now making edits I realize, is that I try to keep reiterating the same point and repeating a point does not equal transition. This makes my paper feel repetitive. I think I was afraid I didn't have enough justifications that I ended up repeating points, which I see now is not helping my argument. If I cut down on a lot of this I can reduce the word count. Another thing all of you guys mentioned is that I do not interpret the quotes enough. I lose my voice in the big quotes I get from sources, which ends up making my writing sound really choppy. There are parts where I can definitely cut down (entire sections of literature review about CBT and dependency disorders). It was really helpful seeing my paper from another point of view. I am glad it is easy to understand, but at times the repetition makes it too oversimplified. Thanks for all the help!
ReplyDelete