Writing Center instructions

Hello fellow Writing Center consultant,

If you're reading this, you're sitting with one of my students, wondering what to do next. Due on 3/17 is a 6-7 page, Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, 12-point font results section of a literature review paper. There is an example of a published literature review from AJPH in the "files" section on Canvas, if either of you is curious what one looks like. This paper is also in APA. 

The plan for the paper is not to do it all at once. So, the paper doesn't need an introduction, a conclusion, discussion section, method section, etc. The paper will need all of those things eventually. But we're doing all that after spring break. The results section is the most difficult and substantive part of the paper, and, as such, needed to be done first. 

But, in term of the results section of the paper itself, I don't expect a masterpiece. After all, this is just the paper's first major draft. And it'll be compressed down to a smaller length later on. What I'm really looking for is organization. When I say "organization," I mean the rationale by which they decide what studies go in which paragraph, and how the paragraphs are arranged and sequenced together for the purpose of arriving at their own conclusion. 

Every paper ought to have subsections, that is, because published literature reviews in the field of public health have subsections, so one really great thing you two could do together is brainstorm how to break up the results section into, say, three smaller subsections, and make an outline for one of these sections. (The number of subsections could also be two. But, if they want to do any more than four or less than two [i.e., none at all], they'll have to come talk to me first.) The number one thing I'm concerned about is that they simply develop a good rationale for what goes with what and why. 

They have an assignment coming up in which they have to do just this (the synthesis proposal), and I'm not opposed to you two working on that assignment, either, especially since it basically asks for the same thing: namely, to re-contextualize the results of different studies in the form of a story, while also breaking the task into subsections for increased readability. (I'm also a fan of good, very informative titles for the subsections.) 

So, brainstorming is good; outlines are good; figuring out how to tell a story with data is good; collectively figuring out what studies go together and why is good, etc. But that's where they're going: i.e., the synthesis proposal, and then the result section of the literature review. 

Also, email me at drakestechnicalwritingclass@gmail.com

Drake