The Academic Phrasebank of the University of Manchester offers very good lists of academic phrases and their functions in academic writing.

• Academic Phrasebank, University of Manchester

Go to this http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk and decide on the purpose and function of each group of phrases a) - g). Spend no more than 10 min on the exercise.

a)

• This study set out to …
• The aim of the present research was to examine …
• The purpose of the current study was to determine …
• The main goal of the current study was to determine …

b)

• This study has shown that …
• The findings clearly indicate that …
• The research has also shown that …
• The second major finding was that …

c)

• Overall, this study strengthens the idea that …
• The current data high light the importance of …
• The findings of this research provide insights for …
• The results of this research support the idea that …

d)

• The findings reported here shed new light on …
• The study contributes to our understanding of …
• These results add to the rapid!y expanding field of …
• The contribution of this study has been to confirm …

e)

• A limitation of this study is that …
• Being limited to X, this study lacks …
• The major limitation of this study is the …
• This study was limited by the absence of …

f)

• Several questions still remain to be answered.
• A natural progression of this work is to analyse …
• A greater focus on X could produce interesting findings that …
• The issue of X is an intriguing one which could be usefully explored in further research.

g)

• Greater efforts are needed to ensure …
• There is, therefore, a definite need for …
• A second broad recommendation is that …
• Another important practical implication is that…