Guides: ENG 1301 Library Tools for ESL Learners: Graduate Student Resources

Best Resources for Your Subject

The video below will review how to find the best resources to use in finding scholarly articles in your subject area.

Graduate Writing Center

The Graduate Writing Center can help you improve and polish your writing for any project through individual consultations, and they provide opportunities for individual writing in a group setting (their "Just Write Workshops"). More information on the Graduate Writing Center and its services can be found at their web page.

Types of Graduate Writing

A literature or systematic review is a particular type of academic writing which demonstrates your mastery of the scholarly literature in a particular and well-defined subject field. A literature review in some form is part of most Ph.D. dissertations, although the specifics vary by the department or subject you are writing in.

We have another guide on Writing the Literature Review/Meta-Analysis which has good information on this style of research and writing. Please take a look at it, especially the brief video which does a good job of describing the purpose and structure of a literature review.

An abstract is written after you have finished writing your paper. It summarizes the problem you studied, the methods you used, outcomes of your research; and a summary of the conclusions you reached. Scientists will read the abstract to decide if they should read the entire article, so the abstract is important.

The abstract stands on its own as a document. It has no tables, illustrations, or equations in it.

The Writing Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel HIll, "Abstracts." This link provides a good overview of what an abstract is (and is not) and the different needs and purposes of an abstract.

The Mathematical Association of America. "A Guide to Writing an Abstract."

University of Pittsburgh. Department of Biological Sciences. "Abstract Writing."

University of Toronto. Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering. Engineering Communication Program. "Abstracts and Executive Summaries."