Eighth Lesson

Beginning with the title

There are two ways to find out a suitable title for your study.

a) Keywords

b) Analysing the assignment

Today, our focus only on the first way to find out a suitable title that is keywords.

a) Keywords

One way that students are often taught to approach a new title is to pick out the keywords and work with these to understand how they should approach the assignment.

With the keywords approach you pick out what seem to be the important parts of the question and ignored the linking words.

The focus is on leaving out less important linking words and piking out both the content keywords that can help to understand "what the assignment is about" and also can help to find out appropriate title to your assignment.

Some academic keywords are mentioned in list below:

Discuss
Explain
Compare and contrast
Describe
Analyse
Illustrate
Evaluate
Outline
Critically examined
Assess

Activity Eight: Identifying academic keywords

Look at the list above. Look over some of the questions for written assignment in your course.

• Do they use any of these words?
• Why do you think the lecturer has used a particular academic keyword rather than another?
• Write down your own ideas about what the academic keywords mean (do not use dictionary definitions).