# Using starter phrases
**Source**: https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/writing-fundamentals/writing-sentences/using-starter-phrases/
**Parent**: https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/writing-fundamentals/writing-sentences/
If you feel stuck for finding the right phrase to start your sentence, you can use a strategy called ‘Syntactic borrowing’ (Kamler & Thomson, 2006; Swales & Feak, 2004) in which you borrow the phrases used by others.
To do this, look at some sentences in various sections of a research journal in your discipline and remove all the content, leaving a sentence skeleton. This should give you some ideas for phrases that are often used.
## Examples
To help you along with the process, here are some lists of common phrases you might want to use in particular sections of your thesis or exegesis.
Note: these are general academic phrases - there may be phrases in the lists that are not used in your discipline.
## Introduction
… is an important component of …
Central to the discipline of … is …
… is an increasingly important issue in …
Recent developments in … have shown the need for …
Recent developments in the field of … have led to a renewed interest in …
This study builds on … and contributes to …
Over the past century, there has been a (major) decline in …
Recently there has been renewed interest in …
To date, there has been little agreement on …
A theoretical issue that has dominated the field for many years is …
The controversy over … has raged for many years.
The issue of … has recently grown in importance.
Most studies of … have only been carried out on …
Until now, little importance has been given to …
Until now, this method has only been applied to …
## Literature review
A considerable amount of literature has been published on …
However, there has been relatively little literature published on …
Numerous studies have argued that …
Several studies have revealed …
The research to date has tended to focus on …
Data from several studies have identified the …
It has been suggested that …
It has been conclusively shown that …
It has been demonstrated that …
It is thought that …
Other studies have considered the relationship between …
The first systematic study of … was reported by …
The study of … was first carried out by …
Detailed examination of … by … showed that …
In a randomised controlled study of …
A comparative study by … found that …
This view is supported by …, who argues that …
A key problem with this argument is …
However, there is inconsistency with this argument, given …
X’s interpretation overlooks much of …
One question that needs to be asked, however, is …
One problem with this approach is …
The main limitation to X’s study is …
However, this method of analysis has a number of limitations.
However, the research does not take into account …
The author offers no explanation for …
The main weakness of this study is …
Previous studies have only focused on …
The existing research fails to …
Much of the recent literature has not …
## Methods
The design of the questionnaire was informed by …
A semi-structured approach was chosen because …
This methodology has a number of advantages, such as …
Limitations to the study design include …
Data were gathered from …
…was prepared according to the procedure outlined by …
The initial sample consisted of…
The criteria for selecting the subjects were as follows: …
Eligibility criteria required individuals to have completed …
To increase the reliability of measures, …
## Results
It is apparent from Table 1 that …
The data in Figure 2 indicates that …
Strong evidence of … was found when …
A positive correlation was found between … and …
The results, as seen in Table2, indicate that …
No significant reduction in … was found.
The majority of respondents felt that …
A small number of those interviewed indicated that …
A comparison of the two results reveals that …
## Discussion
Contrary to expectations, this research did not find a significant difference between …
This finding was unexpected and suggests that …
Findings in the present study are consistent with the findings of …
There are similarities in…between the present study and those described by …
It is possible to hypothesise that …
These findings suggest …
In contrast to earlier findings, however, no evidence of … was detected.
There are several possible explanations for this result. For example, …
This inconsistency may be due to …
These data must be interpreted with caution because …
It may be the case that …
This finding, while preliminary, suggests that …
This finding has implications for …
An important issue emerging from these findings is …
## Conclusion
This research has investigated …
The study set out to …
The purpose of the present research was to …
The study has shown that …
An important finding to emerge in this study is …
The results are significant in three respects …
In general, therefore, the results show …
The findings add to our understanding of …
This study adds to the body of knowledge around …
This research confirms previous findings and contributes to our understanding of …
Although the study did not show …, it did substantiate …
However, a number of limitations need to be considered. For instance, …
The research was limited in several ways.
However, the findings are subject to at least four limitations. The most significant was …
Several limitations need to be acknowledged.
Further research should be done to investigate the …
Future research should concentrate on …
More research is needed to better understand …
An implication of these findings is that …
The findings of this study have a number of important implications for …
## References
Kamler, Barbara & Thomson, Pat. (2006). Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision. 10.4324/9781315813639.
Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (2nd ed.). Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
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## Keywords
- [Academic writing](https://learninglab.rmit.edu.au/keyword/academic-writing/)
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