In this video, we will discuss how to write your introduction.
We will talk about dos and don'ts, and we will see how to fully focus your research question.
Your introduction is marked under the exploration criterion. Students often think that personal
engagement should mainly be shown in the introduction. To clarify this, we will briefly
address the personal engagement criterion in this video. Dos include reformulating your
research question to create your title, connecting your IA to a specific personal experience,
and keeping the focus on your specific topic. Let's see how these look like in our example IA.
As you can see, I simply reformulated my research question to create the title.
In my introduction, I mentioned a specific personal experience and briefly explained
what a glass xylophone is. Note that I do not go into too much detail, as this would be relevant.
Then I connect my experience to physics and specify what I will do in my investigation.
Note that here I don't discuss general physics concepts such as how sound waves work. This
would be too general and not specific enough to my topic. Don'ts include writing about irrelevant
personal or historical details, explaining general physics concepts, trying to show personal
engagement by using big words and writing a personal engagement section. We already discussed
the first two points, so let's talk a bit about personal engagement. Personal engagement is evaluated
holistically, in other words based on your entire IA and not just on your introduction.
The best way to show personal engagement is to choose the topic that you're excited about
and to do good quality work, paying attention to detail. I usually just ask students to do these
two things and ask them to forget about trying to show personal engagement. If you are still worried
about personal engagement, just keep in mind that it's only two out of 24 marks. You will almost
surely get at least one out of the two marks, and the second mark that you might be worried about
is only worth 0.83% so less than 1% of your overall physics grade. So to conclude, please do not use
big words, for instance loving electrical circuits or being excited about circular motion, and definitely
do not write a personal engagement section. This will almost always lower your IA mark.
To fully focus your research question, add in specific detail, and if relevant include equipment
information. My initial research question after brainstorming is this, and my final fully focused
research question is this. As you can see, I added in a bit more detail and included some
equipment information. Finally, I placed my research question at the end of the first paragraph.
This completes step two action one. Now you know how to write your introduction.
In the next video, we will discuss how to write your background information.