Formulating a Hypothesis

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En provenance du cours de Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Academic Literacy

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Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Academic Literacy

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Cours 1 sur 5 dans Specialization English for Research Publication Purposes

This is the first course of the English for Research Publication Purposes Specialization. The course is an introduction to what you need to know about academic discourse. You’ll gain important critical reading skills to help you develop as a self-critical scientific writer. You will learn practical tools and effective strategies for increasing your academic vocabulary and grammar so that you will write well-structured coherent academic texts.

À partir de la leçon

MODULE I: THE READING–RESEARCH–WRITING CONTINUUM

This module will help you acquire critical reading skills so that you will develop as a self-critical writer. The module covers issues related to reading discipline-specific literature, which is indispensable from developing professional expertise in writing academic texts. The focus is on fundamental concepts of scientific writing, such as logical organization and argumentation.

Starting Point8:51

Research Questions7:23

Formulating a Hypothesis8:28

Rencontrer les enseignants

Elena Bazanova
Director of the Language Training and Testing Center
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

[MUSIC]

You have a research question and now you need to turn it into a hypothesis.

A hypothesis Is an educated prediction that provides an explanation for

an observed event.

An observed event is a measurable result or condition.

If you cannot measure it, then you cannot form a hypothesis about it,

because you cannot confirm or reject it.

In addition, a hypothesis typical it takes the poem of an if and

statement, so you can test it with your research.

Needless to say, it can all be a little intimidating and many novice

researchers find this to be the most difficult stage of the scientific method.

In fact, it is not as difficult as it looks.

And if you have followed the steps of the scientific process and found an area of

research and potential research problem, then you may already have a few ideas.

The hypothesis is a clear statement of what is intended to be investigated.

It should be specified before research is conducted and

openly stated in reporting their results.

This follows the reader to identify the research objectives.

Identify the key abstract concepts involved in the research and identify

its relationship to both the problem statement, and the literature review.

I can offer the following tips for thinking about and

writing good hypothesis.

The research question comes first.

Before you make a hypothesis,

you have to clearly identify the question you are interested in studying.

A hypothesis is a statement not a question.

Your hypothesis is not the scientific question in your research project.

The hypothesis, as I said is an educated,

testable prediction about what will happen.

Make it clear.

A good hypothesis is written in clear and simple language.

Reading your hypothesis should tell the reader exactly what you

thought was going to happen when you started your research.

Keep the variables in mind.

A good hypothesis defines the variables in easy to measure terms like,

who the participants are?

What changes during the testing?

And what the effect of the changes will be?

Make sure you have hypothesis is testable.

To prove or disprove your hypothesis,

you need to be able to do an experiment and take measurements or

make observations to see how two things your variables are related.

You should also be able to repeat your experiment over and over again.

If necessary, to create a testable hypothesis,

make sure you have done all of those things.

Thought about what experiments you will need to carry out to do the test.

Identified the variables in the research, included the independent and

dependent variable in the hypothesis statement.

This helps ensure that your statement is specific enough.

Read credible sources related to the area of your research.

You may find many studies similar to yours have already been conducted.

What you learn from available literature and

data can help you shape your research, and hypothesis.

Dont bite off more than you can chew.

Answering some scientific questions can involve more than one experiment,

each with it's own hypothesis.

Make sure that your hypothesis is a specific statement

relating to a single experiment.

The research structure helps you create research that is quantifiable,

verifiable, replicable and defensible.

Most research projects share the same general structure

which could be represented in the shape of an hourglass.

Scientists use an experiment to search for cause and effect relations in nature.

In other words, they design and experiment, so

that changes to one item cause something else to vary in a predictable way.

These changing quantities are called variables.

A variable is any factor trade or

condition that can exist in different amounts of types.

An experiment usually has three kinds of variables.

Independent, dependent and controlled.

An independent variable is the one that is changed by the scientist.

To ensure a fair test, it is important for an experiment to be a fair test.

You conduct a fair test by making sure that you change one factor at a time

while keeping all other conditions the same.

A good experiment has only one independent variable.

As the scientist changes the independent variable, he or she observes what happens.

The scientist focuses his or her observations on one dependent

variable to see how it responds to the change made to the independent variable.

The new value of the dependent variable is caused by and

depends on the value of the independent variable.

For example, if you open a faucet, the independent variable,

the quantity of water flowing, dependent variable changes in response.

You observe that the water flow increases.

The number of dependent variables in an experiment varies, but

there is often more than one.

Experiments often have controlled variables.

Controlled variables are quantities that scientists wants to remain constant and

he or she must observe them, as carefully as the dependent variables.

For example, if you want to measure how much of water increases when you

open a faucet, it is important to make sure that the water pressure,

the control variable is held constant.

That's because both the water pressure and

the opening of a faucet have an impact on how much water flows.

If we change both of them at the same time, we can't be sure

how much of the change in water flow is because of the faucet opening and

how much, because of the water pressure.

In other words, it would not be a fair test.

Most experiments have more than one controlled variable.

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