Research students

In the extract below one can find some useful expressions to speak about the aims of one’s research. Pay attention to the key words and phrases underlined for you.


The problem of crime is not new to our time, but its challenge has, in our age, progressed to increasingly disturbing proportions. For thousands of years a great many thinkers have tried to deal with this major social issue, but it is in our generation that crime has become everybody’s concern. The ever-increasing rate and the expanded variety of lawbreaking have made virtually all of us potential victims. Thus, it is not really surprising that, in this flourishing era of criminal activity, a bewildering array of criminology textbooks have offered themselves to illuminate the crime problem. This volume proposes to belong to that category of books.
This text, however, differs from most of the standard works in the field. Criminology textbooks have traditionally been of ambitious length in an attempt to cover the fullest possible scope and, perhaps, to create the illusion of presenting all relevant knowledge. Oddly enough, they might include swiftly changing statistical information, short-lived research results, and ephemeral theoretical constructs.
This paper is not intended to provide a comprehensive treatment of all details of the problem of crime. Instead, by drawing only essential outlines, it attempts to concentrate on a general and comprehensive understanding of the whole.


Complete the sentences supplying them with the information on your own research activities.

The topic of the dissertation is …

The paper focuses on …
The research is aimed at …
An attempt has been made …
We have applied the method of …
We wanted to have a full view of …
It is argued that …
The paper abounds in …
The comparison between … is made.
On the basis of the comparison made …
Interdependence between … has been revealed.
Research into … provides the answer to the question …
The main provisions of the research have been reported at …
Some disputable issues have been discussed in …
The results of the investigation have been reflected in the form of …