One thing I was finding difficult when beginning the report was not always knowing how to start academic sentences without repeating the same wording.
I therefore looked at the University of Manchester's Academic Phrasebank. I was not using it to write sentences for me, but as a way of understanding the different functions academic sentences need to perform.
This was particularly useful because my writing needs to do more than introduce a source. I also need to compare research, show disagreement, identify limitations, introduce my own interpretation and move between different parts of an argument.
My early notes often began very simply with phrases such as "this paper says" or "the author found". That is useful when taking research notes, but it quickly becomes repetitive and descriptive within a 5,000-word report.
The Phrasebank helped me think about why I am introducing a source before I write the sentence.
Sometimes I am establishing what is already known. Sometimes I am showing that several researchers reach similar conclusions. At other points I need to signal a contradiction, question the strength of the evidence or explain why a finding matters specifically to my project.
The sentence opening should help show the relationship between the evidence and my argument, rather than simply announcing that I have read another paper.
This became especially useful when I started combining sources within the same paragraph.
Instead of writing one paragraph about one researcher and then moving to another, I can use the language of comparison to show where evidence agrees, extends another argument or reaches a different conclusion.
This is important for my report because many of the strongest ideas are not supported by one paper alone. Independence, sensory variability, perceived control and fluctuating support needs appear across several different studies.
The writing therefore needs to make those relationships visible.
The Phrasebank was also useful for writing critically without making every criticism sound overly aggressive.
A limitation does not necessarily mean that a paper is bad. It may mean that the sample is small, the context is different from an airport, the participants are not autistic adults, the study is laboratory-based or the authors' conclusions cannot be generalised as widely as the paper initially suggests.
Learning to signal those limitations more carefully has helped me avoid simply accepting every source at face value.
Another useful area was cautious or "hedged" language.