An important aim for your studies is to gain skills and tools to help you take responsibility for your own learning. Here thesis writing plays an important role. You are required to write from a basis of previous research and your text needs to be both argumentative and reflective.
An important feature of the academic text is that it is produced within a particular context. This context, to be precise, is that what the research on the topic so far has come up with. Your task is to 1) explain this context to your reader and 2) to show in which way your own text relates to the texts of previous research. Practically, you do this by inserting references in your text. A reference consists of two parts: 1) the short in-text reference in your own text and 2) the fully written out reference that must appear in the reference list (bibliography) at the end of your text. The full reference must contain all the bibliographical information that your reader needs to trace your source. The reference list must include all the texts that you have used.
Reference markers or transitions are standardized phrases used for inserting references in academic texts. Suggestions on how to formulate a reference marker phrase (transition) can be found in so called phrase banks. Here are two phrase banks published by the universities of Manchester and Michigan State University:
