Two important topics covered in Chapter 10 – examining the thesis and publishing the thesis – are retained here, and are covered in more detail in my two other books: How to Survive Your Viva (2003) and Writing for Academic Journals (2005) ). I would like to thank my editors at Open University Press and the reviewers of the first edition.
The need for this book
The basic premises of this book are that you need to: (1) find out what is expected of you as a thesis; and (2) write from the beginning and continue to write throughout your research. Although the terms 'thesis' and 'dissertation' have different meanings in different cultures, the term 'thesis' is used in this book to refer to both undergraduate and postgraduate writing projects.
What the students say
What Phillips and Pugh did for the doctoral process, this book does for the doctoral and master's writing processes. This book aims to help you develop your understanding of the writing process – not just the finished product – through reading, writing, and discussion with your peers and supervisors.
A writer’s ‘toolbox’
Of course, a good thesis writing 'tool' is more than a resource for a specific word count, just as a thesis is more than a simple sum of many words. They recognize that "bad writing" is sometimes part of the process and the "arithmetic of writing".
Principles of academic writing
I find that I can keep up with my original enthusiasm while also avoiding the self-doubt that is always lurking. stay focused on what you are thinking and force yourself to find a way to ignore – or postpone – any 'self-doubt' that may arise.
The literature on writing
Just as there are dominant issues in the debate in your discipline, there are terms that are in and out of current usage. A theme in the literature is that there are writing assignments throughout the thesis process, aimed at developing the thesis as an integral part of the research process.
Disciplinary differences
In the humanities and social sciences, one of the challenges that thesis writers face is locating writing: where is writing. However, in the humanities and social sciences, students do not only have to come up with their own research question.
Thinking about structure
This can be seen as representing the 'deep structure' of many different types of thesis. If this structure and strategy seems wrong to you, it may be because you already have the germ of an idea for your thesis structure.
Prompts
Establishing a direct link to your own interests, using plain English and the first person - 'I' - and actually writing about them are the key features of this exercise. Simply thinking about these questions, running them over and over in your mind, will undoubtedly not have the same effect.
Enabling student writing
Whatever the goals are, the most important point is that they are discussed and agreed upon by you and your supervisor. Your supervisor may feel that you have enough to do to prepare the research or read stacks of books and papers and may agree to defer writing to a later stage.
Writing in a second language
It does not have to be a formal test, just a writing task that allows your supervisor to assess the standard of your writing. If your supervisor does not provide this, or does not ask you to write in the first few weeks or months of your project, you should offer to do some writing so that you can get such feedback early.
Grammar, punctuation, spelling
Your supervisor may recommend a different text and may use different definitions of grammar that you should link to your reading about it. How much work, and how you will learn about these topics, may be worth discussing with your supervisor.
Goal setting
You should agree with your supervisor on your goals, not on your personal procedures for achieving them. Goal setting requires feedback and monitoring, otherwise you won't have a real sense of whether or not you're making progress.
Lifelong learning
You are expected to have a high level of written and spoken English at the start of your second degree, but it is likely that you will develop these skills further over the months and years to come. Whether you're doing a doctorate or a master's or undergraduate thesis, you may need to think about what 'transferable skills' you can acquire in the process.
Audience and purpose
Timetable for writing
As you gradually understand what is required of a thesis—and how your supervisor interprets that requirement—revisit your short- and long-term goals.
Checklist
Defining the writing task
Doctorate or masters?
This chapter suggests a structured approach to writing a thesis that promotes the idea of integrating writing into the research process. Arguments for writing throughout the thesis are suggested and strategies for writing at the early stages are defined and illustrated using examples of real student writing.
What is a doctorate?
There is an overview of what this entails, including reflections on many parts of the writing process: psychological, social and rhetorical. Many supervisors will have been involved, although some not enough, in these transformations of the doctorate - proposed or real - at the local level.
New routes to the PhD
Perhaps even more important, for future students – and universities – is HEFCE's statement about the future of this route: they propose that all PhD students use this model. You can use this information to assess the success – and suitability – of this process.
Why are you doing a doctorate?
Although this new route aims to compete with the American PhD, it does not offer the same components available in many American universities, although it should be remembered that American higher education is an extremely diverse system and therefore must any generalization about it is carefully considered. For individual PhD students, the question of whether or not to follow this path can be decided by the simple fact of whether it is offered in their field or at the university they wish to attend.
Internal and external drivers
More importantly, your answer to the question of 'why' can strongly influence your choice of 'where' and 'with whom'. Leonard 2001: 85) Leonard's chapter on 'Where to study: Finding the right supervisor and the right university' talks readers through the key issues.
PhD or professional doctorate?
In the end, the similarities between the PhD and the professional doctorate may be as important as the differences: Their conclusions show that assessment in the professional doctorate appears to be less similar to intended learning outcomes and more 'PhD-like':.
Full-time or part-time?
You will need to develop routines and regimens for writing regularly, strategies covered in Chapter 5. There is even more need for writing routines when you combine a higher education and a full-time job.
What will you use writing for?
It is always a good idea to make the audience and purpose specific by writing it on the first page, and this is as valid for thesis writing as for other forms of writing: 'This piece/draft/paper was written. Again, this is another reason to be specific about what your purposes are in any piece of writing.
Regulations
At later stages, an important question will be what is meant by 'monitoring progress' - how is your progress monitored. In addition to your university's guidelines, you must follow a specific stylesheet.
How will it look on the page?
Although the final copy of your thesis will be single-spaced and double-spaced, you can probably get away with single-spacing your drafts, but it's worth checking with your supervisor. This contains detailed rules to follow when presenting your text, references, etc.
Demystification: codes and guides
The supervisor must ensure that the student is aware of the basis for the supervisor's assessment of progress and understands the scope of the work. Some are more specific than others, but if you are studying psychology, for example, you will benefit from reading the British Psychological Society's Guidelines for Assessment of the PhD in Psychology and Related Disciplines (BPS 2000).
How will my thesis be assessed?
Even if you are in a 'related discipline' you will find these guidelines useful as they define many aspects of the PhD experience.
What are the criteria?
All questions in the handbook can be turned into writing prompts in this way. This article examines the roles and importance of the viva in the doctoral process.
Defining ‘originality’
If you do some informal, anecdotal "research" on thesis research criteria and practices in your department, you may find some variety. The supervisor – and examiner – will look for a clear, explicit and valid claim to originality in your thesis.
What is the reader looking for?
It would be just as well to start figuring out what it means now by doing – and repeating – the short writing activity. Demonstration of research 'competence' rather than e.g. 'excellence', achievement of goals, rather than achieving more than the original goals, and the strength of the argument that the topic was 'worthy of in-depth study', rather than this being the newest, most cutting-edge subject of research , does not necessarily indicate a lowering of standards.
IT processes and needs
With this practice, we can enjoy great pleasure - and encouragement - but we can also take a considerable distance from the focus of our own projects. Until recently, teachers thought it was enough to distinguish between "data". and "information" – interpreted data that has a targeted use.
Reasons for not writing
Having more than one backup in more than one location is a simple way to avoid this. Pushing to major revisions is one way to make sure that even if you lose all your electronic files, you still have your work on paper.
Peer discussion and support
Your first meeting with your supervisor
A code of practice can be a useful agenda for a series of early meetings where you and your supervisor work out how you will manage your research and writing. These early discussions will help you understand what you are dealing with and the degree to which your supervisor is willing to adjust his or her style.
Questions for reflection
Prompts for discussion
Writing timetable
Create 'hard' deadlines, which are fixed, non-movable, and 'soft' deadlines, which are flexible, moveable.
Pre-planning
As thesis writers develop an understanding of terms and strategies, their vocabulary for talking about writing may change. Prompts for discussion with supervisors focus on the importance of developing a common language for talking about writing.
Can’t it wait till later?
Audiences and purposes
Primary audience
In addition, you can create connections with other researchers in your field via e-mail. You can analyze their expectations and you can analyze your own reactions to your audience.
Secondary audience
In terms of your writing, you will internalize certain scholars in your field and imagine them reading your work. Once you find out who your external examiner is, you will also imagine that he or she is reading your writing.
Immediate audience
The role of the supervisor
Later in your PhD you may feel that your supervisor has to play a completely different role. 2 When playing the role of a "disciple," you may feel too strongly influenced by your supervisor's thinking and writing style to find yours.
A common language for talking about writing
You should be ready to make a strong case for what you think you need in your supervisor's feedback. This will give you - and your supervisor - a way to check that you have understood the feedback.
Writing to prompts
If you are playing the role of a learner, aspiring to learn as much as you can during your research, and if you are behaving like a learner, using the word "learn". However, writing is not your only means of demonstrating research expertise; you can use writing as a tool for learning and thinking: "Think-then-write strategies and think-as-you-write strategies are useful in the context of academic writing" (Caffarella and Barnett 2000: 40).
Freewriting
The lesson to be learned from their experiences is that, although in theory we may all agree that we should have more than one – and not just our preferred – writing strategy in our writing 'toolkit', it is nevertheless very difficult to putting it in. action. Perhaps we need to be clearer about what the purpose of writing is - that is, the writing activity - when we start writing.
Generative writing
A key strategy for ensuring that freewriting and generative writing are productive is to follow them with discussion. These three strategies—writing for prompts, freewriting, and generative writing—may prove useful right away, or they may be so unlike the writing you generally do that they're unlikely to help.
Starting to write
Revision of your proposal • Outline • Finding a thesis • Writing a literature review • Plagiarism • Designing a thesis • 'Writing in layers' • Writing locations • Writing times • Checklist: looking for structure. They can help us find the type of story our dissertation will tell.
Revising your proposal
At an early stage in your research, it can establish focus and/or direction, prompting you to write perhaps before you have a sense of focus or direction. Later, this activity can help you focus your thinking as you prepare your conclusions and revise your introduction.
Outlining
Development of your ideas will happen because you write; it might not happen if you don't write at all. You will need to adjust some of your thinking about your work if a focus is to emerge.
Finding a thesis
It's important that you find a way to write at this stage, but don't expect to find that all the prompts, questions, and generic frameworks fit neatly into your work.
Writing a literature review
Use writing to focus your studies and develop your understanding of literature. The various purposes of a literature review can be illustrated with examples from completed theses.
Plagiarism
They can help us go beyond the fragments of the thesis by repeatedly trying to put them together. Fragments of the thesis can be moved by repeatedly trying to combine them.
Designing a thesis
If there is no word limit, neither maximum nor minimum, this leaves the thesis - once again - somewhat undefined. Once you've started thinking about the total length, then you can start thinking about—and maybe even planning—the proportions of the chapters.
Writing in layers’
Now that you are aware of the ways in which a draft outline can be improved, you may be able to create a better first draft. Despite its shortcomings—or rather, not-yet-made revisions—you can use the sample as a model for the kind of outline that gives your readers an overview of your entire thesis.
Writing locations
The interesting thing about these notes, taken from an actual student-organized, student-written discussion, is what happens when the students reflect on the act of writing. They can see for themselves that one place probably won't work for all writers, and they can put that knowledge into practice.
Writing times
Seeking structure
The end of the first phase, after the first year, usually brings some form of evaluation. This shift means that the thesis writer has to complete something in the first phase of the Ph.D.
First writing milestone
The first-year report
From notes to draft
Without looking at your notes, write for five minutes on the subject your notes cover, the topic for the chapter you are drafting. This may seem oversimplifying the interaction between your notes and your current moment of thinking and writing, but at this stage you should take on a more "formative" role, outlining your own structure for the chapter.
Dialogue
These are fairly common by design, to allow for some openness in the dialogue. This is not to say that you should challenge them directly, but that dialogue and debate should begin to replace monologue and direction as the student becomes more knowledgeable in the field.
Monitoring
If you can convince them that you see the purpose of monitoring as (1) to assist you when you come to write progress reports; (2) to assist them when they come to assess your progress; and (3) to assist both you and them by maintaining a control over communication, then they are more likely to go along with it. Just make sure you confirm the agreement, the purposes and the form to them in writing as soon as possible to explain that you interpreted their points correctly.
Pressure
This type of semi-formal monitoring is part of the process of moving up a gear at this stage of your doctorate. The nature of the work may have become more complex and this may be what caused the anxiety.
What is progress?
Each of these new incentives not only looks at the positive – what has been done – but also translates the anxiety into a cue for action. This may be a good time to review planning practices and consider changing them: to include parallel tasks, parallel lines of development.
Work-in-progress writing
For the writing in the main part of the poster, we need to make similar adjustments: clipping, listing, bullet point. These two extracts from the novel show - not just describe - the change in style that is presented in the above extract from my thesis.
A writers’ group
In a writing group, they get to see so many other writers—staff and students in our groups—going through the same revision process. This is not true; the writing group is for those who want to write and improve their writing on the fly.
The first milestone
There is a structured approach to thesis writing – the basic unit is the paragraph – and a step-by-step approach to the writing process. This chapter describes how writing can become more frequent, more regular, and more focused.
What is a serial writer?
What began as almost an excess of new habits turned out to be nothing more than a few manageable principles of balance and moderation. We need to be able to manage our writing along with other professional tasks.
Scaffolding for an argument
Paragraph structure
2 The pronoun 'she' referring to the duchess in the first part of the sentence tells us that the writer is still talking about the same subject. 4 "Similarly" is another example of using a linking word at the beginning of a sentence.
Introductory paragraphs
It may be time to start using the words "thesis" and "argument," as in "The thesis of this chapter is. If you find you can't, then you're not sure of your chapter yet.
Writing about the method(s)
The following example may strike you as not directly relevant to your subject area or your subject; however, the point of this example is that it illustrates the elements of the opening page of the methods chapter/section. Over a period of ten weeks, the effects of the exercise program were compared with those of a routine care control group.
Study buddy
This example has the essential ingredients of a chapter introduction: the connection to the aims of the study, the rationale for the chapter to come, and the anticipation of its content. There is no limit to what you discuss; it can be any aspect of the writing process, including your achievements.
Regular writing
The best study partner is someone who is also a regular writer, or tries to be one. Try to make time for regular discussion with your supervisor and study partner about writing: about how you manage writing, where you write, when you write, how often and how much you produce.
Problems with writing
The write cycle may have broken, and now that you've noticed it, you can restart it. It is unlikely that you will be completely satisfied with your writing at this stage.
Writer’s block
You can use strategies to regularly “scribble”—if you think “writing” is too good a word for it—to keep your ideas from simmering. Our experiences writing—and teaching writing—certainly influenced how we see and write now.
Incremental writing
Writing binges
A key feature that snack writing can bring to your writing is the process of defining your writing tasks, perhaps in more detail than you do when you have a lot of time. If you write in this way and write regularly, you will find that your writing is focused and fluid.
Developing a writing strategy
Becoming a serial writer
What is closure?
