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Clarify

  1. Work with sources and broaden your knowledge. Many sources are biased and contain unstated assumptions. Moreover, sources often conflict. Identify authors' biases.
  2. Gather and interpret evidence.
  3. Get the most recent editions to base interpretations and conclusions on, and summarise main evidence in your own words.
  4. Be fair and analytical.
  5. State the conclusions that you reach about the topic under consideration.
  6. Provide evidence. Include useful links and a bibliography.
  7. Then you may be ready to design and write the paper or thesis.
  8. Write a summary and check your notes.

Such an all-round procedure and avoiding conflicts can perhaps prevent mishaps. [Rampolla 2004, v-27, passim]

Take care to begin well

  • Know exactly what constitutes an acceptable thesis.
  • Get the technical skill needed to produce it. There are many details to master.
  • Get your finances straight first.
  • Listen to your own advisor to know what counts as valid and relevant and fruitful right where you are.
  • Emboss little.

Seek to employ good technical equipment: Time saved should be a major benefit.

Writing Process

To reduce or eliminate errors and much waste of time, think through these stages of the writing process and make the best use of them as conditions allow. The stages apply to both term papers, essays and theses. This list enlarges on the first list above, and supplies more details.

  1. Contrive as best you can. Glean trophy thoughts of others, including textbook authors. Learn the concepts used and favoured in your track. Heuristics is particularly apt in this idea-searching stage.

  2. Group ideas well. Hermeneutics is a help; it assists in such as interpreting data, and then you may better know what to do with (some of) them. To arrange ideas into groups may be done by smart computers too nowadays. This process of grouping tends to go on during a study, and should seldom be hindered. Finally, drafts and chapters reflect it.

  3. Arrive at a footing: Documentation is for that. There are many forms and variants of documentations, and not all are verbal. Find and use expert literature and master such as Library Searches. Learn to search on the Internet too. Adhere to works that your supervisors recommend or that are in the tradition you are inside. Form tables to condense material and get a better overview. Write a fair-looking disposition and revise it as needs be. Let your deeper mind into the task or project - let it work too. You may have no regrets, for great scientists apply it to their benefi lots of time.

  4. Sift and streamline the best ideas for your topic or subject through hard-headed skills and methods that should be favourable to you. That means finding the most essential ones and making good use of them, for a starter.

  5. Make use of (implement) the best ideas that you have come across or gained access to. Methods that others have developed, should be fit for you here. Methods that you devise from bottom much by yourself, may be deemed debatable or worse - maybe for no good reason - or "less than perfect" or less than desirable" for a long time - and that may cost you much. So try to implement your better items in cost-efficient ways.

  6. Write out things to the best of your ability. There are many ways of doing it, many different learning styles and different presentation styles, but you may have to conform to a routine that suits your supervisor too. Sigmund Freud, for example, went through a three-stage process when he wrote for publication. It is often a question of what you find time for.

  7. Check a lot and get plenty of feedback. Let the material rest between the most intense writing periods, and you may come up with additional matter and new, good ideas. Also, you may become aware of misspelt words and bad grammar after such rest periods. It often happens.

A writing process is not one of separate steps and stages, it is more integral. You will probably "leap" to and fro many of the stages on a good day, and during the period that you produce your discourse (written material) or whatever. Yet it is helpful to let these pivotal parts of the integral process stand out, because they reflect the budding process - from main ideas, arranging them, getting documentation, sifting, and making use of the best items - That is hopefully favorable.

It terms of effort and use of time, this allround design helps you by pinpointing the stark essentials that may lead to a rewarding process.

Also, there are usually many handbooks and guides for writing theses in different fields. You are likely to benefit from reading into them. You may use this survey as a checklist to see if you have done the necessary things for getting informed on a subject too. The general procedure works for almost any subject of interest. You do not have to attend school to benefit from it. Feel free to let the writing parts dwindle if you are not eager to write down something, although keynotes help.

How You Write All-round Fitly

Good and academic writing both include the art of presenting your case on any subject in order, with integrity, clarity, simplicity, brevity, interest, and with no trace of pomposity, as Napley writes [in Barrass 2002, 35].

Robert Barrass further says that explanation, completeness, impartiality, order, accuracy, objectivity and simplicity are basic requirements in scientific writing, and that considerate authors can be marked by appropriateness, consistency, control, interest, persuasiveness, precision, sincerity, and unity [Barrass 2002, 35].

Barrass also tells us to study published work by others, for "detecting faults in the work of others should help you to improve your own [Barrass 2002, 35]." As a result we may revise our own work and arrive at fewer words, and, when necessary, provide observations and reminders that assist the relevance of the message. Bar charts and similar figures have not been used on this page, but they can often serve clarity of presentation.

The book by Barrass also gives good examples. They add meat to the bones of abstract terms.

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Master's thesis, basic steps and stages, Literature  

Barrass, Robert. Scientists Must Write: A Guide to Better Writing for Scientists, Engineers and Students. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.

Mauch, James E., and Namgi Park. 2003. Guide to the Successful Thesis and Dissertation: A Handbook for Students and Faculty. 5th ed. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Murray, Neil, and David Beglar. 2009. Writing Dissertations and Theses. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education.

Single, Peg Boyle. 2010. Demystifying the Dissertation; A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Swetnam, Derek, and Ruth Swetnam. 2009. Writing Your Dissertation: The Bestselling Guide to Planning, Preparing and Presenting First-Class Work. 3rd rev ed. Begbroke, Oxford: How To Books.

Thurabian, Kate. 2013. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 8th ed. Rev. by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and the University of Chicago Press editorial staff. London: The University of Chicago Press.

Harvesting the hay

Symbols, brackets, signs and text icons explained: (1) Text markers(2) Digesting.

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