Gillian, Nancy, and Madeline share one tip each. We hope you find them useful.
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How to get started with a writing genre or assignment that’s new to you
Gillian
If you’ve been asked to write an “annotated bibliography,” “summary,” or “critical analysis,” and these types of assignments are unfamiliar, there are TONS of resources and samples online to guide you. Search “how do I write a…” and choose sites that end in “.edu” (American universities) or that belong to Canadian or UK universities. YouTube can also be a great “how to” resource. Another option is to ask an AI tool, like ChatGPT to show you what that type of assignment looks like. It can’t access a lot of the information and sources that you can, and doesn’t have any critical thinking skills, but it can serve as a good starting point and show you what kind of language is standard for the genre and type of assignment.
How to write the final sentence of your paper
Nancy
I struggle with writing the final sentence in the conclusion of a paper. Over time, I’ve learned a few strategies from observing other writers. Strategy #1: Make a prediction: Explain what might be gained or what might happen if your argument is heard or your solution is enacted. Strategy #2: Complete the circle. Return to the first sentence of your introduction and highlight the connection or show the impact of your discussion. If you began with a question, what is the answer? If you started with a gap in knowledge, what information has emerged? Strategy #3: Briefly comment on a broad implication or next step. Who could join the conversation? What small direction might the research take? Who knows? Maybe following these strategies will work for you, too.
How to ensure your language is inclusive, empowering, and respectful
Madeline
Language is constantly evolving. We are aware of how language can oppress and marginalize, and we are committed to writing in a way that is respective and inclusive. Pronoun identification, people-first language around disability, inclusive vocabulary to describe people experiencing homelessness (instead of “the homeless”): These are just a few language shifts we’ve seen in recent years. If you are writing a paper, thesis, article, or dissertation and want to check that you are writing in a conscious style, you may want to consult this guide: https://consciousstyleguide.com/
For a very long time, writing a single book-length manuscript was the only way to complete a PhD. In the past few decades, however, the traditional manuscript-style dissertation has been recognized as somewhat of a “strange” and “ungeneralizable” genre: its audience is limited, and dissertation-writing skills are minimally transferable to the real world (Duke & Beck, 1999). The possibilities for variation in dissertation structures and genres has quietly expanded, and other options are becoming more acceptable and even preferred (see, for example, Anderson et al., 2020; Anderson & Okuda, 2021; Anderson et al., 2021; Dong, 1998; Paltridge, 2002; Paltridge and Starfield, 2020; Paltridge et al., 2012; Paré, 2019; Thomas et al., 2016).
You have options! One of those is the “article-based” dissertation, also known as the “manuscript-style” dissertation, or “dissertation by publication.” In the sciences, a lot of dissertations are now completed by publication—as many as 40%—and in the field of education, around 10–15% of dissertations might contain at least some published or publishable work.
Here, I’ll weigh some pros and cons of writing your dissertation in this genre and attempt to answer some questions you may have if you’re considering this structure. As always, you should consider which format best suits your research questions, methodology, and discipline, and consult with your supervisor about how to proceed.
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash
What is an article-based dissertation?
An article-based dissertation consists of several articles (usually three or four, but I’ve heard of there being as many as nine) that either have already been published during the course of a student’s PhD studies, or are ready to publish. The PhD candidate should be the first author or first co-author, if co-authorship is permitted (but this varies across disciplines, so check with your supervisor first if you’re considering co-writing any parts of your dissertation). Each article should be a stand-alone document that can be understood independently from the rest of the dissertation, with its own introduction, literature review, methodology, results, and discussion sections, as applicable. In order for the final product to be a cohesive “dissertation,” though, it might also need sections or chapters that introduce the overarching research questions, topic, and methods, as well as “bridging” sections to link the articles.
Reasons to write one:
You want to continue on in academia, and having publications will help you get a job.
Your supervisor wrote one and will be good at helping you navigate writing your own.
Your topic and/or discipline lend themselves well to this type of structure.
It’s super cool to see your name in print and get notifications that your work has been cited by others in your field! Publishing is a great way to assess the impact of your work and to see your research grow and be appreciated by others.
Reasons not to:
Your supervisor did not write one, or isn’t very familiar with that genre, and would therefore not be comfortable guiding you through the process.
You want to finish. A single manuscript is the shortest route to completion. It’s familiar and will encounter minimal pushback from the faculty of graduate studies or committee members.
Your topic, research questions, methodology, etc. are better suited to another format.
You’re not planning to continue in academia, and publishing won’t benefit your career.
Your discipline and/or the intended audience or end user of the work doesn’t value publishing in academic journals as highly as sharing your work in other ways.
Anderson, T., Alexander, I., & Saunders, G. (2020). An examination of education-based dissertation macrostructures. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 45, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100845
Anderson, T. & Okuda, T. (2021). Temporal change in dissertation macrostructures. English for Specific Purposes 64. 1–12. . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2021.06.001
Anderson, T., Saunders, G., & Alexander, I. (2021). Alternative dissertation formats in education-based doctorates. Higher Education Research and Development, 41(3). 593–612. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1867513
Dong, Y. R. (1998). Non-native speaker graduate students’ thesis/dissertation writing in science: Self-reports by students and their advisors from two U.S. institutions. English for Specific Purposes, 17(4), 369–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(97)00054-9
Paltridge, B. (2002). Thesis and dissertation writing: An examination of published advice and actual practice. English for Specific Purposes, 21(2). 125–143, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0889-4906(00)00025-9
Paltridge, B., & Starfield., S. (2020). Change and continuity in thesis and dissertation writing: The evolution of an academic genre. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 48. 1–16, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100910
Paltridge, B., Starfield, S., Ravelli, L. J., & Tuckwell, K. (2012). Change and stability: Examining the macrostructures of doctoral theses in the visual and performing arts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11(4), 332e344. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2012.08.003.
Paré, A. (2019). Re-writing the doctorate: New contexts, identities, and genres. Journal of SecondLanguage Writing, 43. 80–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2018.08.004
Thomas, R. A., West, R. E., & Rich, P. (2016). Benefits, challenges, and perceptions of the multiple article dissertation format in instructional technology. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 32(2), 82–99. https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.2573
About Gillian
I’ve been working at UVic as an English as an Additional Language Specialist in the Centre for Academic Communication since 2014, where I’ve helped hundreds of students in first-year academic writing and literature courses to become more skilled and confident writers. I have also taught English for academic purposes, English literature, business English, and TESOL in various contexts in Canada and abroad for many years.
I’m currently a PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at UVic, writing an article-based dissertation, and my research focuses on the experiences of undergraduate students accessing and using different forms of academic writing support.
Hello, returning and new graduate students. We know that graduate school involves lots of reading, writing, listening, and presentations. We offer one-to-one assistance with your academic writing challenges in three modes: Zoom appointments, in-person appointments at the Centre (in the Mearns Centre for Learning) and in the form of same-day written feedback. Create an account and make an appointment here: https://uvic.mywconline.com
As you embark on your courses and start researching and writing assignments, theses, and dissertations, we’d like to share our team members’ favourite writing resources. Perhaps one or more of these resources will provide knowledge or perspective that makes a difference to you.
Please leave a comment for us, letting us know your own favourites. We wish you well as you embark on your studies.
Emily’s favourite links
For graduate student writers
University of Minnesota “Graduate Student Writers” Resources:
The Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota boasts numerous “quick tips” resources for graduate student writers, including how to write thesis/dissertation/conference proposals, as well as how to organize, write, and present a thesis/dissertation, with specific emphasis on compositional cohesion and self-editing strategies:
For undergraduate student writers and for everyone
“EAL Learner Agency” WordPress Blog:
Below is a link to the WordPress blog I co-created with Jing Mao’s thoughtful input. The blog contains helpful information for EAL students on how to exercise greater learner agency by leveraging available academic supports as well as concrete tips for communicating effectively with course instructors and peers:
The University of Minnesota has produced a high-quality repository of resources for EAL learners including practical tips for improving speaking, listening, confidence, reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar:
Writing Resources for Graduate Students (Yale University)
Yale University’s Graduate Writing Lab has a series of writing resources for graduate students on topics such as “Dissertation Writing” to “Prospectus Writing” that can help guide new graduate students navigate various forms of academic writing.
From their own site: “DoctoralWritingSIG is a forum where people who are interested in doctoral writing can come together to share information, resources, ideas, dreams (perhaps even nightmares!) in a spirit of building knowledge and skills around higher degree research writing.”
There are few students who do not know about this huge repository of information on general writing and grammar support. This is exactly why I make sure those few students also know about the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University.
A great collection of writing advice on fundamental questions about academic writing such as “how to overcome a writer’s block?” or “how to write an abstract?” These “advice files” are created by writing instructors at U of T based on the most common questions students have asked over the years and so cover a wide range of writing issues. The site is organized in a few categories, such as “Planning,” “Researching,” “Using Sources,” and so on.
Carlton University’s Online Writing Resources for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Carlton University’s graduate writing resources page is home to a comprehensive repository of resources for writing, from guides on work-life balance and common problems in thesis and dissertation writing to video workshops and blogs like The Thesis Whisperer, Three Month Thesis, and more.
For undergraduate student writers and for everyone
English Use for Academic Purposes (EUFAP)
EUFAP is a long-time favourite, despite its somewhat basic and outdated appearance. It’s a site dedicated to everything related to English for Academic purposes (EAP), which is typically an area of instruction for English language learners, but this site really has information that can benefit writers of all backgrounds and skill levels. It addresses the “four skills”: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
The University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank
The Academic Phrasebank provides the “nuts and bolts” of writing a research paper, organized by function. It’s a great resource for when you need to make a connection between ideas or argue a point and you’re at a loss for words.
Helen Sword hosts writing retreats and workshops that focus on enjoying academic writing, being productive, and writing with style. Her books are helpful as well, particularly, The Writer’s Diet and Stylish Academic Writing.
Pat Thompson’s website has fresh posts coming all the time about timely topics for grad students: how to write the literature review, how to start a doctorate, how to manage your time effectively, and much more.
Wendy Belcher is another writer on academic writing for grad students and faculty. Her writing advice webpage has links to some valuable material, such as how to write a journal article (she wrote the book on it!), how to write a book review, and how to read journals.
For undergraduate student writers and for everyone
I don’t know, maybe it’s the silly video with the guy playing a guitar and singing about transitions? Or maybe it’s because this is where I learned about “adversative transitions.” In any case, this is my go-to for transition information and suggestions.
Image credit: North News & Pictures Ltd. Creative Commons Licence.
“The well of inspiration is a hole that leads downwards” (Atwood, 176).
Margaret Atwood and Hélène Cixous suggest that all writing is motivated by a compulsion to explore the deepest parts of ourselves. Both authors argue that writing serves to illuminate “an underworld” to draw unacknowledged or unexamined insights back into the light (Atwood, xxiv). Whereas Cixous compares writing to plunging deep into the earth or ocean (5), Atwood compares writing to entering a dark labyrinth or cave with no opening:
“Obstruction, obscurity, emptiness, disorientation, often combined with a struggle or path or journey – an inability to see one’s way forward but a feeling that there [is] a way forward, and that the act of going forward eventually [brings] about the conditions for vision.” (xxii-xxiii)
For Atwood, writing is midwifed in darkness through which inspiration appears as a flash of light (176). Simply put, writers who enter this underworld serve to illuminate that which is already present but unseen.
For Atwood and Cixous, the process of reading shares many of the same properties as writing: a reader enters a text from a place of darkness, unsure of where that text may take them, and temporarily loses then regains their sense of self in the process. As Cixous describes, to be a reader is “to lose a world and to discover that there is more than one world, and that the world isn’t what we think” (10). Ultimately, both authors acknowledge that writing-as-self-discovery is not an easy process – that any attempt to write with integrity is “an exercise that requires us to be stronger than ourselves” (Cixous, 42). It is perhaps for this reason that Kafka once compared writing to “an axe” to break “the frozen sea inside us” (as cited in Cixous, 17). Whether understood as a beam of light, a mirror, or an axe, Atwood, Cixous, and Kafka teach us that the process of writing, however imperfect, may gift the writer with the means to ascend towards a more luminous, expansive, or magnanimous awareness of self.
Works Referenced
Atwood, Margaret. Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
About the author:
Emily Arvay completed her PhD at the University of Victoria in 2019 with her thesis “Climate Change, the Ruined Island, and British Metamodernism.” Since then, she has worked as a Learning Strategist and EAL Specialist at the University of Victoria. She is currently conducting further research on the intersections between literary metamodernism and contemporary climate fictions.
Our last post was way back in March. I was going to write about some time management and productivity apps and tools to complement Emily’s wonderful post, but fittingly, I procrastinated about that. And here it is, the end of May, and I am finally tackling this task! I think I need one of these apps. . .
My colleagues at the Centre for Academic Communication told me about some productivity tools and apps they use or have had recommended to them. Today, I am checking out a few.
Some apps are about sticking to the task at hand by shutting out distractions. If you are a Mac user, this free application, SelfControl, will “let you block your own access to distracting websites.” The skull image scared me a little—I might die if I can’t access my mail for half an hour!
SelfControl app
Calmly Writer and Forest apps also give you the “distraction-free” writing experience; as with many of these apps, you can get a free trial then will have to pay.
Kaveh swears by the kitchen timer: “I find the simple technique of dividing your working time to rotating minutes for work and a break (at a ratio of 5:1 or 4:1) the most effective. If a kitchen timer does the magic for you, then you can call it the Pomodoro Technique (but it doesn’t have to be). You can simply use any timer.”
Are you a list maker? You might like Toodledo, a listing app that helps you organize life and work. The claim is that it will “increase your productivity,” providing a place to “write long notes, make custom lists, create structure outlines and track your habits.”
Finally, two intriguing apps have to do with making commitments in order to increase your productivity.
stickk is a “commitment platform with the tools to help you achieve your goals.” When you sign up with stickk, you make a commitment contract, for example, I will write five times a week for 12 weeks. The makers claim the difference between having a goal to achieving that goal is to make a binding agreement with yourself. Additionally, you can put money on the line by committing to pay a certain amount if you do NOT reach your goal. They even suggest promising to donate to an organization with values antithetical to your own in order to motivate you to stick to your commitment. I thought of promising $100 to the National Rifle Association if I fail to meet my goal of walking four times a week, but then I backed out.
With the app called focusmate, you sign up to be part of a “community of doers.” You arrange to work in tandem silence with a “live peer accountability partner” for 50 minutes of distraction-free writing (or some other task), up to three times a week. The app claims that it can help you eliminate procrastination and commit to “blasting excuses and get important work done.” When you are accountable to another person, you show up.
Sounds a bit like our Graduate Writing Room, 2-4 PST Wednesday afternoons: Join us and get ‘er done:
Welcome new graduate students and welcome back returning students!
Writing is a big part of your work as a graduate student. Frequently we write alone, and that can feel isolating. Now that we are keeping our physical distance from one another, this sense of isolation can be profound. A great way to break out of isolation and kick-start your writing is to connect with your peers and write together and/or share your writing. Wendy Belcher, editor, teacher, and the author of Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks, is a proponent of making your writing social, whether through involvement in a writing group or with a writing partner. Writing with others can allay writer’s block and other forms of anxiety, make you more productive, and help you feel connected to others.
If you’d like to start your own writing group, The Thesis Whisperer has some tips on how to start your own “Shut up and write” group (you can modify to create online or socially distanced meetings). Another resource—this one developed here at UVic—is The Thesis Writing Starter Kit, which can also be modified for online meetings.
If starting a writing group isn’t your thing, or if you simply want a pre-made writing group, why not join our virtual writing room on Wednesday afternoons? It’s a great way to set and accomplish small goals while writing in the (virtual) company of others. No registration required, just drop in on Wednesday afternoons between 2 and 4 p.m. (September 9-December 4). You can come in for all or part of the session. A tutor from the Centre for Academic Communication will be there to answer any questions and facilitate.
Are you a graduate student in Business or the Social Sciences, such as Psychology, Linguistics, Sociology, or Economics? Have you bought your new edition of the APA Style Manual? No? Well, to be honest, neither have I. Officially published earlier this year, the entrance of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association’s Seventh Edition was overshadowed by the chaos accompanying the Covid-19 pandemic. I have just had a chance to review the changes from the sixth to the seventh edition, summarized in this document, and I’d like to tell you about five changes that stood out for me. I’m sure you’ll have your own favourites.
Image from https://apastyle.apa.org/products/publication-manual-7th-edition/
First, The 7th edition acknowledges the difference between preparing a professional paper for publication and a student paper for a course. In Chapter 2, they provide a sample professional paper and a sample student paper (p. 1). In 2.18, they note different page header elements for the professional paper and the student paper (professionals: page number and running head; students: page number only). (Yay! Finally, we’re getting real—no running heads for student papers!) In 2.3, they describe a title page for a student paper v. a professional paper—also reflecting the reality of the classroom (why do you need an author’s note for your unpublished class assignment?). These changes come as a relief to many instructors who have spent years struggling to modify the professional guidelines to suit the classroom: Finally, it’s been done for you!
Second, I was thrilled to see in Chapter 4, on writing style and grammar, that APA has endorsed the singular use of “they,” explained in this blog post on the APA style blog. You can safely banish the awkward “he or she” and the dreaded “s/he” from your writing. With APA’s blessing, you can use “they” in those instances, as this pronoun is inclusive of all people and helps to avoid making assumptions about gender. When to use “they” as a singular pronoun? Chelsea Lee (2019) explains that “Writers should use the singular “they” in two main cases: (a) when referring to a generic person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant to the context and (b) when referring to a specific, known person who uses “they” as their pronoun.”
Third, all of the old-school “two spaces after a period” folks who started their typing life on typewriters (including me) can embrace the new rule: “Use one space after a period (or other punctuation) at the end of a sentence” (p. 4) (from Chapter 6, Mechanics of Style).
Fourth, Chapter 8 has some guidance about how to cite recorded or unrecorded Traditional Knowledge and Oral Traditions of Indigenous Peoples (see Section 8.9). This guidance is a much needed addition to the style guide, as post-secondary libraries decolonize and researchers draw on Indigenous knowledge. Also in this chapter is new guidance on how to format quotations from research participants (see Section 8.36). I’ve worked with so many students doing qualitative research using some form of narrative inquiry—now there are guidelines about how to work with the rich data from their participants’ voices.
And finally, I am delighted to see that the font-mantra—”you must use Times New Roman 12”—has been relaxed with this edition, with an emphasis on accessibility rather than homogeneity: “Font guidelines are more flexible. This revised section notes that ‘APA Style papers should be written in a font that is accessible to all users.’ Section 2.19 provides the following font recommendations: a sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode or a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal (10-point) Computer Modern (the latter is the default font for LaTeX)” (p. 2). According to Wikipedia (I know, not a definitive source), for the first time, APA Style’s team worked with accessibility experts to ensure accessibility in APA writing/reading (shortened in-text citations are another change).
These are just a few of the exciting transformations the APA Style Manual has undergone to keep pace with our rapidly changing world. I am looking forward to owning my own copy of the 7th edition. (And no, I’m not kidding.)
Finally, if you don’t have a copy of the manual yet or don’t plan on buying one, the APA style blog continues to be a great resource for answering your APA questions:
Traffic at the Centre for Communication (CAC) eased off this week, so I took the opportunity to chat with Janet Symmons. Janet is a graduate student tutor at the CAC and a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education, Curriculum and Instruction. We talked about how to write about theory—not only because this is a question grad students wonder about, but because it’s a topic dear to Janet’s heart. During our talk, Janet clarified the difference between a conceptual framework and a theoretical framework, told me a little about her own story and provided a useful resource.
Madeline: So what is the difference between a conceptual framework and a theoretical framework?
Janet: There has been quite a debate about this – Google it and you’ll see. People get the two confused. A conceptual framework clarifies the concepts through which the findings are discussed. So it emerges as you write your literature review (key words and ideas). Concepts are the general meanings of words, and from them you build the conceptual framework.
The theoretical framework is built from one or more theories through which you view everything. It’s like a pair of glasses you put on, glasses that you can change. For example, you can look at the same data through different lenses—say a feminist lens or a Marxist lens—and find different things. You can also combine theories that complement one another. My theoretical frame is self-determination theory. This is the theory through which I will view my data. Perhaps in a different study I can use the same data, but change my theoretical framework, to say, feminism or Marxist theory. Those would give me a very different perspective of the same data.
Madeline: When do you write about theory?
Janet: You should introduce your theoretical framework in your introduction, but give all of the details about it in your methodology section. And when you’re writing about its history or background, use the past tense. When you are writing about how you are using it, use the present tense.
Madeline: What are you working on and what is your theoretical framework?
Janet: I am doing a qualitative study, interviewing nine British Columbia educators about their use of open educational resources (OERs), specifically what motivates them to use OERs. I am collecting my data using phenomenology methodology, specifically Reflective Lifeworld Research.[1] With this approach, you gather data in a particular way, use a three-part analysis, and put it back together. After that, I will use self-determination theory to view the data.
Madeline: Why did you decide to inquire about how educators use OERs?
Janet: OERs are on the cusp; they will either evolve or be tossed to the wayside. Educators using OERs are being disruptive by using OERs rather than traditional textbooks, and I want to know why.
Madeline: Let’s backtrack to theory. You can’t just pick any theory, right? Don’t you have to align theory with your project?
Janet: Right. First I tried using one theory called Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations, but after working a few months on it, I felt as if I were fitting a square peg into a round hole. It just didn’t work. I read about a few more theories before I found the ones that worked, and a light bulb went on.
Madeline: But isn’t phenomenology a theory? Is your theory reflective lifeworld research or is it self-determination?
Janet: It can be confusing. A resource that really helped me get clear is Salma Patel’s post where he explains the research paradigm in simple language and provides a table:
[1] For more on this methodological development, see the work of Helena and Karin Dahlberg. They draw on the phenomenological and hermeneutic traditions to create a new approach to qualitative research. Dahlberg, H., & Dahlberg, K. (2019). Open and Reflective Lifeworld Research: A Third Way. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419836696
Photo credit: By Conrad von Soest – http://www.badwildungen.de/altar/foto6.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1844015
The “Glasses Apostle” painting in the altarpiece of the church of Bad Wildungen, Germany. Painted by Conrad von Soest in 1403, “Glasses Apostle” is considered the oldest depiction of eyeglasses north of the Alps.
David Evans, Paul Gruba, and Justin Zobel. (2014). How to Write a Better Thesis, 3rd edition. [e-book]. Springer. 173 pages.
When you hit a snag or are feeling lost in writing your thesis, reading a “how to” book can be just what you need. Such a book might give you a new perspective, a fresh idea, great advice, or motivation to continue. I recommend you have a look at the e-book How to Write a Better Thesis, free and easily accessible in UVic’s library. Writing in a friendly and knowledgeable collective voice, Evans, Gruba, and Zobel cover every stage of the thesis-writing journey. Surprisingly, they recommend you start by exploring the end-point. Look up institutional expectations for the finished thesis (get guidelines from your department). Then, read theses in your field (this is easy for UVic students; just access UVicSpace and search). These investigations will orient you to thesis-writing’s big picture.
Part of big picture thinking is recognizing that dissertation writing is not a logical, linear journey. Evans et al. (2014) acknowledge that this journey involves both the left and the right sides of our brains: “the process of research is often not entirely rational. . . . Research is a mixture of inspiration (hypothesis generation, musing over the odd and surprising, finding lines of attack on difficult problems) and rational thinking (design and execution of crucial experiments, analysis of results in terms of existing theory) . . . without the creative part, no real research would be done, no new insights would be gained, and no new theories would be formulated” (p. 10, emphasis added). This claim resonates with my own experience of writing the dissertation: moments of serendipity and light-bulb flashes punctuating long periods of reading, research, and painstaking writing.
Another example of how these writers home in on the big picture is their discussion of aim and scope, where they show how writers sometimes conflate research methods with aims. Using a cogent example of a student named Alistair, they quote what Alistair has identified as the aim of his thesis about attitudes toward a marginal group in Japanese society called the burakumin:
The aim of the research is to establish which groups of mainstream Japanese continue to harbour anti-burakumin attitudes, analyze what those attitudes are and why they have remained extant, and to investigate which political measures are needed to solve the problem. (p. 64)
Evans et al. (2014) rightly ask, “what was the real aim?” and go on to show that Alistair has crammed four aims into one sentence:
to establish which group has attitudes,
to analyze attitudes,
to determine why they persist,
and to investigate measures to solve the problem.
According to Evans et al. (2014), the first three “aims” should not appear in the intro chapter, but in the research design chapter. They go on to explain that a common problem for graduate students is that they have too many aims and should identify only one aim that follows as a “logical consequence of the problem statement” (p. 65). Finally, the conclusion should respond to this aim. So, in a nutshell, they say “stick to a single paramount aim” (p. 65, emphasis in original). This is simple but excellent advice. Less is more.
This book has many strengths:
The book is well organized, with introductory chapters on structure and mechanics followed by chapters on each section of the dissertation.
The authors are practical and sensible on mechanics; for example, if you are wondering what style is permissible in your writing, “go to the top five journals in your field and determine what style is used. Look, too, at the use of voice to see if it is first person singular, active (‘I investigate’) or perhaps third person passive (‘the event was investigated’). If your work is cross-disciplinary, settle on a single style so that your work is consistent” (p. 29).
They provide a comprehensive final checklist, “Dotting the ‘I’s and Crossing the ‘t’s” to review before you submit (pp. 129-136).
Summaries are provided at the end of each chapter, so it’s easy to dip in and out of the book and choose only what is relevant to your thesis-writing journey.
Although the authors write from an Australian perspective and they claim their book is suitable mostly for students in the physical, biomedical, mathematical, and social sciences, I believe this book has nuggets of good advice for all thesis writers.
Note: “Thesis” in this book is an umbrella term covering both the master’s thesis and the doctoral dissertation.
About Madeline
Madeline Walker is the Coordinator of the Centre for Academic Communication. She has a PhD in English and enjoys helping students to engage fully with their writing. She loves red and purple, colours of the heart.
Experienced tutor Gillian Saunders helps a graduate student
In graduate school, students are expected to write skillfully in their disciplines, yet explicit writing instruction via academic writing courses is rare at the grad level. Moreover, instructors are not often able to provide the intensive mentorship many students require, and if they can, such supervision “is costly and time consuming” (Dunleavy, 2003, p. 4). Tutors at the Centre for Academic Communication help to close this gap in grad student support by providing regular meetings to talk about writing, help to plan writing, and work on specific writing issues.
Grad students benefit from CAC tutors’ knowledge of and experience in graduate academic writing. Additionally, graduate students appreciate the continuity of support we offer. For example, one MA student finds that meetings with her busy supervisor are sporadic, but she can count on a weekly meeting with a tutor to check in. Another Master’s student (EAL) saves questions throughout the week and uses his time with a tutor to check vocabulary, syntax, meaning, and organization of his thesis in computer science, questions he deems inappropriate to ask his supervisor.
Students also appreciate the encouraging, non-judgmental approach we take during tutoring sessions. Writing at the graduate level involves developing a new scholarly identity, and this process can be fraught with anxiety and self-doubt. Students often feel reassured after meeting with a tutor because they realize they are on the right track. They can set goals and talk about how to be more productive—topics their supervisors may not have time to discuss.
Graduate students number over 3,000 at UVic, and they need academic writing support. With faculty members supervising multiple graduate students in addition to their teaching, research, and service commitments, the role of the Centre for Academic Communication has never been so important. Connect with us by creating an account online and booking an appointment with a tutor. Check out our spring schedule for tutoring, workshops, and other services. Come to the Grad Writing Room, Library 151B on Fridays from 10 to 1, where you write in community with others. Or just drop by and say hello. We’re located on the main floor of the Mearns Centre for Learning – McPherson Library. We’d love to see you.
Reference
Dunleavy, P. (2003). Authoring a PhD: How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
