This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
2. How Specific Should My Thesis Get?• When writing a thesis, you should get extremely
specific. • The intended readers of your thesis are only:• (1) your advisor;• (2) future researchers in the field you are studying.• Thesis writing is not for the common man.
• Therefore, there is virtually no limit to how involved you can get in the subject matter.
• In fact, besides the writing in the body of your thesis, it will also be necessary to include diagrams, charts, tables, and images to illustrate your results and data.
3. How Should I Write My Thesis? • Like any good piece of writing, your thesis should
be well organized, have a clear thesis paragraph, and be written in a simple, clear active voice.
• Naturally, you will have to use an abundance of field-specific terms and, in fact, it is easier for other researchers to read scientific terms than it will be for them to read oversimplified words.
• You must write your thesis in clear, concise, and correct language (or English).
• Grammatical errors and mistakes in spelling or punctuation are unacceptable and might cause your advisor or academic committee to reject your completed manuscript.
• Start with your chapters, change their order a bit, and when you feel relatively satisfied with the chapters you’ve chosen, go chapter by chapter and make headings.
• Repeat the process with subheadings. • Doing so will make organizing your thesis,
Step One: Making an Outline3. When You Think You’re Finished • When you have a rough outline, let a sit overnight.
Come to it the next day with a fresh attitude and make revisions. Don’t be afraid to spend up to a week making an outline.
• Naturally, as you write your thesis, new headings and subheadings may pop up.
• In fact, your initial thesis outline will rarely look exactly like your final thesis outline. But that shouldn’t motivate you to allow your outline to remain incomplete.
A Typical Outline• A typical outline will be of the form: Chapter 1: Introduction1.1 Background to the research1.2 Research problem and hypotheses1.3 Signification for the research1.4 Methodology1.5 Outline of the thesis1.6 Definitions1.7 Conclusion
• Now that you’re organized, you don’t want to go mixing up your precious thesis writing notes with other papers.
• You might also want to make a second copy of all your chapters, notes, and findings, and store it in a different place that you visit from time to time.
• Deadlines are the mother of invention. You and your advisor should discuss a reasonable schedule for producing chapters and ultimately, finishing your thesis.
• Make a schedule that is broken down into chapters. Depending on who your advisor is, these schedules indicate when certain chapters are due or strict timetables, taking them seriously.
• As each deadline passes and another chapter is stamped “complete” you will be getting closer and closer to the finish line.
• But before you submit a draft to your advisor, run a spell check so that s/he does not waste time on those. If you have any characteristic grammatical failings, check for them.
• The first time you get a chapter back from your advisor, be prepared to see a great deal of corrections because his/her reputation as well as yours is affected.
• Most students learn from experience. You will be proud to see how few corrections are made to the final chapter of your thesis as compared to the first.
• Keep in mind that your scratch work is not being evaluated; only the final thesis version will receive a grade.
• The sections below apply to most, but not all, thesis projects.
• Your own thesis will use many of them, or some combination. Depending on your university and advisor’s policies, you will either be given a list of sections to use in your thesis writing or decide on your own.
• Regardless, here is a description of what is generally expected for the most common thesis sections.
• The abstract is a short section that describes the issue or problem you are approaching, your results and conclusions, and the larger significance of your work.
• Your abstract should be written once you have completed your thesis writing.
• In effect, the abstract sums up the research and the separate sections of the thesis: the introduction, the methods section, the results section and the discussion and conclusion sections.
• Because its function is to provide an outline of the whole thesis, notice that it’s one section that you can only finalize after you have completed writing up the rest of your thesis.
• Although technical language is necessary and proper, people in related realms might read your thesis one day and you want your language to be somewhat user-friendly.
• You should also do your best to arouse the interest of your readers; this may be the only time during your thesis writing when you are permitted to employ a bit of creativity.
• Traditionally the introductory chapter functions to introduce the research in detail and establish the validity of the research by showing that the previous research in the field contains a ‘gap’ in knowledge that will be filled by your research.
• Each technical term used in a thesis must be defined either by a reference to a previously published definition or by a precise, unambiguous definition that appears before the term is used. (New terms only, make the definitions precise, concise, and unambiguous.)
• Each term should be used in one and only one way throughout the thesis.
• The introductory chapter can give the informal definitions of terms provided they are defined more precisely later.
How to Structure Your Thesis5. Literature Review • This section addresses what is known about the issue.• You should write about the background, from where
the problem arose, and how others have attempted to resolve the problem.
• It is normal to consult between 30 and 50 sources. Much of this information will come from the research you have done over the past couple of months and throughout the course of your graduate studies.
• The literature review section is the easiest part of the thesis writing process because it focuses on what you have been studying for the past three years.
• How exactly you organize the body of your thesis writing depends upon the logic of your progression of thought as well as your own preferences.
• You might have to build upon a hypothesis, describing how you tested it and what your results were, concluding with some kind of solution that you have devised yourself.
• For scientific and engineering types of thesis writing, you might use the following headings: Theory (Foundation) , First Problem, Second Problem, Methods, Possible Solutions, Experiment (Data, Tools), Conclusion.
• Other types of thesis writing might require you to discuss various methods in subsequent chapters instead of one Method and Experiment section.
The Body Of Your Thesis7. Theory• When deciding upon which pre-established theory to
include in your thesis writing, note that not all researchers will be familiar with your theories unless they are quite famous.
• Do not present multiple pages of mathematical proofs or the like, and do not forget to summarize even semi-well known theories.
• Thesis writing has no place for cliffhangers: be clear about what you are claiming so that your readers can keep it in mind as they peruse(细读 ) your work.
The Body Of Your Thesis8. The Experiment and Methods Section • While many theses have a Experiment and Methods
section, humanities theses may not. • If you are writing a scientific or engineering thesis,
however, you will need to describe the ways in which you performed your experiments. This should be simple thesis writing for you; all it takes is a literal description of what was done.
• Make sure you are as comprehensive and adept as possible in detailing your techniques, for it is very likely that other people will test your experiment in the future.
Science and Engineering Disciplines• The experiment section is very important in
Science and Engineering disciplines. • In these disciplines, detailed description of the
methods used in the research allows the research to be replicated by other researchers.
• The detailed description presented in some theses of the trial and error of particular methodologies used in the research design also provides the rationale for the final choice of methodology or method of experimentation.
• The methodology chapter is usually written using past tense, eg “data were examined …” The reason for this is that the data examination was carried out before it was written up in the thesis.
• Notice that is written in the passive voice as well: this is used so that focus falls on what was examined and not on who did the examining.
• The results chapter or section of your thesis typically uses past tense verbs, for example: “The false positive of anomaly detection accounted for 0.001% ”.
• Occasionally, however, present tense is used when describing a table or graph or figure, or when comparing results, for example: “Table 1 gives the detection rate of anomaly detection model”; “the data obtained in our study show higher detection rate when compared with the reference 2”.
• Discussion sections or chapters use a range of tenses depending on whether results are being discussed, or whether claims based on the results are being made.
• Present tense is used when making statements about how things are.
• While past tense is used when making statements about what was found.
The Body of Your Thesis10. The Conclusion • The conclusion section is less detailed than the rest
of your thesis, and requires a more literary sort of thesis writing.
• Remember that you have already told readers the conclusion of your research at the very beginning of your thesis, in the abstract.
• The difference between that description and the one in the conclusion section is that here you will be more specific, and also get into the possible limitations of your results.
Main Function of Conclusion• The conclusion might begin by reiterating the aims of the research the results of the research the implications of the results.• Its main function is to:• make generalizations arising from the discussion of the
results• look at the implications of the findings for practice,
accepted models or paradigms and indicate the overall importance of the research to the field
• in some theses, make recommendations for future practice, or future research.
• Most thesis authors put in a page of thanks to those who have helped them in thesis matters, and also indirectly by providing such essentials as education, money, help, advice, friendship etc.
• If any of your work is collaborative, you should make it quite clear who did which sections.
References• The list of references is closely tied to the literature
review of the state of the art given in the review section.
• Most examiners scan your list of references looking for the important works in the field, so make sure they are listed and referred to in literature review section.
• All references given must be referred to in the main body of the thesis. Organize the list of references by order of citation in the thesis.
• For an article: you must include the author's name, the article title, the journal name, the volume and edition, the year of publication and the page numbers.
• For a monograph or book: you must include the author's name, the book title, the publishers name and town of publication, the year of publication and the page numbers of the cited resources.
• Most examiners will search your references looking for if recognized format is used.
• The contribution to knowledge of a Master thesis can be in the nature of an incremental improvement in an area of knowledge, or the application of known techniques in a new area.
• The Ph.D. must be a substantial and innovative contribution to knowledge.