Paul Oliver - Writing Your Thesis

Study Strategies

• Visit a university library, and select several examples of thetype of thesis you intend to write.
• Read the titles. Do they give an unambiguous indication of thenature of the thesis?
• Read the abstracts. Do they provide a clear summary of thethesis?
• Locate the aims of the thesis. (You may find these near the endof the .)Are they precise and clearly worded?
• Look at the contents pages and overall structure of the thesis.Is it easy to find your way around the thesis?
• Examine a few sample pages of the thesis at random. Is the pagelayout easy on the eye and is the text easy to read?

This book is designed to help postgraduate students with the process ofwriting a thesis. For many people engaged in masters or doctoralresearch, collecting and analysing data is interesting and exciting. In thesocial sciences, the research process often involves interaction withother people, and as you begin to amass your data there is a realfeeling of progress. However, the time comes when all of this data andanalysis has to be converted into a thesis. Writing is a largelysolitary process, and progress may seem very slow. The task seems tostretch away into infinity. This book will help you with writing yourthesis, from the moment you type your first word, to when you walk intothe viva voce examination to defend the completed work! The book isdivided into two parts. The first provides help on the broad issues ofacademic writing which are useful when preparing a thesis. The secondpart is a template for writing your thesis. It takes you through theprocess, step by step, from the title page to the final examination.Although there is no single way of using the book, one idea would be toread Part 1 during the early stages of your research, and to save Part 2for when you actually start writing your thesis.