Mandeepa Patnaik

Course on Academic Writing

manideepap@yahoo.com

The Thesis as Research Training

Academic writing is a genre. A person who writes poems and stories very well or who
writes for news papers very well may not have mastered the art of academic writing.
Writing a thesis needs research training.

Proposal/Synopsis

The training starts from the proposal writing stage. 1 It’s better to spend a lot of time
carefully planning the proposal. The thesis becomes implementation of this planning
when done carefully.

The proposal must consist of key aspects of the research. There should be a brief
introduction that explains the subject of research and reasons for considering the topic for
investigation.

The aim of the research should be clearly stated in the proposal. Clear indication must be
made about existing literature. There should be clear indication about the proposed
research design and intended means of collecting and analyzing data. There should be a
broad projected timescale for the research.

A perfect proposal is half the battle won. You just need to stick to your proposal and get
going with chapters. It’s ideal to spend good deal of time in planning and drafting a final
synopsis/proposal which can be a planner for your thesis.

It’s advisable to attend seminars and conferences on your topic of investigation at the
proposal writing stage. Getting to know people who may help you with your doctoral
work should be given importance to at this stage.

1
Many departments expect the candidates to submit the proposal at the beginning of doctoral registration.
Some others require to it to be submitted after the course work. It’s better to write a synopsis during the
course work. Somehow departments haven’t taken this as a desirable element of course work. When you
submit a synopsis at the time of registration you expect amendments and post facto modifications more
often than not. Usually in doctoral programs the research proposal gets submitted to a committee of
experienced supervisors for their comments, and may, in addition, be sent anonymously to academic
referees.
The proposal has the following structure

 Introduction
 Summary of the subject of investigation
 Aim/goal of the research clearly specified
 Literature review and justification for the research
 Methodology- research design and methodology with rationale
 Organization of the thesis with chapter outlines
 Anticipated timescale (You must make an actual chapter-wise planner at this
stage that you should keep to yourself)

References

I would advise you to open a file on reference and index from the very moment you start
your work. Thesis submission time is usually very stressful. Preparing references at that
time becomes dragging. It’s better to open the file from the start so that every time you
read something you can just incorporate the section to the reference section. By the time
you complete writing your chapters you can also have a decent 10/15 page reference
section.

Threading arguments

I will take a special session on arguments threading. A well trained scholar writes in clear
style while doing justice to the academic requirements of the subject. An elegant
academic writing does not make unnecessary use of jargons. Organizing the section into
chapters and subsections makes the writing process easier.

You feel lost in the middle of writing your thesis when you get out of touch with your
research proposal and when your arguments don’t follow from one another. You should
always ensure there is coherence as you progress so that you don’t get fatigued at any
time. You can thread your arguments well if you have a well planned proposal that you
should keep as a reference point at all time.

It’s better to be constantly aware there is an aim to reach by the time you finish writing
200 odd pages. By this time you should be able to address all the issues and sub-issues
related to your topic as stated by you in the proposal. Threading becomes easier when
you have a content line kept before you with clearly specified sections and sub-sections.

Specifying the aim

Specifying your aim means limiting the scope of your work. Unless you really limit the
scope of your work you cannot have a well defined aim. Completing the doctoral work in
a stipulated time becomes difficult when you do not have a well defined proposal and a
well defined aim.
Review of literature

Review of literature is really an art. Here you make a choice about which brand of
academic writing to give focus to. You should make a very careful selection of literature
that you want to review. Don’t review any literature that comes on your way because
that looks relevant to your topic. The literature you select to review must be clearly
argumentative and predictive in nature.

Errors

Some examiners make big issues out of small errors. Small errors can be very noticeable
in a thesis. The thesis must be very carefully proofread to reduce typographical,
punctuation and grammatical errors.

Referencing should be checked carefully so that details of works cited match in different
parts of the thesis.

Consistency is very important in a thesis. In a good thesis consistency must be

maintained at the way the thesis is written and structured. This applies for example to the
spelling of technical terms, use of acronyms and the way sub-sections are set out and
numbered.

Abstract

The thesis should have a well written one page abstract at the beginning. The abstract
should give a clear picture of what the thesis is about. This page should have the context
of the research, the aims and research design, the results and conclusion. Please
remember to put the title of the thesis at the top of the abstract page.

Title

Deciding a good title for your thesis is an art in itself. It’s not a bad idea to spend some
time in deciding the title of your thesis. The title should not be excessively long but it
should describe precisely the nature of your thesis.

I will talk about Academic Writing as a genre in my next session.