Preparing for writing

Manideepa Patnaik

Linking problem identification and thematizing them as probable papers is one of

the ways to prepare yourself for effective thesis writing. You can straight away
get with writing your chapters too. In any case, it is important to put the themes in
order first. You can add sub-themes coming on the way in the process of
researching. 1

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If you are working on qualitative data and taking clues from internet to fill out the
questionnaire, there is a heavy possibility that one or more questions may submerge.
Qualitative data analyses will have leave space for flexibility in the overall schemata and
in many times they do often make you explore themes that you never noticed before.
Paper writing idea is more effective because that helps you to have a target
audience before you and the reinforcement is very immediate. Quicker
reinforcement creates within you a reason and enthusiasm or rather an addiction
to write and a zeal to attend many seminars. In one year, you will notice, you
have ended up with 12 papers related to your thesis if you catch up the right
zeal . I have seen many people who never leave a single seminar – whatever is
the quality of the seminar or type of papers they write, they attend all the
seminars that come on their way. This helps you to achieve a target based work.

Keeping an audience in mind helps you to maintain the genre of academic writing
more rigorously. This helps you to meet up a certain expectation. Readers of a
thesis paper or chapter will have different expectations from the reader of a
general news paper article or magazine article. There are two kinds of readers-
(i) your tutors and thesis examiners (ii) scholars who will consult your thesis
taking it from your library shelves for many years to come. You have to
constantly keep them in mind when you are writing so that you get the right kind
of enthusiasm to write and the viewpoints you discuss the way you elaborate
them gets the best.

We do not always do the best we can do. Many times we do what we can do
quickly and it does get approved. But thesis is a lasting work. If you want to do it
for promotion in your won college that’s different issue, but if plan to apply to a
very best place then the interviewers will look at your thesis. You have to prepare
yourself mentally to make your thesis valuable enough for all these situations that
your thesis will meet up with eventually.
Assumption about reader’s knowledge

Do not use clauses like “As we all know/ or as it is well known” etc. Do not
assume that the reader will know about what you are talking about so there is no
need to explain it further because your examiner is not the only person who is
reading your thesis. A number of scholars and even people who are getting
exposed to your area will read your thesis too and they will not necessarily have
any background knowledge about your work. So explain everything that you think
you must explain. This happens when you are adopting a phenomenological
approach. Examiners will certainly be familiar with a number of issues that you
are considering but all the probable readers may not be. If you will be mentally
prepared to write for your examiners only, then you are likely to assume that
readers will have background knowledge and that will make your thesis look very
sketchy. I am not telling you go oversimplify but you should not not explain an
issue because you anticipate it might become boring for your examiner.

You have to mentally prepare to demonstrate your entire knowledge about issue
and full understanding and grasp over the matter when you are writing.
Coherence will result out of that. This can be ensured when you adopt a paper
collation based approach. Your examiners do not sit before you when you
present a paper. All kinds of scholars- even some novice listen to you. So you
write with more clarity and demonstrate your understanding better in this case.
Balancing the structure

You should have a mental calculation about the structure of your thesis when you
are writing papers with a view to collate them together to bring them to a thesis
level. Coherence also involves an element about length and detailing of
discussion you assign to a paper. Do not omit any information and do not explain
more than necessary is the key to the genre of academic writing.

Caution about writing about methodology

There is often a tendency to explain a lot when selecting one approach while
rejecting the other. The temptation to justify one’s own choice amounts to talking
about all the existing methodology in great details. This results in an excessively
long methodology chapter. When we say do not omit information, we do not
necessarily say, write all information that can be omitted. Do omit anything that is
directly relevant to your thesis. Writing in detail about the methodology you adopt
is important. But writing in details about the methodology you reject is not as
important. It becomes text bookish when you make your methodology chapter
long and exhaustive.