SKILLS FOR WRITING A DISSERTATION

SKILLS FOR WRITING A DISSERTATION

Introduction

The writing skills you learn while developing your dissertation become useful later on in life.  Odena & Burgess, 2015 argue that it gives one a competitive edge in the job market after graduation as one has learned skills on the development of reports and other papers. They say that learning writing skills will help the students to overcome writers blocks.  According to the Higher Education Council for England, 2010, over 75% of students studying doctoral degrees in UK universities four years later than the expected. He associates this to failure on the part of the students to understand and develop strategies or skills for writing dissertations.

Dissertation writing is a tedious and daunting task. It is more difficult if your English is not your first language (Iftanti, 2016). A dissertation is supposed to be original work from a specific topic developed independently. It is a rewarding yet challenging part of the degree that students have to go through. The skills for writing a dissertation can be considered in the writing style adopted, research skills, planning skills and analytical skills, among others.

Writing Style for Dissertation

Writing in Passive voice.

Dissertations, just like other academic articles, are written in the third person, or passive voice. For example, one may write, ‘research was carried out to ascertain…’ That is the traditional known writing style. Passive voice writing is one of the problematic areas to understand. A passive voice helps in constructing longer sentences. It yields sentences in which the subject is the action. The subject is the one that receives the action.

The formula; Passive voice= Subject + was/were + past participle + by object

Examples of the passive voice: Simple past (e.g. was made), past progressive (e.g. was being made). Passive voice tries to focus on the attention to the person being affected by the action. Passive voice is used to portray interest in object or person that is experiencing the action.

In passive voice, your reader knows that it is you the author that experimented, it just lays more emphasis on the experiment and from you. However, many journals and scientific dissertations have now adapted a first-person and active voice in writing. There has been an inclination to active voice by science disciplines who currently use and prefer active voice such as ‘we’, ”I’ in their published reports in the materials and methods sections.  Students need to check with their instructors on the usage of active voice in their dissertations.

Despite the recommendation for passive voice in writing a dissertation, they can be disadvantageous as well. Since passive sentences are long, they tend to be vague about how they are used to describe the responsible for the action. When passive voice is used in the dissertation to compare thoughts and ideas of different researchers, they can create confusion between other researchers’ views and yours as the author. Some researchers use the passive voice to hide errors in their research or to increase the word count for their work. They are also wordy and indirect and make the reader take up more space in their paper.

            Formatting and templates for dissertations

In your style of writing, formatting should be of particular concern and attention should be paid. There are structured formats and models provided by the institutions for this purpose. “A stitch in time saves nine” This is an idiom that helps to remember that it is better to spend time dealing with a problem from the word go as it gets worse later and will take longer and more effort to deal with. It is better to start your writing using the format and templates provided from the onset of your writing. This is more preferred than cutting and pasting and editing to meet the expectations of the institution. Provided templates are meant to make students work and life easier.

The formatting of the references should be from an institution preferred referencing style. It is advisable to do this as you go along with your writing.  Formats for referencing like APA, MLA, Chicago are available from google scholar. The institutions provide the manual for referencing of your dissertations. Students can obtain these manuals from the librarians.  However, other resources can be used to assist with the formatting of the dissertation references. Purdue owl – the Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides writing and instructional resources to students and worldwide users for free.  Students can obtain free services for any writing.  https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html. The resource will provide you with instructions and expectations for any format for referencing.

Students find it hectic typing and formatting their references. Emerging technologies have made it easier for students to do this.  These resources are available to save your time in typing out full names; you only need to do minor tweaks to correspond to the outlined referencing style. Students can you CiteForMe- https://www.citethisforme.com/, or even Mendeley – https://www.mendeley.com/?interaction_required=true.

Proofreading your dissertation

Proofreading is looking out for grammatical errors, wrong spellings, punctuation mistakes, and examining the general information and structure of your dissertation. Proofreading your work enables you to rid of unnecessary details. Some students prefer to proofread as they work through their thesis, others prefer to do it chapter by chapter, while others prefer to do it at the last minute. A majority of students don’t like proofreading their work at all.  Students interviewed said that proofreading makes them doubt their work. Others said that it felt like writing the dissertation all over again.

How many times should students proofread their work? The answer is severally. ‘’I found it easier to swap my dissertation with my peer for proofreading, it was the best decision as we were able to ask each other questions which led to critical evaluation of the paper...” Said Robert, a PhD student. Fresh eyes are able and likely to spot errors where you couldn’t. Take note to swap with colleagues who are supportive and can give you generous and honest feedback on your paper.

“.. I regret not proofreading my dissertation severally, my supervisor found many hanging sentences which was an embarrassment to me, he doubted my seriousness…” Said Carol, an art PhD student. Proofreading requires ample time to ensure that all sentences and paragraphs flow correctly.

There are various online tools and resources that students can use for proofreading. These tools should be combined with your knowledge of technology. These online tools and computer software are free, and others require a subscription for premium access. The tools include:

Grammarly – contains both free and premium access and checks mainly your grammar, verbs, passive and active grammar, length of sentences and overuse of words.  https://www.grammarly.com/proofreading.

Readable.io – helps with word counts in your text, readability level, and scores. If your institution has a college reading level, this tool will be most useful. https://readable.io/.

Slick Write – it critiques your dissertation as you write, analysis for passive and judges the workflow. https://www.slickwrite.com/#!home

Nevertheless, good quality work is one that you can read out loud to yourself. You can print and make corrections with pencil and conduct direct editing from your computers – whatever suits you as the author.

Editing Dissertation

The globally preferred language of academic writing and publishing in English-this is also the requirements from the majority of the institutions.  Therefore, if English is not the students’ first language, it becomes a challenge. In this case, you have an option of finding an English speaking fellow student to read your dissertation and help you to correct and improve your English or pay an editor to do the work for you.  You can even obtain editing from professionals like Emerald and Springer, who are professional language editors. You may have to consult with your institution as some institutions find it dishonesty to pay for your dissertation work of whatever kind. Additionally, you may have to have adequate or sufficient time enough to allow for your work to be edited.

Planning skills

Writing and completing your dissertation requires proper planning. You need to acquire planning skills and understand how to use them (Roberts & Hyatt, 2019). As discussed in chapter 1, planning is the basis for your dissertation. Mind mapping or sketching out of ideas and thoughts will give you a clear outline or plan for your dissertation (Winstanley, 2012). When planning your dissertation, draw an outline of what is expected of you in every chapter and what you intend to research. For example, in the introduction, outline what you will be researching on, global context, local context, etc. Outlining will help to mark what has been done.

Creation of to do things for your dissertation not only helps you to plan your time but to keep you on schedule as well. Planning realistic time scales for writing your dissertation is imperative.  Dissertation writing can drag on forever if not properly prepared. Time scale planning is both necessary for life balance; time for family, friends, leisure and time for writing. If any of them is not balanced, they are likely to bring confusion, procrastination that may result in non-completion of your paper.

Research skills

Research skills are soft skills in a student. Being able to research is a crucial academic skill. It entails the ability to categorise data, summarise it. With so much information and so many sources, the researcher needs to be capable of citing only the relevant sources. As such, the data from various sources require categorisation.  Without the research skills, the students would not succeed. With research skills, one has to develop critical and analytical thinking additionally.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking helps to find new knowledge of an issue and draw new conclusions. That is why students ought to remain objective. Being objective helps to justify their views in the paper. Critical thinking s about thinking clearly to be able to connect ideas, evaluate them and arguments, come up with ideas for reasoning and define the basis for justification and rationale. Being a critical thinker means accumulating information and using that information for what he is seeking to understand in research.  Being a critical thinker is not being argumentative but cooperative reasoning.

Critical thinking is not a matter of accumulating information and neither should it be confused with argumentative. A person with good memory and who knows a lot of facts is not necessarily good at critical thinking. A critical thinker can deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems and to seek relevant sources of information to inform himself. When you use critical thinking, you enhance and improve your dissertation and research skills. Critical thinking does not kill creativity, although it follows logic rules and rationality.  It is about thinking outside the box.  It is creative thinking as it evaluates and improves creative ideas.

Analytical Thinking

Analytical thinking is an essential and valuable skill for dissertation writers. When you can think analytically, it means you can analyse so much information at once.  In dissertation writing, students are required to study different aspects of the problem they intend to solve. Dissertation writing means studying a lot of material that has been written on the subject, analysing them and picking what is most important for your paper. Therefore, this requires getting information from different sources, the books, the internet, the school modules, and bringing them together to make a sensible connection. Analytical thinking is not a natural skill to acquire; it is complicated, and students have to work on it consistently. Analytical thinking is about questioning, judging ideas and recombining information to make sense.

Explanation skills

Dissertation writing requires students to be able to explain their thoughts. Majority of people find it hard to do this. Explanation skills mean having the ability or capability to explain your ideas logically. For example, the concept of ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘when’.  In social research, explanation skills serve numerous purposes in empirical research (Babbie, 2007). It helps to unveil new information and knowledge and how to report the relationship while looking at different aspects of the topic under study. Explanation skills are required to construct sentences and phrases with the right words and syntax. When a writer uses explanation skills, the dissertation is easy to read and follow. As a result, it improves the quality of the paper, and readers find it enjoyable.

The explanation is meant to give understanding to others. If your dissertation is full of multiple paragraphs, or difficult language, then it is not clear. This can be overcome by using description, interpretation or reason-giving instead. Explanation skills can be improved. Students ought to read analytical and critical essays to learn explanation skills. These skills are not easy to acquire.  Some institutions offer workshops that facilitate the development of these skills. The best way to learn is to practice academic writing experience.  This will enable students to gather information quickly and to make conclusions with ease.

Developing and improving Dissertation Writing skills

Dissertation writing can be compared to academic writing.  Both require essential skills that students ought to develop to succeed in writing, enhance their communication of ideas with clarity and understanding.  Improvement in dissertation or academic writing propels you to remain competitive among peers, professors, publications and even in your careers. The following are tips on how to improve your dissertation writing skills; –

• Understand your audience: It is imperative to note that academic writing is for those individuals that are of high education, is well informed and already understands the depth of the material information you are writing on. Do not dwell on the obvious as it will get boring for them. It is advisable to be strategic and select the main points and simply analysing them.
• Build from history: Your dissertation requires research even before the commencement of writing. As such, students need to build their paper from the past (history), by way of compiling researched reports on the topics and ensure that ideas that have been written or researched on are not repeated on your paper. If they are repeated, your information becomes irrelevant.
• Dwell on main points: Quite often in dissertations professors get frustrated and ask students, ’…what is your point?’ Students tend to write too much information without first highlighting the main points. The first paragraph of the dissertation should be able to outline the main points to be covered in the paper.  It helps the reader to quickly establish the topic of your dissertation and the appeal or attraction to read the rest of it. Dissertations have provision for an abstract which serves to summarise the whole paper. Keen attention should be taken to bring out the main points of the dissertation at this point
• Establish dissertation stand: Students need to take a stand in the dissertation. Making a statement and providing the supporting evidence for the statement is critical in dissertation writing and is an effective writing strategy.  Students should give the hypothesis they are working on and provide through research persuading arguments for its validity.  It is crucial for dissertations that will be published. It brings out persuasive reasoning of the new ideas the author is bringing to the world. Your dissertation should be such that it brings new insights on the topic both for learning, information.
• Cite and provide evidence: A dissertation should contain sources of information used to build up the paper. It should contain bibliographic data that is complete to allow the readers to make reference and evaluate your study conclusions based on those sources. Citations should be cited in the be prescribed style by the institution.  The method of referencing and quotes is covered in this chapter. Substantial evidence helps to inform the audience on your topic and enhances the credibility of your dissertation as your ideas are presented fully with proof to the audience or readers.
• Avoid literacy clichés: Dissertation is a formal paper and designed to educate its readers. Overuse of language, flowery words, metaphors and figures of speech can be distracting and lower the impact of understanding of your paper. Many readers are not familiar with tropes may find it difficult to follow your points on the paper. Choose a simple language that is clear and concise without losing objectivity of the d and the points you wish to put through.
• Edit your paper: Dissertations should adhere to the style and structure provided by the institution. Adopt the style of your writing at the beginning and follow through. Students should edit their dissertation as they work along consistently; this can be done by eliminating spelling mistakes, long, complex sentences. It will enable students to produce polished papers whose points are eloquent for the readers.

Students’ Experiences in Dissertation Writing Skills

Majority of the students interviewed on dissertation writing skills confessed that at the beginning of the dissertation, they felt that they were not good writers and did not have an idea how they would come up with over twenty thousand words.  They cited having experienced the fear that they were not good. At the end of their dissertation paper, they felt more experienced and more confident.

…” In the beginning, I was frustrated by my writing skills. I kept practising and reading critical and analytical essays and journals. With time, I started enjoying writing” Robert.

Feedback from supervisors and peers as one of the ways many students have been able to cope and adjust their dissertation writing skills. Many reported that the first round of corrections sent them to the right direction of their writing skills.  …” I kept doubting myself and the ability to write. I had ideas but had difficulties in putting them on paper. My first feedback from my supervisor had me restructure most of my sentence and paragraphs, but it helped to improve my writing skills as I got better…” Nancy.

Majority of students forget that professors and supervisors are willing to help with dissertation writing skills and hesitate consultation. “… my dissertation writing would have been more interesting had I invested in consulting my professor from the onset. I realised later on that once I admitted my weaknesses and fears to my supervisor, he was ready and willing to walk with me..’’ Patel.

References

Odena, O., & Burgess, H. (2015). How doctoral students and graduates describe facilitating experiences and strategies for their thesis writing learning process: a qualitative approach. Studies in Higher Education, 42(3), 572-590. doi: 10.1080/03075079.2015.1063598

Higher Education Funding Council for England. 2010. Research Degree Qualification Rates. HEFCE July 2010/21. www.hefce.ac.uk [Google Scholar]

Roberts, C., & Hyatt, L. (2019). The dissertation journey: The Dissertation Journey A Practical and Comprehensive Guide to Planning, Writing, and Defending Your Dissertation (3rd ed.). London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Iftanti, E. (2016). Improving Students’ Writing Skills Through Writing Journal Articles. Journal Bahasa Lingua Scientia, 8(1). doi: 10.21274/ls.2016.8.1.1-22

Winstanley, C. (2012). Writing a Dissertation for Dummies.

Babbie, E. (2007). The Practice of social research (11th ed.). California: Thompson Wadsworth.