Writing The Master's Thesis - The Preliminaries, Planning Ah

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Writing The Master's Thesis - The Preliminaries, Planning Ahead And Choosing A Topic

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Nothing strikes more fear in the heart of a graduate student than these two words: masters thesis. A well-researched and well-written masters thesis can take months, even years, to complete. Depending on the specific requirements of the academic program for which it is being written, the thesis can range from 35 to 100 or more pages. It may require fieldwork or lab work; in all cases it will require research and not just a little research. The bibliography of a masters thesis can cover ten or more pages and boast hundreds of sources, including books, academic essays, journal articles, and other reference works. Often, a thesis will be read and reviewed by a committee of professors, all of whom must approve of the work before the masters degree may be conferred. Sometimes, a committee will require to the author of a thesis to defend it orally in a kind of academic interrogation that would make even a hardened CIA agent blanch. To students pursuing an advanced degree, the thesis looms at the end of the tunnel that is their coursework like an unimaginable Herculean ordeal, one with all the appeal of an execution.

In actuality, however, writing a thesis can and should be one of the most rewarding academic experiences you will ever have. The master"s thesis offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to delve deeply into a topic that fascinates you for a sustained period of time. The whole purpose of your graduate education is to write a thesis that will contribute in some way, no matter how small, to the academic field that you have chosen to pursue. If you succeed in producing such a thesis, you will feel the intense pride that comes along with leaving an indelible mark on your profession and it is a very good feeling.

So the masters thesis should be embraced, not feared. No one can say that writing a thesis will be easy. But you can conquer your fear and write an outstanding thesis by following two pieces of advice. First, start your preparations for your thesis as early as possible. Second, instead of viewing the thesis as an impossibly enormous task, conceptualize it as a series of smaller tasks and complete those tasks one at a time.

Keep in mind that it is never to early to begin preparing for your thesis. After all, from an academic perspective, and the perspective of your professors and your program, completing the thesis is the most important part of your graduate education. Ideally, you should begin planning for your thesis from the moment you walk through the door of your academic department"s offices. Your choice of courses and professors should be made with your thesis in mind. The courses you take, both the in-class discussion and the reading you do outside class, will serve as diamond mines in which you can dig for a gem of a potential thesis topic. Take classes that interest you because you will want to choose a thesis topic that interests you. Remember that, if you are lucky, a well-executed research paper for a graduate course could become a springboard for a thesis if you are able to expand on your ideas and deepen your analysis.#p#分页标题#e#

Also dont underestimate the role of academic politics to the successful completion of your thesis. Academic rivalries have been known to derail the aspirations of more than one graduate student. If your thesis will be read and graded not only by your adviser but also by a committee of professors, then it is particularly important to pay heed to the political situation within your department. Whatever you do, do not snub, alienate or offend anyone who could potentially sit on your thesis committee. If you are a literature student interested in the works of Charles Dickens, be sure to take courses with the Dickens expert in your department. If your department has two Dickens experts and you cannot fit a class with the second into your course schedule, then make an excuse to visit him during office hours to ask his opinion on your novel interpretation of David Copperfield or chat him up at a department cocktail hour and subtly mention that you read his superb article on the symbolism of prisons in Little Dorrit which was recently published in The Journal of Victorian Studies. Dissertation is provide by Custom Thesis http://www.ukthesis.org/

Your courses and your professors will serve as invaluable resources when it comes to tackling the first, and perhaps most important, step in preparing for and writing your thesis: choosing a topic. The ultimate success of your thesis will turn on your choice of a topic and your ability to refine it into a question that is worthy of extensive research. To write a good thesis, you must begin with good material. No matter how sharp and diligent you are, you cannot write a successful thesis on a topic that does not interest you and will not be interesting to others.

You will be living constantly and intimately with your topic for months, if not longer. Your daily thoughts will be dominated by thoughts of your topic and how best to convey in writing the points you want to make about your topic. So you need to pick a topic that you not only find interesting but which you are passionate about. If your enthusiasm wanes and you grow sick of your topic, you will not be able to put in the required time and effort to write a good thesis.

Choosing a good thesis topic is not as straightforward as it may initially seem. In practice, you will most likely refine and adjust your topic several times throughout the course of writing your thesis by narrowing it, broadening it, or changing the focus of your research ever so slightly. The trick with deciding what to write about for your master"s thesis is to choose a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow. The topic must be both broad enough to warrant the extensive treatment that it will receive in, say, fifty pages, and narrow enough that you can exhaust your topic and completely answer the question it proposes within that same page limit. Generally, the topics that graduate students initially propose are overly broad rather than overly narrow. As you advance through the thesis planning and thesis writing process, you will most likely find your self progressively narrowing your topic. You may be interested in the works of Charles Dickens, but "Dickens" is too broad a topic. You will need to begin narrowing that down to a single novel by Dickens or perhaps to a single theme as it is expressed in two or more of his novels. From there, it may be necessary to narrow the topic even further.#p#分页标题#e#

Remember when choosing a topic (and later when you are writing about that topic) that you are not going to be composing a book report or an encyclopedia entry.At the graduate level, you are expected to do more than simply regurgitate or paraphrase information and ideas from other sources. As discussed above, a graduate student is expected to make a meaningful contribution to his or her discipline as a scholar and researcher. Your thesis should serve as a crystallization of your contribution to your field.Dissertation is provide by Custom Thesis http://www.ukthesis.org/

The term "thesis" derives from the word hypothesis. Just as a scientist poses a hypothesis, or question, that he seeks to solve through experimentation, your thesis topic should pose a question to which your research and your completed masters thesis will provide an answer. A good thesis is one that can be expressed in the form of a question.

For instance, the symbolism of the prison in the novel Little Dorrit by Charles Dicken is not a good topic for a thesis because it does not ask a question. One could write an essay or an entry for a literary encyclopedia on this topic, but not a successful thesis.

"What is the significance of the symbolism of the prison in Little Dorrit?" is slightly better. It is posed in the form of a question, and answering the question will require the application, to a certain degree, of critical analytical skills. However, it is a relatively unsophisticated question, more suited to an undergraduate English paper than a
masters thesis. This topic is a start but requires further refining. How does Dickens use the symbol of the prison in Little Dorrit to represent the interior mental states of his characters? would be a further improvement but would probably still require refinement. However, as mentioned previously, a thesis topic is repeatedly refined throughout the process of planning and writing the thesis. What is important is that you move from broader and less sophisticated ideas to narrower and more insightful questions about your chosen subject matter.

Your thesis should contribute to your field, and, to qualify as a meaningful contribution, it needs to be original. That is, your completed thesis should address a question about the relevant subject matter that has not been answered before. You need to write your own thesis, not recapitulate a thesis written by one or more graduate students or scholars who have come before you. Thus, you must strive to craft a unique topic. Sometimes it is easier to ask an original question about a general topic that has been tackled only rarely by scholars in your field. If you are a fan of Victorian literature, you will, of course, be drawn to the works of Charles Dickens. But thousands and thousands of thesis, dissertations, articles, and books have already been written about Dickens and his various literary works. That does not mean that you #p#分页标题#e#Dissertation is provide by Custom Thesis http://www.ukthesis.org/
cannot write a successful and original thesis on Dickens or his works. However, you might consider choosing to write instead about a contemporary of Dickens instead, someone who has not been the subject of so much academic attention, perhaps an obscure author of the Victorian era whom you consider unappreciated. Many a graduate student has ended up getting his or her
masters thesis published by writing about, for instance, an undiscovered woman writer of the past or the like. Whatever your topic, however, you must approach it with the critical thinking skills of a practiced scholar and researcher.

The next article in this series will help you do just that by guiding you through the steps involved in the actual process of writing your thesis.