#writingyourthesis

A lot of the literature I have been reading about writing recently has emphasised how unproductive it is to start out try and write something coherent and well-structured. I will hold my hand up to having spent agonising writing days over the years trying to order my thoughts before or as I wrote them. And then you get to the end of that agonising day only to find I had made very little progress - both in your writing and your thinking. Vitae (2009) outline a three draft approach:

Get the big ideas down

Structure and fill in the gaps

Proof

When I teach sessions on planning, writing and completing your thesis one of things everyone wants to know is how to structure their thesis, and it’s a question I just can’t answer. Each discipline, research area, and indeed thesis topic is so different that it is difficult to give an ‘overview’ or ‘how to’ in terms of thesis structure, as it has to be particular to and appropriate for your work. Should your literature review be an individual chapter, or incorporated in to individual topic chapters? Should you methodology be part of your introduction? How many theme or topic chapters should a thesis have?

Vitae have some really useful suggestions on how to decide on a structure for your thesis, which you can look at in detail here. The best of these, and the one that I discuss at length in my teaching sessions, is analysing existing theses. The benefit of analysing existing theses is that it lets you in to discipline-specific structural possibilities, and can help you identify the pros and cons of different approaches.

Most Universities have open access repositories now where anyone can download PhD theses. Ours at Exeter is called ORE – Open Research Exeter. If you want to look a bit further afield, you can download or request electronic copies if theses from Universities across the country from Ethos – the British Library’s e-theses online service.

So, when analysis existing theses, what should you be looking at? Vitae can help here to. You can start with an overview by asking the following:

How many chapters?

How long is each chapter?

How have key sections like the introduction, literature review, methodology and conclusion been dealt with?

(Vitae, 2015)

As part of their Part-Time Researcher workshop, Vitae break this down even further to analyse thesis writing at a micro, mid and micro level. This involves looking at the following:

Macro level:

Structure

Signposting

Mid level:

Linking between chapters

Repetition

Micro level:

Paragraph structure

Sentence structure

Choice of words

(Vitae, 2009)

At all levels, the key issues to look at are:

how originality is shown

how the gap in knowledge is shown

how certainty/uncertainty is acknowledged

how weaknesses in the work are dealt with

style variation in the thesis (introduction through to further work)

what were the author’s reasons/objectives for writing that way

how is the writer’s voice shown

what writing do you like/dislike and why?

(Vitae, 2009)

The above can be used as a taxonomy for analysing thesis structure and writing more generally, and as a way in to thinking about how to approach writing up your thesis.

The truth is, reading existing theses can help you answer a multitude of questions throughout your doctoral studies. Want to know what a literature review looks like in your subject area? Look at existing theses. Want to improve your academic writing? Read existing theses. Want to know what the pass standard is for a PhD thesis in your subject? Look at recently submitted theses in your department, or, even better, a recently submitted thesis examined or supervised by your internal or external examiners.

I really like Get a Life, PhD’s post ‘ How to Respond to a “Revise and Resubmit” from an Academic Journal: Ten Steps to a Successful Revision’ as its practically focused. As such, I adapted the ‘Ten Steps to a Successful Revision’ to develop ‘10 Steps For Dealing with Feedback’ - specifically your supervisor’s feedback on a draft of your thesis - for my Completing Your Thesis session at the University of Exeter. Here they are - I’ve used quotation marks to make sure I’m giving Get a Life, PhD due credit :)

Step One: Read or listen to the feedback.

Feedback on your draft thesis may come to you in a variety of different ways – an email, as track changes on a word document, or in a supervision. If it is the latter, I would suggest audio recording your supervision – that way, you can focus on discussing how to approach the re-draft rather than making sure you write every word down.

The first thing you need to do is to read or listen to the feedback: carefully.

Step Two: Take some time out.

Don’t try to tackle revisions whilst you’re feeling overwhelmed/angry/lost/confused/hurt…take some time out. Do something for yourself. Watch someone in your Netflix queue. Read a (fiction) book you’ve been dying to get to but not had the time. Go for dinner with the friend you key missing. Spend time with your family. Go away and stay with family/friends for a few days. Treat yourself and get some distance. Step Three: Create an Excel File to List the Revisions.

When you are ready…

‘Create an Excel file with four columns in which to put the suggestions for revisions.’ Label the columns: “Supervisor”; “Suggestions”; “Response”; “Done?”.

Step Four: Extract the suggestions from the reviewers' and editors' letters.

Revisit the feedback ‘to extract the suggestions for revision and put the suggestions in the Excel file. This step requires the painful and painstaking process of closely reading [or listening to] the [feedback] and extracting all of the useful suggestions. On some occasions, the [feedback] can contain useful information, but not relay the information in a congenial fashion. The beauty of this step is that you can rewrite the suggestions and not have to look at the mean-spirited [feedback] again. For example, [your supervisor] might write: “One major problem with this [thesis] is that the research methods are suspect.” You can re-write this as: “Provide a more accurate and complete discussion of the data collection.”’

Step Five: Re-arrange the suggestions for revision in a logical fashion. 

‘Oftentimes, two [supervisors] will both mention in different ways that you need to build up the conceptual framework or the literature review. If you group all of the literature review suggestions together, it will be easier to tackle the revision systematically.’

‘Organizing all of the suggestions for the Introduction, the Literature Review, the data analysis, etc., will make it easier to respond to’. Of course, if done in track changes this is pretty easy, but helps you collate verbal comments etc. with these. 

Step Six: Decide how you will respond to all of the suggestions. 

‘If the suggestion is to more clearly define the difference between “transnational” and “transborder,” then you can write: “Add one paragraph to the conceptual framework that clearly explains the difference between transnational and transborder, and why this distinction is useful.” Be sure that the suggestions you lay out for yourself make it clear what the next step is. Note: Respond to all of the suggestions. There may be some suggestions that you disagree with. This is fine, but you have to make a conscious decision not to respond to any particular suggestion. For example, [your supervisor] might suggest that you return to the archive to explore more biographical features of a certain person. You can respond that this step is not necessary for your argument. Place all of your instructions to yourself for how you will respond in the third column’ for use in your next supervision meeting or when sending through your next draft. Step Seven: Tackle your revision plan, step by step. 

‘Now that you have made a clear plan for revision by outlining all of the suggestions and have decided how you will respond, you can tackle the revisions one by one. If you feel intimidated, start with the easiest ones. Usually, the easy ones will be something along the lines of: “Find and add a quote from Diana’s interview that elucidates how subjects talk about discrimination.” Even easier: “Add citation from Stephens (2009) about transnationalism from below.”’

Step Eight: Double-check

‘Go back to the original [feedback], and double-check to make sure that you have not missed anything.’ Step Nine: Do a final read-over.

‘Read over your [thesis] to make sure that you have maintained the flow and argument in each chapter and overall, even after having made the revisions. Read it without thinking about the feedback, but imagine a reader who is unaware of your original version or the feedback, as that reader is now your intended audience.’

Get a friend or colleague to give it a read for you. Ask them to give you feedback on clarity, flow and argument, or perhaps just to proof-read it for typos!

Step Ten: Submit!

This post from Rachael Cayley's blog on Academic Writing - Explorations of Style - gives a really clear overview of how to do a reverse outline. 'Reverse outlines are outlines that we create from an existing text' to 'reveal the structure—and thus the structural problems' of it. Cayley details the process as follows: 

1. Number your paragraphs. (Paragraphs are the essential unit of analysis here; next week we will look at why paragraphs are so important.)

2. Identify the topic of each paragraph. At this point, you can also make note of the following:

a. Is there a recognizable topic sentence?

b. How long is the paragraph?

i. Does the topic seem sufficiently developed?

ii. Is there more than one topic in the paragraph?

3. Arrange these topics in an outline.

4. Analyze this outline, assessing the logic (where elements have been placed in relation to one another) and the proportion (how much space is being devoted to each element).

5. Use this analysis to create a revised outline.

6. Use this revised outline to reorganize your text.