Handout for Thesis Research Students

Handout for Thesis Research Students

Completing Your Thesis Research Successfully

Downloaded Reference Articles

Compiled and Formatted

by

Dr. Irfan Hyder

This document contains a selection of articles downloaded from the net that would greatly speed up the completion of thesis research. Understanding these articles would help in producing good research output.

Contents

1.Writing a Thesis Statement

1.1How To Write a Thesis Statement

1.2What is Your Thesis: Dissertation Advice by Olin Shivers

2.What is a thesis statement: Attributes and Qualities

2.1Why Write a Thesis Statement?

2.2How to Write a Thesis Statement

2.3Content of Your Thesis Statement

2.4Checklist for Revising Thesis Statements

3.How To Write A Thesis/Dissertation: Style

4.Why Students Fail to Complete Their Thesis/Dissertations

4.1Reasons for ABD (All But Dissertation/Thesis) Inertia—The Nature of the Beast

4.2Work Smart: Planning to Work When, Where and How You Work Best

4.3Internal Stresses that Cause Problems for Dissertation Writers

4.4Getting Down to Business: Tips for Writing Consistently

5.Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

5.1The "Thinking About It" Stage

5.2Preparing The Proposal

5.3Thinking About Buying a Book?

5.4A Handful of Worthwhile Bookmarks -

6.Tips for Successful Writing Groups

6.1Not Another Meeting!

6.2The Benefits

6.3Nuts and Bolts

7.Thesis Proposals: A Brief Guide

7.1Thesis Proposals Report

7.2Thesis Proposals: Theoretical Orientation

7.3Some Thoughts on Dissertation Proposal Writing

8.Thesis and Dissertation Manual

8.1Definitions of Theses and Dissertations

8.2Legal Issues

8.3Style and Documentation

8.4Formatting the Final Copy

9.How To Cite References - IEEE Style

9.1Citation Within The Text

9.2Creating a reference list or bibliography

9.3Electronic documents

9.4Non-Book Formats

9.5A reference list: what should it look like?

9.6Abbreviations

9.7Other sources of information

10.References: For Thesis/Dissertation Help

10.1A Quick Guide To Dissertation/Thesis Writing

10.2Books on Dissertation Writing, Procrastination, and Graduate School:

10.3Thesis Proposals: Recommended Reading

10.4Helpful Websites:

1.Writing a Thesis Statement

General Thesis Statement Tips

A thesis statement generally consists of two parts: your topic, and then the analysis, explanation(s), or assertion(s) that you're making about the topic. The kind of thesis statement you write will depend on what kind of paper you're writing.

In some kinds of writing, such as narratives or descriptions, a thesis statement is less important, but you may still want to provide some kind of statement in your first paragraph that helps to guide your reader through your paper.

A thesis statement is a very specific statement -- it should cover only what you want to discuss in your paper, and be supported with specific evidence. The scope of your paper will be determined by the length of your paper and any other requirements that might be in place.

Generally, a thesis statement appears at the end of the first paragraph of an essay, so that readers will have a clear idea of what to expect as they read.

You can think of your thesis as a map or a guide both for yourself and your audience, so it might be helpful to draw a chart or picture of your ideas and how they're connected to help you get started.

As you write and revise your paper, it's okay to change your thesis statement -- sometimes you don't discover what you really want to say about a topic until you've started (or finished) writing! Just make sure that your "final" thesis statement accurately shows what will happen in your paper.

Analytical Thesis Statements

• what you are analyzing
• the parts of your analysis
• the order in which you will be presenting your analysis
• What did I analyze?
• What did I discover in my analysis?
• How can I categorize my discoveries?
• In what order should I present my discoveries?

Expository (Explanatory) Thesis Statements

• what you are going to explain to them
• the categories you are using to organize your explanation
• the order in which you will be presenting your categories
• What am I trying to explain?
• How can I categorize my explanation into different parts?
• In what order should I present the different parts of my explanation?

Argumentative Thesis Statements

• your claim or assertion
• the reasons/evidence that support this claim
• the order in which you will be presenting your reasons and evidence
• What is my claim or assertion?
• What are the reasons I have to support my claim or assertion?
• In what order should I present my reasons?

Further Resources

• Academic Writing: Developing a Thesis Statement (available at
• Thesis Writing (available at
• The Thesis Statement (available at
• How to Write a Thesis Statement (available at
• LEO Thesis Statement (available at

1.1How To Write a Thesis Statement

ISS, Indiana University: Writing Tutorial Service

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What is a Thesis Statement?

• Why Should Your Essay Contain A Thesis Statement?
• to test your ideas by distilling them into a sentence or two
• to better organize and develop your argument
• to provide your reader with a “guide” to your argument
• How Can You Write Good Thesis Statement?
• How to Generate a Thesis if the Topic is Assigned.
• How to Generate a Thesis if the Topic is Not Assigned.
• How to Tell a Strong Thesis Statement from a Weak One.
• How to Generate a Thesis Statement if the Topic is Not Assigned.
• take on a subject upon which reasonable people could disagree
• deal with a subject that can be adequately treated given the nature of the assignment
• express one main idea
• assert your conclusions about a subject
• How to Tell a Strong Thesis Sentence from a Weak One.
• A strong thesis takes some sort of stand.
• A strong thesis justifies discussion.
• A strong thesis expresses one main idea.
• A strong thesis statement is specific.

1.2What is Your Thesis: Dissertation Advice by Olin Shivers

I give the same advice to graduate students writing dissertations/thesis so often that I will set it down here to save myself the repetition.

What is your thesis?

First, do you understand the difference between a dissertation and a thesis? A thesis is an idea. A dissertation is a document that supports your thesis. After you write your dissertation explaining why your thesis is a good one, you have to stand up in front of a crowd and defend it -- the thesis defence.

It is best if you can capture your thesis in a single sentence. If you can do this, make it sentence #1 of your dissertation, and repeat this sentence, word for word, wherever you need to drive home the point of your dissertation. This is a tremendous aid in focussing your work. A side benefit is that it provides an unassailable defense to an entire class of attacks on your work. For example, should someone attack your work by pointing out that it does not scale, you simply reply,

“You may be correct, but right or wrong, your point is irrelevant. My thesis is that "crossbreeding gerbils with hamsters provides an order of magnitude speedup over standard treadmill technology." I clearly demonstrate factors of 12-17 in my dissertation; I make no claims beyond an order of magnitude.

This is one of the benefits of focus.

Some examples

When I wrote my dissertation, I began with the opening sentence:

“Control-flow analysis is feasible and useful for higher-order languages.”

Then I spent 200 pages explaining first how to do CFA for higher-order languages (feasible), and second, the kinds of optimisations it enables (useful). My dissertation was nominated for the 1991 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award.

The first chapter of John Ellis' dissertation, Bulldog: A Compiler for VLIW Architectures, is titled "My Thesis." Not much room for misinterpretation here -- it's clear what the chapter is all about. The first sentence of this chapter is:

Ordinary scientific programs can be compiled for a new parallel architecture called VLIW (Very Long Instruction Word), yielding order of magnitude speedups over scalar architectures.

There is never any doubt in the reader's mind what Ellis is setting out to demonstrate with his book.

Ellis' dissertation received the 1985 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see how to write academic prose: it is the single best piece of academic writing I have ever read. It is clear and lucid. It does not get tangled up in stilted, passive, jargon-laden "academic" style. Ideas flow effortlessly off the page and into your head. When something is an opinion, it's obvious that it's an opinion; when something is a fact, it's obvious that it's a fact. You should try to write a dissertation this good.

The first sentence of Henry Massalin's dissertation on the Synthesis operating system is,

“This dissertation shows that operating systems can provide fundamental services an order of magnitude more efficiently than traditional implementations.”

He then spends 140 pages showing how this can be done. Henry's dissertation was nominated for the 1992 ACM Distinguished Dissertation award.

The point is: what are you trying to show? The point is: what is your point? If you can get that straight in your head, and put it up front at the beginning of your document, you will be able to proceed in a straight line. You will know what things are essential, and what things are distractions or detours. You will know when to stop writing: when you have demonstrated your thesis. If your thesis committee makes unreasonable demands of you, you will be able to tell them: "(a) My thesis, as stated, is a solid advancement of the field, and (b) I have supported my thesis. This is all I need to do to graduate; your requests are above and beyond this threshold. Cancel them and give me my degree."

Don't be alarmed if you are unable to precisely state your thesis when you start work in your thesis area -- you may only have a general and long-winded notion of the problem and its solution. But you may find it useful, as you progress in your work, to refine this down to that single sentence (or couple of sentences) that states your thesis. As you grind away on your PhD, and your understanding of your problem matures, it will help you to have a little background voice asking at regular intervals: "What is my thesis?"

Recommended reading

I recommend Mary-Claire van Leunen's A Handbook for Scholars to any academic author who wishes to write well. Mary-Claire's book will help you write clear, unpretentious, unstilted academic prose. She also gives excellent advice on the details of citations and bibliography.

Olin Shivers /

2.What is a thesis statement: Attributes and Qualities

(Adapted from

A thesis statement is a single declarative sentence that states what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand after having read your thesis document.

There is nothing wrong with putting the thesis statement in the first paragraph, if that will help you to get your point across to your readers. But many excellent thesis documents do not state the thesis statement in the first paragraph. The decision as to whether to do so should be based on what will work best with your subject and your readers. However, the tradition of putting the thesis in the first paragraph has led some students to mistakenly think of the thesis statement as a kind of introduction to the thesis document. In some cases, the thesis statement works well as part of the introduction; in some cases it doesn't. But a thesis statement is not necessarily part of the introduction, and in developing your thesis statement you should not be thinking primarily about how you want your thesis document to start. You should be thinking about what you want the whole thesis document to say, what you want the reader to know or believe at the end of the thesis document, not the beginning. This is why you often cannot finish your thesis statement until you finish your thesis document.

2.1Why Write a Thesis Statement?

Why should you write a thesis statement when you write a thesis document? What is it good for? Is it just busy work? Developing a thesis statement is an important part of the process of writing a thesis document. In fact, you really can't write a good thesis document without developing a thesis statement. Of course, to "develop" a thesis statement doesn't necessarily require writing it down on a piece of paper and handing it in with your thesis document. But that is what I will ask you to do for every thesis document you write. So I'll have to answer this question in two parts: First, why do you need to develop a thesis statement? Second, why do I ask you to write it down and hand it in?

Why do you need to develop a thesis statement when you write and thesis document?

First, why do you need to develop a thesis statement when you write a thesis document? The reason is that, using the definition of a thesis statement given above, you can't write a good thesis document without one. In fact, it flows from the definition of a thesis document that a thesis document cannot fail to have a thesis. A thesis document is "a short piece of nonfiction that tries to make a point in an interesting way." The thesis statement, as we have defined it, is merely a statement of the point the thesis document makes. If it doesn't make a point, if it's just a random bunch of paragraphs about the same topic that never come to any conclusion, then it isn't really a thesis document. Notice that the definition says that a thesis document tries to make a point in an interesting way. Most thesis documents don't completely succeed for all readers. Having a thesis is no guarantee of a good thesis document. You might try to make a point, and fail. But if you don't have a point to make, if you don't have a thesis, then you can't possibly succeed.

When I talk about "having a thesis," I don't mean that you have to have the thesis before writing the thesis document. When you write you are creating ideas. One of the things that makes writing so interesting and exciting is that, in the process of writing, you almost always discover ideas and connections between ideas that you didn't recognize before. Even if you have a clear idea of what you think you want to say before you start to write, you will usually discover that in the process of writing your idea changes. Often you will have to start writing with only a question to answer or a topic to explore, and you'll have to write your way to a thesis. You will keep revising your thesis statement as you revise your thesis document. Where the thesis statement is most important is at the end of the process, during revision. You want your thesis document to come to a point, to have a clear thesis that every reader will understand.

What's the value of writing out your thesis statement on a piece of paper?

This brings us to the second question. Even if we accept that every good thesis document does have a thesis statement, often that thesis is implied by the thesis document and not explicitly stated. What's the value of writing out your thesis statement on a piece of paper? If you know the point you are trying to make, isn't that enough? The basic answer is "yes." If you really do know what you're trying to say in the paper, if it's crystal clear in your own mind, then it really isn't necessary for you to write down your thesis and label it in order to produce a good thesis document. On the other hand, if your thesis is clear in your mind, it is very easy to write it down on a piece of paper. It just takes a few seconds. No problem. Unfortunately, most of us are not absolutely clear in our minds about what point we are making when we write. Even when we think we know exactly what we want to say, we often discover when we start to write it down that it isn't all there. The main reason you to write down your thesis statement and submit it before, during, and after you write your thesis document is that we will use the trial thesis statement as a tool to discuss and revise your thesis document.

Seeing the relationship between your thesis statement and your thesis document.

Think of your thesis document as a building. You are the architect. As you design the building you construct a scale model so that you and your clients can see what the finished building will look like. It doesn't have all the detail the finished building will, but it does allow us to see the shape and overall design. If you make changes in the design, you will alter the scale model. People's reactions to the scale model may help you to decide how to alter the design. Your thesis statement is to your thesis document as the scale model is to the building. Until construction is complete, you can always make changes. And so your scale model will not be "final" until the building is finished. If you think of the thesis statement as a scale model of your thesis document, you can see why your thesis statement must evolve and develop as your thesis document does, and you won't worry about having a finished thesis statement until you have a finished thesis document. But you will recognize that in working on your thesis statement you are working on your thesis document. If the thesis statement is a good model of your thesis document--if everything in the thesis document is reflected in the thesis statement and everything in the thesis statement is developed in the thesis document--then we can give you useful feedback on your trial thesis statement that will help you to decide how to revise your thesis document.