How To Complete A Thesis Without A Hitch: Developing Your Writing Skills
Completing your thesis and writing your own paper is an enormous accomplishment. In order to finish this huge project successfully, it’s worth a little extra effort to improve your writing skills. A basic understanding of the structure of the paper combined with some polished writing skills should give you a good result.
Structure of a thesis paper
- Title page
– Includes the title and subtitle of your paper, your name, your school, the date, your research advisor, and contact information.
- Abstract
– explains why your paper is important and gives a brief summary of results. Should be concise, clear and quantitative.
- Table of Contents
– all headings and subheadings should appear with their appropriate page numbers.
- Introduction
– write this after you have written the main body of the paper. It should include a hook to grab the reader’s attention and a brief summary of the paper.
- Methods
– all activities done in support of the paper’s findings should be replicable by someone else.
- Results
– actual statements of observations. Poor or negative results should also be presented.
- Discussion
– present your observations of the methods and results. Give your interpretation, and make sure you are clear they are your inferences and not facts.
- Conclusions
– make the strongest statements you can based on your observations.
- Recommendations
– Is further research required to fill in the gaps? Give direction to investigations which should be conducted in the future.
- Acknowledgments
– anyone who was involved in helping you complete this project.
- References
– make sufficient citations to all material used that wasn’t your own.
- Appendices
– all data, graphs, charts, reference material, tables, and calculations should be included here.
How to polish your writing skills
- -Write something for your thesis every single day. It keeps you in the habit and also takes the pressure off later when the deadline is looming near.
- Keep all of your materials in one place. Have an organized area for thesis writing as well as all of your reference materials.
- Write freely. Don’t worry about stopping to correct errors; this just interrupts your writing momentum. Instead, leave the editing and proofreading until the last phase. You may revise along the way.
- Your first draft is never your last. The first draft is exactly that. They are always messy and unfinished, and serve their purpose. It’s your launching pad to your next better draft.
- Use software or resources online to correct your grammar. You don’t have to be an English major to write a great paper, so utilize all the extra sources you can.