Three-Minute Paper: Advice vs. practice in thesis writing

Ana will lead a discussion on Paltridge (2002), which can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00025-9

Overview

Background:

Graduate and post-graduate writing might be said to be under-researched due to (in)accessibility and size of the theses as well as changing (disciplinary) standards. Additionally, much attention has been paid to research articles (RAs): prominent genre, “master narrative” (Montgomery, 1996 as cited in Swales, 2004).

However, in L1 educational contexts (“inner circle”), there are usually many students with different language backgrounds who are required to write their theses in English.

Design:

Aim: To compare actual theses (macro-rhetorical structure) and guides on thesis writing and research for thesis.

Corpus:

30 theses/dissertations in a number of disciplines written at a major Australian research University; and guides covering a certain time span and from several EL1 contexts.

Results:

1) the guides examined differ with respect to treatment of thesis/dissertation structuring;

In guides, generally suggested patterns of macro-structure are:

INTRODUCTION→PROBLEM/BACKGROUND/LITERATURE REVIEW→DESIGN AND RESULTS/METHODOLOGY AND RESULTS→DISCUSSION/CONCLUSIONS→CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS;

As for micro-structure, even less space is dedicated to constructing individual chapters.

2) In actual practice, several categories of macro-structure of the theses were found:

TRADITIONAL (IMRAD)→SIMPLE (IMRAD, REPORTING ON A SINGLE STUDY) AND COMPLEX (IMRAD, REPORTING ON MORE THAN ONE STUDY);

TOPIC-BASED (INTRODUCTION, TOPIC-BASED INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS, CONCLUSION)

COMPILATION (OF RESEARCH ARTICLES)

Questions

With this divergence in mind, how do we (you) prepare your students for writing theses?

What can EAP courses do for them, how can we contribute (ethnographic perspectives, amalgamating research and practice)

Should we and could we be perhaps included in needs analysis for these target groups of students?

Do your institutions conduct such analyses and if they do, are you allowed to be involved? What is your role? Do you feel the need to be included in the process?

References

Paltridge, B. 2002. Thesis and dissertation writing: an examination of published advice and actual practice. English for Specific Purposes, 21(2), pp.125-143. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0889-4906(00)00025-9