How to write thesis

How to write abstract

Ref: [REF3]

What is an Abstract

  1. It is a summary of the whole thesis.
  2. It presents all the major elements of your work in a highly condensed form.
  3. It often functions, together with the thesis title, as a stand-alone text.
  4. In addition to prepare the reader for the thesis, it must be capable of substituting for the whole thesis when there is insufficient time and space for the full text.

Size and Structure

  1. PolyU requirements for MSc thesis is 200 to 500 words for abstract.
  2. Currently, the maximum sizes for abstracts submitted to Canada’s National Archive are 150 words (Masters thesis) and 350 words (Doctoral dissertation).
  3. To preserve visual coherence, you may wish to limit the abstract for your doctoral dissertation to one double-spaced page, about 280 words.
  4. The structure of the abstract should mirror the structure of the whole thesis, and should represent all its major elements.
  5. For example, if your thesis has five chapters (introduction, literature review, methodology, results, conclusion), there should be one or more sentences assigned to summarize each chapter.
  6. Clearly Specify Your Research Questions

Don’t Forget the Results

  1. The most common error in abstracts is failure to present results.
  2. The primary function of your thesis (and by extension your abstract) is not to tell readers what you did, it is to tell them what you discovered.
  3. Approximately the last half of the abstract should be dedicated to summarizing and interpreting your results.

How to write the Introduction

Ref: [REF4]

You need to get your introduction sorted. You need to get your brain in gear.

You need to know:

  • What the purpose of an introduction is
  • How it should work in the first place

Well,

  1. An introduction should introduce.
  2. It needs to explain what’s coming, and
  3. What the reader can expect. Similarly,
  4. It needs to explain why the work that’s been done has been worth doing,
  5. What new contribution to knowledge this thesis is going to make
  6. What does the reader get out of reading it.

To let the reader know what to expect,

  1. Provide key concepts, defining terms, explaining basic theory

2. Explain your scope limitations, e.g., clear it up that I am dealing with mode decision rather than CU depth decision. 3. Highlight key themes and ideas that unite the chapters as a whole; the introduction should flag up the Important Ideas in a general form so that the reader has a vague idea of the shape that the chapters are going to take.

The final part of the introduction is the road map. Here is a list of the chapters with a paragraph summary of what you will find in each.

Another way to think about what you need to cover in your introduction is to consider your scope, your aims and your methodology. That sounds a bit scary, but can be broken down into simple questions – what are you talking about? What were you trying to find out? How were you trying to find it out? Once I’d written my introduction, I went back and made sure I had answered those questions to the best of my ability, rather than trying to write to answer them in the first place, which seemed the more helpful way of going about it. I should also note that methodology is a word that tends to put my nerves on edges, because I am a text-based analysis person. My methodology – I look at texts, I analyse, what more do you want? Obviously methodology is more important in fields where the ways of doing things are less fixed, even in classics, but it’s still important to talk about how you did the research you are going to tell people about, and what your guiding principles are.

To sum up – introductions lay the ground, highlight the important ideas, argue the case for the importance of the work, lay out the stall, sell the product. They also, as subtly as possible, make it clear what a work is not going to offer – but an introduction is not apologetic or flimsy. That said, neither is it overbearing and arrogant, convinced it’s introducing the most important piece of writing on the topic ever written. It makes a calm, considered case for the value of what the reader is about to read, and should whet said reader’s appetite to find out more about the details of this Important Idea. An introduction should be an invitation, like an appetizer that makes you want to see what else the chef can do.