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Writing a Research Proposal

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tutorial, instructions, and a sample research brief

What is a research proposal?

At post-graduate level of education (after a first degree) it is quite common for research tasks to be part of the curriculum. Don’t worry – you are not expected to unearth some hitherto unknown secret of the universe. The research skills you will learn are simply part of the intellectual equipment required by your subject of study.

The research itself may be preceded by the exercise of writing a proposal for the task you are going to undertake. This research proposal is rather like an extended written preparation for the work you are going to do. Its purpose is to show that you can construct a coherent plan which demonstrates that you are aware of what is required.

Your tutor or supervisor will see from your research proposal that you have prepared efficiently for a long piece of work, and that you are conscious of the disciplines required by your subject. It is also important that what you are proposing is capable of being successfully completed in the time and the circumstances at your disposal.

Here are the steps that should be followed in producing a good, sound research proposal – though some of the smaller details will vary according to the subject being studied.

1. Study the research brief

A research brief is the written instructions for the task you have been asked to complete or a description of the project you have been invited to propose. The number of words will be specified. The issues which you are required to discuss or include will be outlined, and any limitations on the scope of the exercise might be flagged up.

Copy out this research brief and its instructions completely in your preparatory notes. Write out the instruction accurately and in detail to show that you have read all the requirements – some of which it might be easy to miss in a casual reading.

The research brief and instructions will not be included in your final research proposal, but they are an integral part of the materials required to produce it.

2. Identify the formal structure of the proposal

You should demonstrate a clear understanding of the structure required in your research proposal. This might be specified by the department in which you are studying, it might be a matter of tradition in your subject, or you might need to create your own structure.

Look at examples of previous proposals that have been successful. Make a note of the principal headings and sub-headings that have been used. Your own headings should be based on and should refer to everything that has been asked for. Construct the outline headings to start planning your proposal.

3. Choose suitable topic(s) for research

Choose a research topic in which you are genuinely interested, otherwise the project work might become tedious. Make sure the topic of the proposal is something that you can actually accomplish. Do not be over-ambitious. The purpose of the research is a check that you can identify an issue or a hypothesis, then test its validity. You are not being asked to be innovative at this level.

Think ahead to the practical problems you might face in gathering your data. Choose a topic that can be modified slightly in case problems arise.

4. Follow academic conventions

Make sure you know the academic conventions of presentation for the subject. Some popular style guides include the Harvard, the Chicago, the PMLA, and the MHRA conventions.

These style guides on academic referencing and citation are designed to show that you can make accurate and consistent use of other people’s work in your own writing. They will also help you to avoid any suggestion of plagiarism.

Follow the conventions required by the system down to the smallest detail. It is easy to lose marks for not following the conventions, because mistakes are easy for tutors and examiners to spot.

5. Organise your materials

Create a separate folder for each part of your written materials and your data. This applies to both paper and digital files. Keep clearly labelled storage systems for your written arguments, data, bibliography, questionnaires, tables, and data analysis. Don’t keep everything in one long document or one folder.

Long pieces of written work deserve to be handled with respect and good organisation. You will also be able to find your work and control it if it’s well organised.

6. Use cloud storage

Create an account with iCloud or Dropbox or Microsoft Drive and store your materials in the cloud. This will reproduce the system of separate folders that exist on your own computer. Dropbox (and the others) will synchronise the work on your computer with copies stored in the cloud, keeping both up to date as you work on them. The copies are stored safely on remote servers. They can be accessed from any computer – including mobile devices. This means you can access your up-to-date documents wherever you happen to be. This system also keeps your materials safe in the event of computer breakdowns.

Copies stored in the cloud are normally password-protected and available only to the account owner (you). However, it is also possible to have shared folders, so if you happen to be working on a joint project, access can be granted to co-workers.

7. Design an outline plan

Use your list of headings (3) to create an outline plan of the research proposal. The proposal does not need to have any substantial content yet, but the outline is a reminder of all the topics you should keep in mind. The order of the items in the plan can be changed later if necessary. You can also work on the generation of your written proposal in any order you wish. It does not have to be composed in the same order as the research will be conducted.

You might find it useful to translate your proposal into some sort of visual flow chart or diagram of events. This will help you to conceptualise the work you are proposing, and it can make clear your intentions for the people who will be assessing your proposal.

Research Proposal

a workflow diagram

8. List background reading

At all times, keep a full bibliographic record of any materials you consult whilst designing your proposal. The bibliography will include text books, articles, journals, web sites, and other sources from which you have quoted or which you have consulted during the composition of your proposal. You should include page numbers for easier retrieval and checking of quotations at a later date. Follow the conventions of bibliographic presentation specified by the style guide you are using (4).

9. Acknowledge the ethics of research

Many types of research now require a formal recognition of the ethical issues which might be involved. This applies to such things as conducting surveys amongst the public; using other people’s data; asking people to complete questionnaires; observing people’s behaviour; or taking samples of public attitudes on controversial topics.

You need to show that you are aware of the possible ethical implications of your research and its methodology. You will also need to indicate what practical steps you intend to take.
Examples of any questionnaires or surveys should be included in your final research proposal submission. A successful proposal might also include a contract of agreement or consent to be used with participants.

10. Make a timetable

Work backwards from the submission deadline. Make a calendar that shows the exact number of days available to you. Allocate time in proportion to the task, and make sure you include all stages of composition – from data gathering and background reading, to writing, editing, and checking the finished proposal.

Sample research proposal brief

Extended research proposal and rationale

Submission date: May 9th, 2014.

Word limit: 4,000 words

Decide on a research question related to Linguistics, Applied Linguistics or Language Teaching, which you would like to explore in your MA dissertation. Bear in mind that the research project needs to be small-scale and realistic to complete within the 3-month dissertation period.

Devise research questions/hypotheses and a research methodology that will allow you to gather data needed to answer your research question/test your hypotheses.

Design and produce appropriate research instruments and data collection procedures.

Write up the research proposal as a short paper with an emphasis on:

  • justification/motivation for your choice of research area
  • research context: understanding of work in the area
  • explanation of the research questions/hypotheses
  • justification for the methodology used
  • reliability and validity issues
  • research ethics
  • timescale for the research
  • awareness of possible limitations of the research

You should make reference to research methodology literature in order to justify your choices throughout the paper. The paper will serve as the basis for a research proposal for the MA dissertation to be undertaken in Semester 3.

Please include a copy of your research instruments in an appendix to your proposal.

© Roy Johnson 2014

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Writing at University

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gentle advice to students on academic writing skills

“We believe that writing for your studies and learning for your studies are so integrally related that they cannot be separated from each other. Writing essays is fundamentally about learning.” That’s the credo here, and this book sets out to help students develop academic writing skills at university level. Creme and Lea start out by exploring the problems associated with getting started. That is, how to remove writer’s block by the techniques of practice writing, brainstorming, and generating your own questions.

Academic writing skills They explain why writing is difficult, then they discuss the early approaches to producing an assignment. This involves becoming aware of the protocols of the subject, and the type of assignment. The next step should be a close analysis of the question title, its key terms and any instructions. They offer some excellent worked examples of analysing assignments and showing what’s required, and they also discuss the note-taking, mind-mapping, and various types of reading which should go into any preparation.

The central strategic issue in academic writing skills is matching your own writing techniques to the requirements of the task in hand. You may be a ‘patchwork’ or a ‘grand plan’ type of writer – but how is this strategy to be matched with a project which might require what they call chronological, descriptive, analytic, or evaluative writing? They explore what might be involved in each of these approaches. There are more good examples – along with neat tips, such as the idea that you should develop your skills by assembling a glossary of terms for your subject as you go along.

They also explore one of the issues which many students find difficult – making the transition from everyday personal or subjective writing to developing a more objective mode which adopts the appropriate ‘language of discourse’. They end with tips for editing your work – including the details of grammar and punctuation – which are wisely left to the last.

The newly expanded second edition includes sections on report writing, electronic writing, learning journals, and using the Internet. This is a writing guide for someone who is prepared to sit down and read about the process of writing and who prefers the support of a sympathetic tutor rather than a source of reference or a compendium of rules. It’s the sort of book which holds you by the hand and talks you gently through the issues.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea, Writing at University, 3rd edition, Buckingham: Open University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0335213251

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Writing Essays

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guide for students in English and the humanities

This is a lively and comprehensive essay-writing manual which is obviously based on solid experience of helping students to improve their skills. Having written a book on the same subject myself [and with the same title!] I was keen to see what he had to say. Richard Turley talks you through the composition of an essay – from introduction to conclusion. This is done by a close examination of real examples, and he shows how writing can be improved by careful editing and re-drafting.

Essay Writing SkillsAll points of his advice are well illustrated, and he clearly knows where students need most help – though I wasn’t so sure about his discussing logic of argument, punctuation, and arrangement of evidence all at the same time. Several issues at once might be difficult for some students to grasp. However, one advantage of this approach is that the reader is brought close to the real process of composition – where several things do have to be considered at once.

He explains how to generate the structure of an essay – by exploring its question – and how to incorporate and use quotations from critics to strengthen your own arguments.

Then he tackles the thorny issues of making links between topics and guiding readers through an argument. I often suggest to students that their intentions should be made obvious without clunky ‘signposting’ of the ‘First I will discuss…’ variety. But the examples he provides are persuasive.

On conclusions, he goes through a series of edits, showing how the expression of ideas can be clarified and improved. He also covers quotations and the conventions of scholarly referencing (which many students find difficult) plus spelling, good style, and presentation.

He finishes with libraries and the use of computers, plus writing essays under exam conditions. Most of his illustrative material is drawn from literature and the humanities – but the advice he gives will be useful for students in most disciplines.

I enjoyed reading this book. The style is lively and often quite amusing. It’s a shame he doesn’t provide a bibliography; but this is one of the few books on study skills which will actually make you laugh.

© Roy Johnson 2002

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Richard Marggraf Turley, Writing Essays: A guide for students in English and the humanities, London: Routledge, 2000, pp.145, ISBN: 0415230136

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Writing for Academic Journals

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getting into print with academic writing

Anyone who wants to get ahead in academic or professional life today knows that it’s a question of publish or perish. This applies to colleges, universities, and even hospital Trusts. Yet writing for publication is one of the many skills which isn’t formally taught. Once beyond undergraduate level, it’s normally assumed that you will pick up the necessary skills as you go along. Writing for Academic Journals seeks to rectify this omission. Rowena Murray is an experienced writer on the subject (author of How to Write a Thesis and How to Survive Your Viva) and she is well aware of the time pressures people are under in their professional lives. What she has to say should be encouraging for those people in ‘new’ universities, people working in disciplines which have only recently been considered academic, and those in professions such as the health service which are under pressure to become more academic.

Writing for Academic Journals She starts out by looking at the psychology of academic writing – questions of confidence, motivation, and skill. She is well aware that there is an enormous amount of competitiveness, envy, and open criticism between departments and disciplines on the subject of who has published and who hasn’t. Next she deals with the important issue of getting to know your target publications. There’s really no way round this: you need to know what they’re looking for, and how they want it presented.

For those who might not have written a scholarly paper before, she shows you how to analyse one and uncover its basic structure and arguments – with a view of course to constructing your own.

Do you want to publish your own articles or research? She likens the process to joining a conversation which has been going on for some time. You must first watch and listen, learn its rules and conventions, then when you have adopted them you might be accepted.

The next part of the book deals with how to find a topic and develop an argument. You can do this by mining your reading notes, expanding a brief presentation, or maybe adapting a chapter from your dissertation or thesis.

She explains several useful strategies to help getting started with writing and overcoming writer’s block. There’s also lots of sound advice on planning, outlining, and the art of writing abstracts.

She shows you how to draft your text and create the appropriate style. This is followed by the process of revision and editing,

There is further encouragement and some practical strategies for finding time in which to write. But by far the most useful is a chapter in which she shows you how to learn from letters of rejection – how to turn the disappointment of facing negative criticism into a positive learning experience.

Although it is aimed at those writing for publication, this book will in fact be useful for anyone who wishes to sharpen their academic writing skills and understand something about the process of preparing a text for its public launching.

© Roy Johnson 2009

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Rowena Murray, Writing for Academic Journals, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2nd edition 2009, pp.288, ISBN: 0335234585

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Writing for Scholars

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A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard

Writing at post-graduate level these days is no joke. Most researchers and untenured lecturers know that they must publish or perish. And writing to order, especially for publication, is difficult when you know your career is at stake. Writing for Scholars offers reassuring guidance to the whole process of producing written papers, projects, and books which will be published to an academic audience. It is aimed precisely at those people who need to get into print in order to promote their careers. Lynn Nygaard has a leisurely, hand-holding style which spells out her advice in slow-moving and measured stages. These start out from a recognition of how difficult writing is at this level, where a scholarly paper might represent months or even years of research.

Writing for ScholarsShe also explains the peer review process for both books and journal articles – but doesn’t take on board the alternative methods of self-archiving and collaborative publishing which Steven Harnad proposed for digital publishing more than a decade ago. Although her focus is quite rightly on the writing process I was surprised that she was so uncritical of academic research and publication practices. She takes it for granted that scholars are somehow entitled to expect research funding from governments, no matter the quality or relevance of what they produce in the way of results. And she seems to me to be completely out of touch with the sort of vainglorious subjectivism which passes for argument in many branches of the humanities. She claims that –

scholars in the humanities must meticulously lay out and justify their logic, in addition to linking their study to the work of others. If they don’t, their work will come across as weak, overly speculative, and not founded on anything substantial. Even if the topic is fascinating or exceptionally timely, journals will not risk publishing an article that lacks sound reasoning.

This is simply not true, as a glance at just about any journal featuring modern literary criticism or cultural theory will show in an instant.

She is well aware that writing is a process, not something that happens in one ‘creative’ burst. There is such a thing as ‘pre-writing’ where we might sort out our preliminary ideas in rough note form. And for regular spells of productive writing, time-management skills are required. She covers all this, and seems to know all the excuses we present to ourselves as an alternative to facing the hard work of generating words on the page.

She’s discussing mainly scientific writing and its need for objectivity, checkable facts and data, and the need for a transparent method. When I think of how flabby much writing is in the humanities, it’s no wonder that subjects such as literary criticism and cultural theory are held in such low regard.

There are plenty of good tips, such as limbering up by free writing or switching off your monitor – and how to get round the problem of the first person pronoun (‘I’) in academic writing.

She spends quite a lot of time on writing for more than one type of audience – though I wonder if any of the scholarly writing she’s talking about is ever really read by anyone outside its specialist audience. We know from hard evidence that most academic articles are read by no more than a handful of people. When was the last time you read a scholarly paper in a discipline other than your own, for instance?

Later chapters deal with some of the most difficult issues in creating a substantial piece of advanced level work – clarifying your own basic argument; giving its exposition structure and persuasive logic; and integrating the presentation of your evidence coherently. There’s even a chapter on making oral presentations of your work, which is a traditional feature of academic life at this level.

But two things about a book pertaining to offer guidance on an academic discipline really amazed me. One – that it quotes no practical examples of scholarly writing which are held up for examination, analysis, or criticism. And two, that it makes no reference at all to any other studies of academic writing, has no bibliography, and makes absolutely no recommendations for further reading. Those are serious shortcomings in a work of this kind.

This will be a reassuring text for aspiring researchers who want to maximise their chances of publication in the long struggle for promotion in the academic world, but for practical writing skills or an insight into the latest developments in academic publishing you will have to go elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Lynn Nygaard, Writing for Scholars: A Practical Guide to Making Sense and Being Heard, Norway: Universitetsforlaget, 2008, pp.195, ISBN: 1599946572

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Writing Guides

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best-selling writing style guides

Writing Guides Doing your Research Project - book jacketDoing Your Research Project: A Guide for First-Time Researchers in Education and Social Science is a best-selling UK guide which covers planning and record-keeping, interviewing, reviewing ‘the literature’, questionnaires, and writing the final report. Even if you are studying a subject other than education or social science, this is a wonderfully helpful guide on organising your ideas and your writing at research level. It’s a model of clarity and good sense. Now in its third edition – and deservedly so. Highly recommended.

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Writing GuidesWriting your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success is a US guide to writing at post-graduate level which uses practical examples, is strong on planning, and offers advice on negotiating the process of research – from making an application to submitting a dissertation. It’s also good on the issue of selecting a research topic and developing it into a feasible project. One of the features which has made this a popular choice is that it offers tips from former students on the problems they have faced in doing research – and how they have overcome them.

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Writing GuidesIf you have any serious intention of preparing text for publication, then Copy-Editing: The Cambridge Handbook for Editors, Authors and Publishers is your encyclopedia on typography, style, and presentation. It has become the classic UK guide and major source of reference for all aspects of editing and text-presentation, covering every possible bibliographic detail. It also covers a wide range of subjects – from languages to mathematics and music – as well as offering tips on copyright and preparing text for electronic publication.

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Writing GuidesWriting at University: a guide for students is a popular UK guide to understanding questions, planning assignments, reading and note-taking, and developing arguments. It puts a lot of emphasis on the process which leads up to the act of writing, and tries to show you how to develop more confidence. Different types of writing are discussed, as well as the important skill of matching your writing to the conventions of the discipline you are studying. The approach is like that of a sympathetic counsellor.

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Writing GuidesThe Classic Guide to Better Writing is more-or-less what its title suggests. It’s a best-selling US guide with emphasis on how to generate, plan, and structure your ideas. It also covers basic grammar, good style, and common mistakes. The approach is step-by-step explanations on each topic, plenty of good advice on how to avoid common mistakes, and tips on how to gain a reader’s attention. Suitable for all types of writing, it well deserves its good reputation.

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fowlerIf you need just one book which will answer all your questions on writing – from punctuation to publication – then this is it. The Little, Brown Handbook is an encyclopaedic US guide to all aspects of writing. It includes vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, style, document design, MLA conventions, editing, bibliography, and the Internet. All topics are profusely illustrated and cross-indexed, and some of the longer entries are virtually short essays. It also has self-assessment exercises so that you can check that you have understood the contents of each chapter. The Swiss army penknife of writing guides. Highly recommended.

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New Hart's Rules - Click for details at AmazonHart’s Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford This is a UK classic guide to the finer points of editing and print preparation, spelling and typography. It was first written as the style guide for OUP, but quickly established a reputation well beyond. There’s no hand-holding here. Everything is pared to the bone. the centre of the book deals with ‘difficult’ and irregular spellings. A masterpiece of compression, it is now in its thirty-ninth edition. This is one for professionals rather than student writers.

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Oxford Writers Dictionary - book jacketThe Oxford Dictionary for Writers & Editors . This is a specialist dictionary for writers, journalists, and text-editors. Unlike most dictionaries, it does not offer explanations of the words meanings. It deals with problematic English and foreign words, offering correct spellings and consistent usage in the OUP house style. By concentrating on difficult cases, it saves you a lot of time. The latest edition also includes American spellings. Strongly recommended.

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The Elements of Style - Click for details at AmazonThe Elements of Style. This is an old favourite – a ‘bare bones’ guidance manual which cuts out everything except the essential answers to the most common writing problems. It covers the elements of good usage, how to write clearly, commonly misued words and expressions, and advice on good style. The emergency first-aid kit of writing guides. It’s very popular, not least because it’s amazingly cheap. Suitable for beginners. There’s an online version available if you do a search – but the cost of a printed version will pay dividends.

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A Manual for Term Papers, Dissertations, and ThesesA Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. This is a modern American classic guidance manual for academic writing. It covers everything from abbreviations and numbers to referencing and page layout. It also includes sections showing how to lay out tables and statistics; lots on bibliographic referencing; and how to deal with public and government documents. The latest edition also includes advice on word-processing.

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Style: Ten LessonsStyle: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. This is a popular guide – particularly amongst creative writing enthusiasts. It offers advice for improving your writing – by putting its emphasis on editing for clarity, creating structure, and keeping the audience in mind. These lessons are useful for all types of writing however. It has plenty of illustrative examples and exercises, an appendix with advice on punctuation, and a good glossary. Recommended.

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Successful Writing for Qualitative ResearchersSuccessful Writing for Qualitative Researchers. This is one for specialist academic writing at post-graduate level. It covers all the stages of creating a scholarly piece of work – from the preparation of a project through to the completion and possible publication of the finished article. Includes sections on style, editing, and collaborative writing. It takes a positive and encouraging tone – which will be welcome to those embarking on such tasks for the first time.

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On Writing WellOn Writing Well. This is a best-selling title, now in its sixth edition. It offers reassuring guidance from an experienced journalist on writing more effectively in a number of genres. He covers interviews, travel writing, memoirs, sport, humour, science and technology, and business writing. The approach is to take a passage and analyse it, showing how and why it works, or where it might be improved. It is particularly good on editing and re-writing.

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© Roy Johnson 2009

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Writing Successful Academic Books

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writing, planning, and commercial skills

What exactly is a successful academic book? One which sells a lot of copies, or one which helps to promote your career? Most people would trade the first success for the long-term benefits of the second. Anthony Haynes starts his guide to scholarly authorship by considering the possible justifications for writing: financial, self-esteem, altruism, and even the desire to learn. But these are all rendered almost redundant by the current climate in the academic world. There is now an overwhelming requirement to publish – unless you want to end up in one of those mind-numbing departments of ‘Maintaining Academic Standards’ or ‘Human Resources and Professional Development’. Writing Successful Academic Books shows you how to avoid such a fate.

Writing Successful Academic BooksHe goes to some length explaining genre – a subject to which any aspiring writer ought to pay attention. For an academic book proposal to be acceptable, it needs to fit into a known category. There’s also a very upbeat account of the current state of digital publishing. His argument is that academic authors have everything to gain from online journals, eBooks, and Print on Demand. He doesn’t touch on Stevan Harnad’s argument for bypassing publishers by self-archiving research directly – but that’s understandable, given that his topic is print publishing.

Possibly the most difficult step on the publication ladder for would-be academic authors is the first rung – that is, successfully pitching a book proposal to an acquisitions editor in the publishing house. He suggests a very rigorous process of preparation for this step – and offers both a template and even more usefull the sample proposal for the book itself he pitched to Cambridge University Press. You can see quite clearly from the quality of the outline why it was successful.

Next comes the contract, which many first-time writers ignore – possibly because they are so relieved to have had their work accepted. His advice is quite clear. You should read the contract carefully, make sure you understand all its content, and even be prepared to ask for changes – some of which he offers as suggestions.

The best part of the book deals with the actual business of writing – that is, the creative activity which will produce the finished work. He’s quite right to emphasise the idea of process rathert thanproduct. Successful writing is not a one-stage activity: it requires preparation, planning, reflection, and a number of drafting stages to produce the text, then edit it and eliminate any flaws. He discusses a variety of strategies for generating the basic text, then shows how it can be edited by reduction, addition, and re-arranged before checking for mistakes.

After these issues of structure and production, he then goes on to consider some of the stylistic niceties of efficient writing – such as tone, choice of lexicon, and the relative elegance with which paragraphs can be started and ended. Much of this sort of thing is covered in other writing guides.

The section of Haynes’ book I found most interesting was how to get a publishable book out of a body of research, or ‘How to turn a dissertation into a monograph’. He outlines three approaches: i) start afresh on something new; ii) make minor revisions and prune the text; and iii) create a new proposal using re-purposed work. He recognises that pressures of acquiring tenure rules out the first, does not recommend the second, and then demonstrates how to make the third successful.

The latter part of the book is taken up with practical matters such as time management and how to deal with editors, proofreaders, indexers, and people who will design and market your book.

I once submitted my doctoral thesis for publication and was dismayed when it was not immediately snapped up. Of course, I can now see why not. I had not done any of the preparatory work of transforming it into a commercial product which is recommended here. If I had read this book then, I wouldn’t have made that mistake. And if you’re in that position now, you can avoid making it by following his advice.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

Anthony Haynes, Writing Successful Academic Books, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp.175, ISBN: 0521730740

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Writing your doctoral dissertation

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guide to advanced academic study and writing skills

Do people at doctoral dissertation level need writing guides? Well yes, they do, because a composition of this scope usually presents difficulties most of us have never come across before. After all, we don’t produce 50,000 word research projects just for fun, do we? Rita Brause starts by explaining the differences between a dissertation and a long term paper [UK=coursework essay]. These are important distinctions which are often learned by most students only at the expense of much anguish and re-writing.

Doctoral Dissertation She also stresses just how much anybody will learn during the process of writing a dissertation, which is the sort of insight unlikely to be available to someone approaching this experience for the first time. She analyses practical examples to show the important structural elements of a dissertation, and then goes on to explain the stages in the doctoral process – including making an application, learning the language of institutions, and fulfilling all their technical requirements. These elements need to be taken into account even before the writing begins, and she justifies the attention she gives to them quite convincingly on the grounds that many students who fail to complete their research do so because they had no idea what to expect when they started out.

It is the US system she is describing, which contains the element of working to a committee that is not found in the UK system, but when it comes to the business of writing, all the issues of preparation, organisation, and intellectual stamina are identical.

The heart of the book comes three-quarters way through, where she describes in detail the process of locating and defining a topic, as well as the type of questions you should ask in order to ‘refine’ a topic or turn an observation into a proposal. These are the stages which in my experience of post-graduate teaching cause students most problems. A research proposal which has not been clearly defined is like an intellectual quagmire. No matter how much new material is generated, the student will be sucked ever deeper into the morass by competing priorities and a lack of focus.

There are three short bibliographies on dissertations, the academic world, and research methodology; but what I think might appeal most of all to the intended audience of this writing guide is an interesting collection of tips (some quite daunting) from former doctoral candidates. There’s often nothing quite so convincing as the reports of first-hand experience.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Rita S. Brause, Writing your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success, London: Falmer Press, 2000, pp.163, ISBN: 0750707445

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Written style in essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. For most essays your written style should be plain, clear, and straightforward. You should avoid sloppiness and a casual manner. Don’t try to be ‘impressive’, flowery, or emotive. Remember that an essay is an academic exercise, not a piece of ‘creative writing’.

2. Keep in mind that speech and writing are two different forms of communication. Avoid the use of a chatty or conversational tone when writing essays.

3. Avoid the use of contractions such as ‘isn’t’, ‘can’t’, ‘don’t’ which occur in speech but should not be used in formal writing. These terms should be written out in full as ‘is not’, ‘can not’, and ‘do not’.

4. Avoid the use of common abbreviations such as ‘etc.’, ‘e.g.’, ‘&’, ‘i.e.’. If you need to use these expressions, write out the terms in full, as ‘for example’, ‘and’, ‘that is’. [There is a good argument for never using ‘et cetera’: it can easily suggest that you are being lazy.]

5. Avoid using unnecessary jargon (technical terms), clich&eacute (‘leave no stone unturned’), vogue words (‘situation’ or ‘ongoing’), and slang (‘far-out’).

6. Avoid using metaphors you are used to seeing in print or figures of speech which are currently popular. For instance: ‘the bottom line’, ‘a ballpark figure’. (This is one of George Orwell’s rules for avoiding a tired style.)

7. Remember that the common word order (the syntax) of a simple sentence written in English is as follows. If in doubt, adopt this pattern.

subject – verb – object

The cat eats the goldfish
We are the best team

8. Avoid starting sentences with words such as ‘Again’, ‘Although’, ‘But’, ‘And’, ‘Also’, and ‘With’. These words are conjunctions, which belong in the ‘middle’ of a sentence, not at its beginning.

9. Good style is usually connected with the need for precise punctuation and clearly expressed ideas. The following example shows a sloppily written argument transformed by just the removal of two commas and the addition of a full stop. This creates two shorter but clear sentences instead of one which is very confused.

bad
Smoking became as socially acceptable as drinking, in all classes of society, mostly associated with men until the second world war when women began to smoke openly, in public shocking older members of their sex.

better
Smoking became as socially acceptable as drinking in all classes of society. It was mainly associated with men until the Second World War when women began to smoke openly in public, shocking older members of their sex.

10. Try to avoid the awkward ‘he or she’, the ugly ‘he/she’, and the crass ‘s/he’. These formulations are sometimes used to solve the problems of gender references.

awkward
Candidates should note that any employer is obliged to follow Equal Opportunities policies when he/she is interviewing applicants.

11. The simple solution to this problem is to use the plural form:

better
Candidates should note that all employers are obliged to follow Equal Opportunities policies when they are interviewing applicants.

12. An essay which is written in a sparkling and attractive style will obviously be more interesting to read than one which plods along in a dull manner. However, you should be very cautious about creative or decorative flourishes in academic writing. Jokes, bold metaphors, and even figures of speech can easily seem mannered. If in doubt, stick to clear, plain language.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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