As you are approaching the final years of your course, you will, without a doubt, notice that there is one final challenge between you and your degree – the dissertation.
It is probably the most important academic work you will have to submit; therefore, in the remainder of the article we will guide you through its key phases.
Preparation
The most important part – not to mention the hardest – about dissertation writing is choosing the correct topic.
It will be significantly harder to write about a something you are not that fond of. So, start early and go through all the topics in course that you will enjoy reading and writing about.
Once you have separated your favourite topics, you should start thinking about the actual problem you will be tackling.
When you are considering what exactly to do, you can check similar research that has been done in your respective field to get ideas.
Once you have pinpointed a topic, do a thorough research and make sure that there is enough literature to support the claims you will be making.
From then on, the process of choosing the correct title for your dissertation is pretty straightforward. However, if you are in doubt, you can always ask your dissertation advisor for help.
Lastly, you can now make a plan of how you will approach the problem and how you will solve it.
Bear in mind that there are three main approaches:
- to continue researching a topic that has been written about,
- to analyze an idea with the help of a particular approach, and
- to apply a theory to a practical situation and critique the results.
When you have decided how you will go about it, you can create a plan of work. Focus on a simplest plan with introduction, body and conclusion parts. You can write down the different questions you will be answering in the different parts to structure your thoughts and to make the writing a lot easier.
The actual writing
Some claim that the preparation they had to do for their dissertation took a lot more effort than the actual writing. Indeed, once you have prepared all the research notes, sources and preparation plans, writing the dissertation will be very straightforward and structured. What you need to focus on here, however, is the style in which you will present the problem. To get the maximum out of the dissertation, try to mimic the academic style of writing in which you have clear and concise sentences with references to the research they are referring to.
Also, write down all the references you have used so that you are later able to create a good bibliography.
Review and correction
Finally, you have the finished copy of the dissertation in front of you. Now just go through it and highlight anything that has not been explained or is not correct. Continue doing this until you have a completely error-free dissertation that will get you the score you want.