How To Write A Thesis

How to write a thesis is a major concern all levels of grad and post graduate levels. Both graduate and post-graduate students are often faced with the daunting task of writing a formal thesis or a paper. Therefore, writing a thesis is one of the most crucial aspects of graduate and undergraduate studies.

Thesis writing is often the end point of years of experimentation or research. Thesis is the culminating point of those years of heard labour. It is said that thesis writing is not an art but a product of months of research and hard work. Writing a thesis takes time often months are taken to put the thesis into the final product.

Composing a research project and presentation of a thesis is one of the most intriguing and time taking components of a research process. The main issues should be to overcome the challenges of writing a dissertation or thesis and produce a forceful, coherent and intellectual piece of work. If this issue is not resolved by the student then a poorly constructed thesis is presented resulting in poor marks or alright rejection of the thesis.

The rules for writing a thesis are not well defined and less clear. Most new graduates undertaking thesis writing are not confident enough to apply the skills of writing within a scholarly context. There are debates and on what is the best approachable way to thesis writing. Achieving the right pitch and individual writing style is emphasized.

Writing a thesis is often used interchangeably with dissertation writing since formatting can be very similar. The aspect of composing a thesis can be daunting. All the same, there are certain formats that the author should abide by in order to make life easier.

Writing a thesis can be divided into 4 major parts; topic selection, researching, writing the chapters and editing. The conventional or traditional method of thesis is in which the body of the thesis or dissertation comprises of 4 or more chapters where the body of the thesis consists of an introductory chapter, 2 or more chapters on methodology and experimentation and a conclusion.

A thesis should be in the following format:

1. First page that consists is the TITLE of the research project with the year of submission, the logo of the institution along with name of the author.

2. A TABLE OF CONTENTS comes next. Divide each heading into subheadings.

3. ABSTRACT comes next. An abstract is a stand alone page instead of a full paper. It is summary of your work, your methods and conclusions.

4. DECLARATION comes next. It is nothing more than a statement. An example of a declaration is as follows.

“No portion of this dissertation or thesis has been used as part of an application for some other academic degree in any other university or college”.

5. A page consisting of COPYRIGHT issues are often added to the thesis. This indicates that the copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Copies of thesis can either be obtained in accordance with the instructions given by university library holding the thesis. Intellectual copyrights are mentioned that the ownership of the thesis is vested by the University.

6. LIST OF FIGURES is a list of images that been used in the thesis. This list can be added but can also be omitted. However it is a useful list to have as its shows organizational skills of the author.

7. ABBREVIATIONS list is a must. This should comprise of all abbreviations and its full form. It can run in several pages.

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. This is an interesting part. Most people like to brag things about coffee breaks, their family and so on.

9. CHAPTERS come next. First is always in INTRODUCTION.

10. All experimental and research findings are written as CHAPTERS. Each chapter may have its own introduction and then detailing the findings.

11. The chapter that comes after the experimental chapters is the CONCLUSION. You can summarize your findings here. Criticize your work, your failings; compare your findings with other published work.

12. The final chapter is always the “FUTURE WORK”. Explain further work that can be carried out. Evaluate what you can do if you had more time. Be intellectual.

13. A REFERENCE list covers all the references used in the thesis. This could either be in numerical order of the name of the authors. Some examiners are fussy and will definitely look if you have omitted a key reference.

14. Finally; APPENDIX. These are the little details like that would to add. One example of an appendix in biological thesis would be a DNA sequence that you used to design PCR primers. In arts this could include; maps, photographs etc.