Before examining the issue of how to write specific chapters of the dissertation, it might be useful at this juncture to closely examine the goal of mastering academic style. The academic style is a style of writing that is expected in term papers, theses, dissertations, and scholarly articles. Notice that this book is not written in an academic style, since it is intended as a technical manual of advice written for graduate students.
At the outset, be sure you have available and refer to the approved style guide adopted by the institution that will grant the degree. Check with your chair to see which is recommended. If you have a choice, use the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Also observe the guidelines specified by ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing, or the appropriate dissertation/thesis repository used by the institution granting the degree. Furthermore, if the university conferring the degree requires electronic submission of dissertations, then by all means secure and follow those guidelines and requirements. Institutional guidelines may supersede the institution’s adopted style manual.
Most style manuals also recommend that you use a left margin of 1½ inches, to provide room for binding.
Mastering a basic process for writing should help at all stages of the dissertation. What you learn about using a good writing process for the dissertation should be of help in future academic writing tasks.
What writing process should you use in writing the dissertation? The answer is a complex one, since individuals vary so much. There is not too much guidance from the research. There are several studies of how professional writers write novels and hundreds of studies of how students write essays but few studies on how graduate students write theses and dissertations. The standard process model taught to secondary students (prewrite, draft, edit, revise, publish) is not useful when it comes to writing dissertations. However, by reviewing the available research and by reflecting on personal experience, it is possible to offer some general guidelines that should keep you in good stead.
Before looking at the specific tasks of writing one chapter, it might be useful to consider some general guidelines for developing an effective approach to writing.
First, ensure that you have ready access to a computer and good word processing software. The computer is a scholarly necessity: It greatly facilitates the writing process; it makes revision a relatively simple matter; it provides access to databases; and it simplifies the data analysis task. Thus, the computer significantly reduces the time spent in completing the dissertation. Then, when you have finished writing the dissertation, it can continue to be of immeasurable help in your professional career, thereby eliminating the dependence on others for assistance in completing the dissertation.
Next, create a research/writing center for yourself. Your research and writing will be easier and faster if you obtain and maintain at the university or at home a special spot of your own where you do all your dissertation thinking and writing. Equip it with your research and writing needs: computer, files, dictionary, and related professional works. Reserve the center for dissertation work only so that every time you sit down in that special chair, the environment says, “dissertation thinking and writing time.”
Also, develop a writing schedule that will help you write systematically and effectively. Since the general issue of developing and following a schedule was discussed in an earlier chapter of this book, it is probably sufficient to note here the need to schedule longer blocks of uninterrupted time on a regular basis—and to keep that time unaltered for dissertation writing. Most writers find that they need at least a three-hour block of time to be productive—to get some good writing done. You begin with a slow “warm-up” period, and then you hit your stride to find the writing flow. If you must stop when you feel your writing is going well, then you lose the momentum. Your writing time should, of course, be free of distractions; you can’t write while you’re watching the baby, doing the laundry, or watching television.
Finally, arrange for the help you will need. You may need to hire a professional word processor, if you do not do your own. If you do hire someone, make clear that you are contracting for word processing services, not “typing.” You want your dissertation on flash or jump drives or CDs to simplify all the revising that will be needed.
You will also need an editor. An editor’s function is to read very carefully your good drafts and suggest or make specific improvements in organization and style. The editor does not write for you; that is dishonest and unethical. But the editor does more than insert commas and correct your spelling; a good editor will suggest how the chapter might be reorganized, will note paragraphs that need fuller development, and will indicate how sentences can be rewritten. Every writer needs a good editor—and making use of a good editor will simplify the whole process for you. You should, of course, acknowledge the editor’s help in the appropriate place in your dissertation.
This matter of using editing assistance is so delicate, however, that you should discuss it with your chair. Some universities provide specific policy guidelines to help students distinguish between the ethical practice of using an editor and the unethical one of using a ghostwriter. Some chairs may prefer that you not use an editor. In general, however, professors do not want to edit your writing. They are scholars, not editors.
With that basic approach well established, you are ready to write one chapter. What is the best process to use here? As noted above, there is no single right answer. You have to experiment to find the process that works best for you. In general, however, you should find the following process a useful one.
Begin by systematizing your knowledge. The first step is to review and systematize what you know about the contents of that chapter. You think about what you have learned. You review your notes on the reading you have done. You reexamine your results. In this stage of systematizing your knowledge, you may find it helpful to talk into a tape recorder, think aloud, or discuss with a colleague. Or you may simply read and reflect. The important thing is to call to mind what you know and to start to think about a systematic way of ordering that knowledge.
Next, plan your chapter. With your knowledge reviewed and tentatively organized, you now should plan the chapter. How do you plan? You can simply adopt one of the outlines suggested in later sections of this work, since dissertation chapters tend to follow certain basic organizing patterns. You can read other dissertations like your own and follow a pattern that someone else has used. (Do not worry about the ethics of following someone else’s plan; professional writers do it all the time.) Or you can start from scratch—beginning with nothing—and develop your own plan. If you start from scratch, there are two basic ways of developing a plan. Some writers plan from the “bottom up”: They review their notes, put the notes in similar piles, identify the general topic of each pile, and then find a logical order for the general topics. Other writers plan from the “top down”: They think about the contents of that chapter in an analytical fashion, determine the broad topics that need to be treated, and decide on a logical arrangement.
Regardless of the method you use, it probably is a good idea to reduce your plan to a written topical outline. You should ask your chair to review the outline before you begin writing that chapter; if the chair prefers not to review outlines, request assistance from a colleague whom you respect. The important rule to remember is that you should not begin writing a chapter until someone else has reviewed your outline. You may be convinced that your outline is excellent, but you are too close to your material to be a reliable judge of that matter. You need the input of an individual who is objective. Unless your chair requires a particular outline form, you should use any outlining system that is clear to you and others who will read it.
Then begin to write. Check your outline. Review your notes for the first section, and then start to write that section without worrying too much about style. What do you do if you have “writer’s block”—that frustrating feeling that all writers know at times, when the words just will not come? The best answer is to write your way through it. Grit your teeth and write whatever comes into your head. Force yourself to write, even if the writing seems bad. Do not sit there and worry that you cannot write. If you do not know how to start the chapter, skip the introduction and jump right into the first major idea.
As you write, use headings and verbal signals to make your organization clear to the reader. The appropriate use of headings will help the reader track your organizational pattern. To understand this point, consider Exhibits 12.1 and 12.2. Exhibit 12.1 shows part of an outline of Chapter 2 of a study of techniques for questioning students; Exhibit 12.2 illustrates how the headings are used to clarify the organization. You should also use verbal signals that show where the chapter is going, such as first, next, also, and finally.
You should also revise as you write. Most good writers revise as they write, following a procedure that goes something like this:
Write a paragraph
Stop and read what was just written
Revise that paragraph
Write another paragraph and start the cycle all over again
How much revising you do and what you revise as you write are individual matters. Some writers are perfectionists. Especially if they are working on a word processor, they will correct punctuation, tinker with sentences, and fret with word choice. Others do a quick draft without any revising and then polish the entire draft.
Exhibit 12.1 Partial Outline of Review of Literature: Techniques for Questioning Students
| I. | Techniques for Questioning Students |
| A. On task | |
|
|
| B. Requests | |
| C. Diversions | |
| II. | Frequency |
| A. By subject | |
| B. By grade level | |
|
With that first draft finished, the best advice is to put it aside for a few hours at least and then read it with a fresh eye. Pretend you are the reader, not the writer. See if the organization is clear, if the generalizations are well supported, if the sentences flow clearly and smoothly, and if the words sound right. And then revise to improve.
In the revising process, use the editing processes available with your word processing software. All will do a spell check. Remember that spell-check programs will not detect an error such as using affect when you should have used effect. Most programs will also provide a thesaurus, if you wish to avoid repeating a word and cannot think of an alternative. You can also use a style checker, such as WhiteSmoke, which will suggest revisions based on the kind of style you have indicated.
Exhibit 12.2 Headings Corresponding to Outline
2. Review of the Literature
This chapter reviews the literature on techniques for questioning students, as a means of providing an intellectual background for the present study. The chapter organizes the review by examining the studies relating to four aspects of techniques for questioning students: types of student questions, frequency of questions, teacher strategies to elicit questions, and effects of student questions.
Types of Student Questions
Researchers have categorized student questions in terms of three purposes: to accomplish the task, to make a request, and to divert the teacher from the task.
Accomplishing the Task
Students ask questions to enable them to accomplish the assigned task. Task-oriented questions tend to be of three types.
Questions of clarification. Most of the task-related questions involve questions of clarification. Reeves (1987) found that elementary students asked such questions more often than secondary students …
Send the revised chapter to your editor before forwarding it to your chair. Discuss any substantive changes with your editor, and then revise in accordance with the editor’s suggestions and your own sense of what you want to do.
Now you can send the revised chapter to your chair, along with an outline. At this point, you will need to follow your chair’s recommendations about the submission of chapters. Some chairs prefer to get one chapter in good shape before letting the other committee members see it; others prefer to get committee input at the draft stage. Even if your chair does not require an outline, it probably is a good idea to include one anyway. The outline shows that you have planned systematically and helps your chair read and respond.
Most students have found it helpful to include with their revised chapter a copy of the chair’s or committee’s previous suggestions for revision. A conversation should have already been held with the chair to clarify what documents, if any, should accompany a chapter being sent for the chair’s review. Some chairs may want any previous drafts that contain revisions to be made to be included with the current chapter. Other chairs may want only the chapter. To be certain, communicate with your chair. By talking with your chair, you should minimize the problem of receiving conflicting messages with each subsequent revision.
Academic writing is a unique genre that has its own norms. One of the implicit expectations of doctoral programs is that you will learn to write like a scholar. This section of the chapter offers some general advice about the sense of self you wish to project and then will deal with more specific applications.
Any discussion of the scholarly style should probably begin with an analysis of the scholarly persona. The persona is the public person you present in the writing—the image created by the writing. It results from several factors: the things you elect to discuss, the tone you adopt, the sentences you write, and the words you use. As a writer of a dissertation, you want to project the persona of a scholar; your writing should convey a message something like the following: “The writer is an informed and knowledgeable person who knows the norms and conventions of the profession, who has done some interesting and useful research, but who has the good sense to be suitably modest about it.”
Below are listed some general suggestions for achieving such an effect.
TOO CONFIDENT: The study proves that students who are taught by national board certified teachers perform higher on standardized tests than students who are NOT taught by national board certified teachers.
TOO TENTATIVE: One conclusion that might be drawn from this study is that at this particular school, on the basis of this investigation, that students taught by national board certified teachers seemed to earn higher scores on standardized tests than students who were not taught by national board certified teachers.
BETTER: The findings suggest that most students at this school who were taught by national board certified teachers had higher scores on standardized tests than students who were not taught by national board certified teachers.
Most important of all, document your assertions. This matter is so important that perhaps it needs special examination.
One mark of the scholarly paper is that assertions are documented: The writer provides evidence for statements that might be reasonably challenged. In contrast, the paper written for a mass audience or one written by a novice typically abounds in generalizations without evidence. The journalist writes: “Experts now believe that most large employers will soon be providing child care services for working parents.” The scholar writes:
According to several studies, a large percentage of the companies employing more than 1,000 employees provide some form of child care for working parents. (See, for example, the Murphy, 1997, survey.)
In writing a dissertation, documentation is essential, since the dissertation is scholarly in nature. This means that you should provide evidence for every general statement that is open to challenge.
There are three general approaches to handling this problem. One way, obviously, is to avoid it: Couch the observation in a way that does not require documentation. Contrast these two versions:
The first statement is open to challenge: Which schools? How many? Do you mean pupils, parents, teachers, or administrators? What evidence do you have? What basics? The statement requires either careful documentation or extensive revision. The second statement is more cautious and also more specific. It makes a general observation about how the popular and professional publications are concerned with the issue; it specifies “administrators and teachers” instead of the vague “schools”; it uses words like suggests and many to indicate tentativeness; and it admits that there is some vagueness about the term the basics. It is wordy, but it is a defensible assertion couched in a way that does not require documentation.
A second choice is to offer in the text itself the evidence that supports the assertion. This example illustrates this second choice:
There has been in recent years increased interest in cooperative learning among both researchers and practitioners. A survey of the entries in Current Index to Journals in Education for the years 1985 through 1995 indicates that …
Here you provide the evidence directly, noting the facts that support the general assertion. The third and more commonly used option is to cite other sources that provide the evidence. You refer the reader to the literature that provides the support for the claim you make. Here is an example of this approach:
Several years ago, researchers turned their attention to interactive and recursive models of the composing process (Applebee, 1987; Graves, 1985).
Now, in making citations to support assertions, you are expected to demonstrate scholarly integrity:
You can overdo this documentation, of course—but when in doubt, document.
There are several ways to cite sources. Suppose, for example, you wish to cite a 2004 study by Boldt that concluded that public school superintendents’ certifications vary state by state. Here are several ways you can cite this source:
Vary the way you cite sources, to avoid excessive repetition.
The length and structure of the paragraph play an important part in the scholarly style. The length of a paragraph is primarily a factor of format and audience. Articles printed in a journal with very narrow columns tend to be divided into shorter paragraphs to increase readability; paragraphs in textbooks tend to run longer, unless written for an immature audience. Shorter paragraphs are easier to read, or at least look easier to read; longer paragraphs seem more difficult. Besides factors of format and audience, the most important concern is the way your ideas and information are segmented. Textbooks on writing usually advise that each paragraph should be about one main idea. In general, that is good advice; all other things being equal, divide a paragraph when you think you have come to the end of an idea or set of information. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind in writing dissertations is this: write main paragraphs of about 100 to 150 words in length or longer, or approximately eight to ten sentences. Very short paragraphs, as noted above, might give the impression of an immature style or shallow thinking; paragraphs that are too long do not invite the reader to read. Also, be sensitive to the norms of your own profession, since there seem to be differences here. Paragraphs in science reports, for example, tend to be shorter than those in education articles.
In terms of the structure of the paragraph, remember that paragraphs in scholarly writing tend to move from the general to the specific. You begin the paragraph with a general statement and then provide the specifics to develop and support that general statement. Occasionally the order is reversed: The paragraph begins with specifics and ends with a generalization. Ordinarily, however, the general-to-specific pattern is easier for the reader to follow and understand. In both situations, a concluding transitional sentence is an effective tool to connect the ideas from the previous paragraph to the forthcoming paragraph.
It is not feasible in this book to present a full treatment of sentence structure and sentence effectiveness; instead, this discussion can only highlight some general features of the scholarly sentence and offer some general points of advice. Readers interested in a more extensive treatment of the sentence should consult any handbook on writing style and usage; several excellent ones are available in university bookstores. This discussion concentrates on those issues that are most important in the dissertation.
Words such as orientations and explanations are called nominalizations. Nominalizations are nouns made from verbs: orientation from orient, explanations from explain. In general, avoid excessive nominalization.
| 5. | Avoid inserting long modifiers between the subject and the verb. For the most part, a sentence is easier to read if the subject and verb are reasonably close. Consider these two examples: |
TOO SEPARATED: School administrators who are interested in making changes that are not too expensive or too complex for the most part have been overly receptive to simplistic solutions.
BETTER: Since many school administrators seem interested in making only simple and inexpensive changes, they have been overly receptive to simplistic solutions.
| 6. | Avoid using subordinate clauses that modify other subordinate clauses. This mistake is called “tandem subordination.” It produces sentences like this one: |
CONVOLUTED: One of the obstacles that deters the installation of solar energy systems that are designed to achieve the savings that are important to all people is the reluctance of those same individuals to make large capital investments.
BETTER: Many people are reluctant to install solar energy systems because of the large capital investment required.
The third person with the passive was once considered desirable because it resulted in a detached, scholarly tone that hid the writer and seemed to connote objectivity. It also resulted in a wordy, lifeless style illustrated by this sentence: “It was decided by this researcher that the effects of socioeconomic status should be investigated as a factor that might possibly affect the amount of reading done in the home.”
This is more direct: “The researcher investigated the relationship between socioeconomic status and the amount of reading done at home.”
| 9. | Be consistent in matters of verb tense. This matter gets complicated. Here are some general rules that should work in most cases: |
For specific advice about word choice and usage, you should refer to one of the good usage reference works readily available. Also, of course, rely upon one of the standard style guides for matters of form. Check with your chair to determine which style guide is required. If none is specified, use the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. It might be helpful, however, to note here a few specific matters that seem to cause special problems to writers of dissertations. A summary of these specific issues is presented in Exhibit 12.3.
Exhibit 12.3 Specific Matters of Style
Word Choice and Usage
Software exists for assisting with the writing process. Such software may be grouped into three categories: spell check, grammar check, and style check. Some of the software is provided with word processing programs, whereas other software may need to be purchased separately.
For example, word processing programs may include both a spell-check and a grammar-check component. Typically, the spell-check component verifies the spelling of words; but it does not check word usage. Furthermore, the grammar-check programs included with word processing software are limited because they may suggest only a different sentence structure. However, grammar-check programs for purchase generally provide more substantial grammar support by checking word usage, punctuation, and so on. Examples of grammar-check software for purchase are these: Instant Grammar Checker (http://www.grammarly.com); Ginger Software (http://www.gingersoftware.com); Grammar Check Software (http://www.whitesmoke.com); and Grammar Software (http://www.grammarsoftware.com). Most grammar-check software vendors provide a free trial version.
For style-check software to work efficiently, the researcher must obtain and enter the bibliographic information in the appropriate field(s) within the software. If the citation is entered correctly, the style-check software is designed to generate both the appropriate “in-text” citation and also the bibliographic information for the reference list(s). Examples of such software are these: StyleWriter (http://www.stylewriter-usa.com); ScholarWord (http://www.scholarword.com); Citation (http://www.lib.calpoly.edu); and Purdue OWL (http://www.owl.english.purdue.edu). Style-check software is not without its problems. First, the successful generation of an in-text citation or a reference list depends on the information entered by the researcher. If the researcher fails to collect a vital piece of information for referencing a document such as an issue number, the software may not generate the reference. Second, if the data entered are correct, the software may not generate a reference list because of incompatibility with the word processing software used. Before electing to use such software, researchers should verify that the style check software is compatible with the word processing and spreadsheet software used.
Grammar-check and style-check software may be cost prohibitive for graduate students if the software must be purchased. Check with the institution granting the degree because it may have a site license for the Researching and Writing the Thesis or Dissertation software. If the institution has such a license, then it is available for your use either free or at a reduced cost.
Regardless, if you use spell-check, grammar-check, or style-check software, the drafts of the document must be read and proofread by a person. Although such software is a tool for verifying spelling, grammar, and style, a person must review to ensure that it is correct and nothing was overlooked. Remember, spell-check, grammar-check, and style-check software is only as good as the programmer, and a human mind is needed to complete the process. Graduate students can be assured that the software is as accurate as it can be; a person needs to review to verify that the software is correct. Your name will appear on Your document, and it is a reflection of you! You do not want any readers to find any errors.