Five Tips You Can Use When Writing A Masters Dissertation

Posted by in Writing Directions, on February 23, 2017

Writing a masters dissertation can be a large and complex project, the type of which that you may not have undertaken before. For many students, composing a masters dissertation is their first foray into such complex and, often, lengthy writing. As such, it is beneficial to make use of a few of these tips that will we mention in this article.

Formatting

Each university will have their own formatting guidelines, which you must ensure to follow. These are things such as the font that you need to write your paper in, along with which size you must write your work in. If you are unsure about which format to write your paper in, ask your supervisor as soon as possible and do not delay this.

Another crucial aspect of the formatting of your paper is the structure. There is a general structure to a thesis and it is like this:

  • Title page
  • Abstract
  • Contents
  • Introduction
  • Literature Review
  • Methodology
  • Data Analysis
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography
  • Appendices

Time Management

Generally, composing a master’s paper is very much an independent task; your supervisors leave you to your devices to manage and write your paper. There may be a general deadline by which your work is due but, apart from this, everything is left down to you.

We recommend that you start as soon as possible on writing your paper and submit your first draft to your supervisor. This is where your supervisor will come in handy and they will give you some very important improvements to make upon your first draft. Generally speaking, students usually need to write 3-4 drafts before handing in their work, so it is best to start as early as you can.

Back up

You do not want to lose thousands of words of work, so back up your paper on as many devices as possible. We recommend that you back up your work on a cloud platform, as well as offline on something like a USB memory stick and/or hard drive.

Research

There are many resources available to you to conduct your research, so you must make best use of them. Visit your university’s library to find a plethora of research on the topic you are writing about. You can also find a lot of research papers on your own faculty’s website.

Writing Ability

It is highly recommended that you read a few papers submitted by previous masters students, and even PhD students, to improve your own writing skills as well as see the type of writing needed for success.

If you utilize these five tips then there is no doubt that you will achieve success in your dissertation.

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