Download Chester: Thesis Writing Workshop 1. Types of Writing Presentation

Chester: Thesis Writing Workshop
1. Types of Writing
Presentation and handout
EXERCISE ONE: Obstacles to Writing
Free-writing Exercise + discussion
Handouts
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Obstacles (consolidated list)
Formulating a Thesis
2. Case Study: Vicky’s Story
Read case study
EXERCISE TWO: Case Study
Answer questions + discussion
Hand-out: Answers to case-study questions
3. Audiences
EXERCISE THREE: How many audiences does a typical PhD cater for?
Group discussion
Feedback
PowerPoint
EXERCISE FOUR (x3 sample extracts): How do these authors negotiate their multiple
audiences?
Group discussion
Feedback
PowerPoint
Hand-out: Answers to Exercise
THE Ph.D: TYPES OF WRITING
‘For every research task, there’s a writing task.’
1. Phases of Writing
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Diaries,notebooks, backs of envelopes
‘Free-writing’
Note-taking
Literature reviews
Frameworks
Proposals / abstracts
‘pilot’ essays / chapters
‘Provisional’ chapters
Draft chapters
Edited chapters
Final drafts of chapters
Introductions and Conclusions
Synopsis / Abstract
2. Routines for Writing
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Writing to supervisory deadlines
‘Incremental’ writing (small sprints of writing that accumulate)
‘Binge writing’
‘Accretive’ writing (reading through / correcting as you go)
‘Slot’ writing
3. Modes of Writing
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Peripatetic writing (e.g. In cafes)
Note-taking (in libraries etc)
Diagram-making
Computer-assisted writing utilizing downloads and cut and paste
Long-hand first drafts
Writing straight onto the computer from brief notes
OBSTACLES TO ACADEMIC WRITING
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Need for ‘quality’ time to write
Laziness
Not knowing one’s audience
Confidence
Getting started (‘the blank page’)
Not feeling one knows enough yet
External / personal pressures and distractions
Fear of the supervisor /reader
The size / scope of the project
Not having done enough ‘research’ yet
Not having a writing routine
The absence of ‘hard’ deadlines
Teaching commitments
NOT HAVING A CLEAR RESEARCH QUESTION / HYPOTHESIS??
SOME SOLUTIONS?
Keeping a notebook
Practising different types of writing – e.g free-writing
Learning to hand in ‘unfinished’ pieces of work to your supervisor (ie. ‘not trying to get it
right first time’ – Peter Elbow, Writing with Power (1988))
Make good use of ‘hard’ deadlines!
Learn to start writing even when the topic is imperfectly grasped
Use writing to EXPLORE the problem / obstacle rather than solve it immediately
Think of writing as a RESEARCH TOOL (not just the communication of completed ideas)
Think upon writing as SKILL and a life-long process
Experiment with style / voice / address
Experiment with ‘free-writing’
Establish effective ROUTINES for writing
DEVISE A WORKING RESEARCH QUESTION/ HYPOTHESIS EARLY ON!
Formulating a Thesis / Finding an Argument
Evidence shows that academic writers - at whatever stage of their careers - often find this the
hardest part of the research and writing process. Whilst the collection and interpretation of data,
followed by intricate notes, plans, lists and diagrams might tell us what the project is 'on' (e.g. 'I am
doing research on 'Female Fantasy') this is still a long way from establishing what a project is 'about'.
Indeed, being able to say what a project is 'about' in academic writing implies the existence of an
'argument' or 'thesis'. The author is expected to have a 'line', or 'position' on her material; to be
making a significant incursion into the attendant debates; to be establishing her own 'unique' point
of view and (hence) 'contribution to knowledge'.
For students working in the Humanities there are particular reasons why this 'finding of an
argument' is so difficult, and it is useful to discuss the specific obstacles in some detail. Before doing
so, however, we should be aware that the 'big' obstacle is endemic to Humanities research at a
structural level: namely, the fact that the 'thesis' is often seen to be the 'product' of the research;
the thing that we are looking for and will hopefully find at the end of the three years. In other words,
there is tacit 'permission' not to know our argument, thesis, or what the thesis is really 'about' until,
perhaps, six months before completion.
There are good scholarly reasons for this prevarication, of course, but the stress it can put upon
writers undergoing the process for the first time is enormous. It is therefore advisable that students
and supervisors find ways of formulating arguments, as well as structures, for academic theses
rather sooner than the last six months; both for individual chapters and the thesis as a whole.
Whilst I have observed that it is common, at the MPhil/PhD 'upgrade' stage (c.18 months in), for
students to have a clear thesis framework (i.e. chapter outline etc.), very few have anything
resembling a true 'thesis' (i.e. an ability to sum up in a sentence, or an A4 sheet, what their research
is specifically 'about').
Although the 'organic' and 'incremental' nature of Humanities research should not be sacrificed in an
attempt to 'force' such a focus too soon, I believe that provisional formulations of argument and
thesis would be better built in to every stage of the writing process, and that 'prompting' such
formulations should be seen as a key responsibility of the supervisor. What we are talking about
here, then, is what scientists would refer to as the hypothesis: the formulation of an argument, or a
question, which is most definitely not the final 'thesis' but which directs and focuses the research
according to what - at the end of the day - are the rhetorical criteria expected of an academic thesis.
Learning to formulate, and develop working hypotheses well - and at a conscious level - is a
forgotten, and subjugated, part of the research process that Humanities students and their
supervisors might usefully recover.
Vicky’s Story: A Typical Second-Year Meltdown?
Vicky is an extremely bright and enthusiastic PhD student who achieved a first class degree and has
been awarded AHRC funding. Her supervisor finds her a delight to work with, and the first two terms
pass in a flurry of activity in which Vicky reads widely across her topic (the changing representation
of masculinity in Gothic literature from the C18th to the 21st centuries) and compiles copious notes.
She also gives the impression of being very focused, however, and -- at the end of the first term -produces a huge diagram on which she has attempted to chart various themes and issues across a
range of texts and authors. The supervisor is impressed.
During the first term, Vicky has also undertaken some preliminary writing in the form of book
reviews and commentaries, and in the second term the supervisor moves her on to some short
5,000 word essays in order to develop ideas. These pieces of work prove more problematic, since
Vicky confesses herself anxious to produce good writing of high (PhD) quality and is aiming to please
and impress her new supervisor. For a while she struggles to produce anything, but by the summer
term a piece is ready for discussion. This is, indeed, of good quality as far as its textual criticism is
concerned, but it unclear exactly where it will fit in the thesis as a whole. The supervisor spots this
problem and, whilst being encouraging, urges Vicky to go off and map out a structure for the thesis
as a whole as she now sees it.
Vicky comes back with a detailed chapter plan which is presented at the first Annual Review panel
with the sample writing piece; the panel are impressed with the apparent focus and the quality of
the student’s writing and forsee no particular problems.
Believing the student to be well-positioned as far as a typical PhD trajectory goes, the supervisor
tells Becky to get a good holiday and then attempt to draft her first ‘proper’ chapter over the
summer. This she does.
When the supervisor reads this first chapter in the Autumn, she sees -- once again -- that this is a
student who can write extremely well and who is a highly intelligent critic of literature; the piece is
lacking a central argument, however, and when the supervisor presses the student on this she
admits that she is not clear who the chapter really fits into the project as a whole. They both decide
to press on with the second chapter, however, which takes a similar form. The student’s writing is so
good, and her textual critical skill so evident, that the supervisor allows her to proceed with drafts of
two more chapters hoping that the central thesis will clarify itself in the process. As a supervisor, one
of her long-term tactics has been to encourage students to write their strongest chapters first in the
hope that this can then become a template for others.
Unfortunately this does not happen in Vicky’s case. All of her draft chapters contain good sections of
literary criticism, but the links between subsections and even the paragraphs are poor; her
supervisor spends a great deal of time trying to make these connections for her, but Vicky struggles
to follow the leads her supervisor suggests because she hasn’t made the connections herself. Indeed,
her supervisor provides her with any number of routes to take, but she doesn’t really feel happy
with any of them. When she started her research she thought she had a clear idea of what it was
about, but now it seems to be about so many things it is impossible to distinguish the main thing and
pull all the ideas and texts together.
Vicky ends her second year feeling much less confident than she was at the end of her first. Although
she now has almost 80,000 words of writing in draft both she and her supervisor know that this is far
from the final draft.
This is the year she has also begun her first teaching and it has not really gone very well. Although
she has only taken on two hours a week and kept the preparation to a minimum, she has found the
classroom experience traumatic and frequently gone home in tears. She has gradually lost more and
more confidence and is now very uncertain about whether she wants a career in academia. During
the latter part of the summer, as she faces the prospect of coming back for what is supposed to be
her final year, she has an emotional breakdown. When her supervisor sees her again in October, she
can’t believe what has happened to her student. She has lost all confidence in the project and
believes herself incapable of completing it.
With some help from a counsellor, Vicky is eventually persuaded to hang-in. She gives up the
teaching she had thought she would do, and feels immediately relieved to get that pressure off her.
She is so stressed she can only look at her work for short periods at a time, and this is what her
counsellor advises her to do. Eventually, and without her supervisor’s intervention, she finally
accepts that what she needs to do is go back to the drawing board and revisit her central hypothesis
/ abstract. Her supervisor supports her in this quest, since she too has realized that what is really
blocking Vicky is that she has not narrowed her research question down sufficiently enough or
established proper links across the chapters. Her diagrams and plans had fooled both of them into
thinking that she was more sorted that she was; but a ‘framework’ is not the same as a ‘thesis’.
Slowly and painfully, over the whole of the next term, she revisits each draft chapter and tries to boil
down its central research questions -- for herself. She realizes that this is not something her
supervisor can do for her; the connections have to make sense to her. By Christmas she has a new
abstract, and although 300 words may not seem very much for a term’s work is the big breakthrough.
With her ideas finally marshaled into a persuasive (and relatively simple) argument, Vicky is in a
position to start re-writing. A good deal of the early material gets ditched, of course, but the quality
of her textual analysis -- now tied to a clear hypothesis -- shines forth. She ends up rewriting her
chapters far more quickly than she dared hoped, and is able to submit her thesis only six months
after the three-year deadline. It is extremely well-received by both examiners who pronounce it an
excellent thesis in ever respect, having no idea that -- for six months or more -- it was the cause of
acute anxiety and depression for the student concerned.
The supervisor, meanwhile, vowed never to let any student -- even the most intellectually able -proceed to the second year with a chapter plan masquerading as a ‘thesis‘. There comes a critical
moment in every research project when we have to move on from what a thesis is ’about’ (it’s broad
field of interest) to what its argument is; from this moment on, the chapters are no longer subsections or folders, but links in chain that begins by making a claim and ends by proving a point.
EXERCISE TWO: QUESTIONS
1. What could Vicky have done to avoid this crisis?
2. What could the supervisor have done to prevent it?
Answers: Vicky’s Story
1. What could Vicky have done?
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Stopped teaching sooner
Sought more explicit / immediate help from her supervisor
Been more honest with herself about the extent to which she was struggling
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Been prepared to listen to her supervisor’s suggestions on how to shape her thesis /
argument
Been less ambitious with her project
Taken fewer notes
Thought about her project in terms of an ‘argument’ rather than a chapter plan / framework
Nothing . . . [i.e., the experience she went through was, in fact, an unavoidable part of her
apprenticeship].
2. What could the supervisor have done?
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Arranged for Vicky to come off teaching as soon as s/he saw how stressed it was making her
Been rather less impressed by the quality of the writing / analysis and pushed Vicky more on
questions and frameworks
Made her stop and re-think after her second draft chapter rather than hoping that the
solution would solve itself through more writing
Seen sooner that a chapter plan wasn’t a substitute for an argument /thesis
Intervened more with suggestions of how Vicky could develop her argument
Intervened less with suggestions of how Vicky could develop her argument
Been more directive, less sympathetic
Been more experienced (i.e. had seen this before!)
Nothing . . . *i.e., once again accept that this sort of ‘journey’ is a necessary part of the
research process – at least, in a Humanities PhD].
‘AUDIENCE’ EXAMPLES: CONSOLIDATED RESPONSES
Mike Greaney
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Remarkably confident and assured for a PhD student
Appears to be writing for his peers / experts in the field rather than either his supervisor or
his examiners
Not obviously a piece of student writing or a PhD
Elegant but quite colloquial writing style: reads easily.
Dismisses other critics / commentators with remarkable confidence.
Possibly over-confident / casual in the way in which others are dismissed (e.g. Ian Watt!)
Stylistic cues signal confidence – e.g., use of word ‘clearly’ to enforce argument / point of
view
No obvious tension between different audiences
No visible pandering to examiners
Sally Bushell
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A rather more ‘defensive’ piece of writing (though this is the ‘Introduction’ rather than the
conclusion).
The examiners are very present in Bushell’s extract (as are other experts in the field)
The discussion focuses on all the things the PhD isn’t going to do – presumably to pre-empt
criticism / attack
The tone is nevertheless confident and authoritative
Linguistics PhD # 1
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The extract reveals the student to be defensive – perhaps even apologetic? – about all that
his / her thesis hasn’t done
The extract has far less visible confidence / authority than the Bushell and Greaney extracts
The text engages with experts in the field, but rather more in the sense of a literature
review; there is less sense
of the author taking her place amongst them as an equal,
even though s/he identifies the contribution the thesis has made
The reference to future research could, in this case, be read as a sign of lack of confidence in
the present thesis
Lynne Pearce
June 2012