General Guidelines for Writing Theses

• Define the field you are interested in – methodology, literature, or linguistics
• Recognise a problem that you are capable of dealing with
• Select material to serve as basis for your research (corpus)
• Set out broad objectives that your thesis should achieve (hypothesis)
• Come to an understanding of the problem (reading reference books)
• Determine what options are possible (combining ideas suggested by the reading with own conclusions based on the material under investigation)
• Evaluate those options against objectives (testing your hypothesis)
• Assess the results of your research (confirmation or denial of the hypothesis)
• Monitor and observe the results (self assessment + methodology + research achievements; stating goals for further research)

• Introduction – State what you intend to write about, explain why you consider it to be a topic worth writing about, describe what methodology/approach you will use, present the structure of your thesis – Firstly, the thesis will deal with …, secondly …, thirdly …
• Main body of the text – Do NOT just describe problems and ideas; discuss and assess them critically. There are two approaches available to the organisation of an academic thesis:
  1. The theoretical – practical part structure
     The theoretical part discusses the reference literature and is divided into several sub-chapters according to the theoretical issues discussed. The final part of the theoretical part is the conclusion where the standpoint of the author of the thesis is stated clearly, so as to be used as theoretical basis for the analysis of the materials in the practical part. The practical part presents the work with the language material and the solution to the problems stated in the Introduction. The results are summarised in the conclusion pointing to the evaluation of the objectives stated in the introduction (hypothesis) and bridging back to the theoretical part.
  2. The objectives – options – arguments structure
     The thesis is divided into chapters according to issues (objectives) to be discussed in the text. Each chapter presents some theoretical preliminaries gathered from the reading, which serve as basis for the discussion of the options available for the solution of the problem (demonstrated on the language material) and the logical sequence of arguments supporting the best alternative proposed by the author. Thus the issues discussed study the problem under investigation from several viewpoints linking theoretical considerations to their practical implementation on the language material. Each chapter is closed by a conclusion reviewing the main points which make the argument progress coherently towards the achievement of the objectives stated in the hypothesis, evaluates the options suggested and announces the issue to be analysed in the following chapter.
• Conclusion – Summarise what you have written about, explain why was it worth writing about it, discuss how appropriate was the methodology or approach you have opted for. State clearly whether your expectations stated in the hypothesis were confirmed or denied. Highlight what is the contribution of your research in the context of the field of study/issue you have written about. Mention possible related problems which you would consider worth examining.

• The choice of point of view – impersonal, personal (WE or I) or a possible interplay of the three (that interplay should be conscious and achieve some emphatic effect, not just a chaotic change of viewpoint). Notice that when using scientific prose style, you are not supposed to be emotive; you are supposed to provide logical argumentation and not to appeal to the emotions of the readers to prove your point of view.
• Using ideas from the reading – Do NOT just repeat or state ideas and material from books and magazines – discuss and apply the ideas; do NOT just state personal opinions – use a well constructed argument to prove your opinion. When you refer to ideas from books and magazines without quoting directly you have still to refer to the author, publication, chapter and/or pages where the idea is discussed.
• Using numbering and lettering – the logical structure of your paper should be explicit using linkers and other devices for highlighting the coherent development of the arguments.
• Quoting – there are two basic ways for quoting from a text.
  • If the quote is coherently integrated in your text (it is a part of your sentence), then you integrate it into the text using quotations and refer to the reference in brackets after the unquote.
  • If you quote a longer passage which is illustrative and does not form an integral part of your text, then you present it as a separate indented paragraph using smaller size letters and again you point to the reference in brackets after at the end of the quotation.
  • A sample model for referencing: (Cook 1981a: 130)
  • A sample model when mentioning the author in the reporting clause: G. Yule relates the concept of distance to the notion of spatial deixis “where the relative location of people and things is being indicated”. (Yule 1996:12).
• A list of useful verbs when referring to ideas you have read about:
  add, address a problem, accept, achieve, analyse, announce, argue, apply a concept, assess, attempt, be interested in, capture, centre on, cite, claim, clarify, confirm, consider, construct, comment, conclude, conceptualise, deal with, define, deny, develop a view, devote attention to, describe, discuss, draw the attention to, elaborate a theory, emphasise, explain, explore, examine, evaluate, favour, find, differentiate, focus, foreground, forecast, go on to point/summarise, highlight, include, investigate, introduce a concept, implement, label, make an issue of, mention, maintain, note, notice, offer, point out, present, predict, promise, proves, put forward a hypothesis, provide a methodology/answer/argument, prove, quote, question, refer to, renew, research, run into problems, show, study, state, suggest, stress, summarise, support, tackle, treat, underscore, underline, warn, write
• Terminology – If the terminology used in the field you intend to write about tends to be idiosyncratic to the authors you may consider including a glossary of terms as an appendix to your work. If the terminology is particularly controversial you may decide to discuss it, stating whose terminology you agree with and why.

• Acknowledge ALL quotes and paraphrases.
• For longer quotes, use separate paragraphs (text in a text, no inverted commas). Quotes shorter than 3 lines should be incorporated into the text, using quotation marks. Indicate the source in the brackets.
• If you do not quote directly but reproduce or sum up what has been written elsewhere, this too, must be acknowledged (see paraphrase).
• At the end, quote the list of works cited (usually titled References or Works Cited) and works consulted.
• The Department of English Language and Literature acknowledges Oxford reference style and MLA style; a guide to the latter can be found here.
  Note: Although the MLA Style tolerates two ways of giving a title, (1) italicized (as in Faulkner’s Light in August), and (2) underlined (Light in August), the use of italics is exceedingly preferred. You may also consult any scholarly publication of a respectable publishing house (e.g. Routledge, CUP, OUP, Harvard University Press). For detailed information and writing tips access a writing centre site at any US university (e.g. University of Wisconsin, Purdue University or University of North Carolina).

MLA Style sample quoting:

Book with one author

• Henley, Patricia. The Hummingbird House. Denver: MacMurray, 1999.

Book with more than one author

• Gillespie, Paula, and Neal Lerner. The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn, 2000.

(If there are more than three authors, you may list only the first author followed by the phrase et al. – the abbreviation for the Latin phrase “and others” – in place of the other authors’ names, or you may list all the authors in the order in which their names appear on the title page.)

Anthology or collection

• Peterson, Nancy J., ed. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Article / Essay in a collection

• Harris, Muriel. “Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers.” A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Rafoth. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000. 24-34.

Web site

• Felluga, Dino. Undergraduate Guide to Literary Theory. 17 Dec. 1999. Purdue University. 15 Nov. 2000 <http://omni.cc.purdue.edu/%7Efelluga/theory2.html>. 
• Purdue Online Writing Lab. 2003. Purdue University. 10 Feb. 2003 <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/>.