Developing writing skills for graduate research

Developing writing skills for graduate research

Adopting authoring mindsets and strategies

This resource introduces approaches to starting, sustaining and strengthening your thesis writing. It includes activities to help you apply tips and reflect on your own learning. It should take you 15-20 minutes to read and complete. Check out the further resources at the bottom of each section and references on the last page for more information on this topic.

Writing a graduate research thesis to a publishable standard requires you to adopt the identity of an author and expert in your field and seek ways to maximise your readership. Developing these ‘authoring’ skills involves heightening your awareness of the processes of doctoral writing and establishing a productive writing routine.

Write to think

Writing shapes and refines
your thinking. A sort of
gym for the intellect.

Writing deepens insight into ideas and information, reveals gaps and creates opportunities to refine expression. Writing down your ideas regularly helps you to not only record them for later use but also process them into new knowledge, freeing up mental space for further thinking.

Write-to-think tips:

  • Try free writing: write continuously on a topic, with as few pauses as possible, without worrying about writing structure or syntax. Give your free writing a time limit, such as 10 minutes at a time, to help you focus on the task of idea generation.
  • Use a writing plan but treat it flexibly. You may need to go back and adjust it as your ideas develop through writing.
  • Write frequently: dedicating specific, regular timeframes to writing can help you avoid procrastination.
  • Try the ‘sentence skeleton’ technique (Thomson & Kamler, 2013):
    1. Choose a thesis or article in your field which you consider a good model.
    2. Remove all the substantive content – language that is specific to the topic – until only the language that frames the content remains.
    3. You’ll end up with a ‘skeleton’ you can expand with your own ideas.
    4. In a later stage, you can modify the language of this skeleton, but using a template of framing language is not plagiarism.

'Skeleton sentence' example:

"Accumulating research on … [my topic] in recent years has indicated a growing need to … [my research problem]. For example, many studies have shown … [my synthesis]. This suggests that … [my interpretation]. This issue needs to be addressed using … [my new approach] because … [my reason]. In this paper, I aim to … [my focus/contribution]"

Shape your writing as you go

It is important to accept ‘good enough’ writing in the early stages, because it is likely that you will need to polish your work as your research progresses in any case.

Just do the best you can early on, knowing that you are writing mostly for yourself and possibly your supervisor, and you will probably revise the writing later to make it suitable for an external examiner.

When revising, note how much your knowledge and understanding has grown in the intervening months or years. Such growth is often assisted by your earlier writing as a first step in the clarification process.

Have the courage to let go of earlier ideas and snippets of writing that no longer have a place in your thesis. If you are hesitant to delete material, create a document for these snippets in case you want to revisit them later.

Write for your reader

A text is a kind of journey that the reader takes, with you as their guide. When refining your writing, anticipate and work to meet your readers’ needs so that they receive the message you intended in the simplest way possible within your field.

  • Knowing your reader
    • Think about the widest possible readership to help you shape your writing so that it appeals to as many scholars as it can.
    • Set the right expectations and deliver upon them. For example, only criticise what you will properly discuss through your work. Be consistent and don’t oversell.
    • Create short-cuts for your readers, for example, by using informative headings, because they will be looking for them.
    • Anticipate what is likely to be familiar and what might require definition or further explanation.
      • Which terms and concepts can you be confident that your reader will know?
      • Which ones may require explanation? These might be very new, or not widely used beyond a few ‘schools of thought’. They may come from another discipline or have different uses in different but related fields.
        In any of these cases, state the meaning you are referring to.
  • Guiding your reader
    • Direct the reader as to where the text will lead and what will be presented along the way. This often appears in chapter or section introductions.
    • Summarise the main points established at the end of a section or chapter.
    • Signal forward, for example, ‘This problem will be discussed in detail in Chapter 2’, and remind readers, for example, ‘as was presented in chapter 3, section 3.1’
    • Indicate your stance, for example, expressions such as “this promising study shows” or “one minor consideration is...” help your reader understand the relative importance of an idea.
    • Use cohesive devices, such as ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’, to signpost and link elements.

Study examination criteria and model theses

First and foremost, a thesis needs to meet examination criteria. Explore the UoM examination criteria and then find an example thesis in your field.

  • How does the thesis address each of the criteria?
  • How can you use these criteria to guide your writing?

Use the side menu to go the next section: Writing complex information clearly, where we look at ways to enhance the clarity of your writing.

Writing complex information clearly

Academic writing usually delivers a lot of new content in limited space, which may create difficulties for your reader in following your ideas. This page introduces some strategies for word choice and sentence organisation to help you create clear and cohesive writing.

Keep it simple

The presentation below introduces examples and strategies you can use to simplify your own writing.

Click on 'next' at the bottom of the slide to work through the activity.

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Examine sample sentences

This activity will provide practice and feedback on your understanding of principles of clear research writing.

Read the sentence, and then select the reason it lacks clarity from the options below it.

Move through the activity by clicking on the 'next' arrow (bottom right).

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Use the side menu to go the next section: Developing authorial voice and narrative, where we examine a writing structure that helps progress a thesis argument.

Developing an authorial voice and narrative

In research writing, an author’s voice is an instrument that weaves all ideas, including background information and your own research, into a unified argument.

Authorial voice is created:

  • At a macro level: by consistently clarifying and justifying all your research decisions and findings in relation to your research question.
    • At a middle level: by connecting and interpreting sources and your own research using your analytical lens.
      • At a micro level: by using language that shows your involvement and evaluation, such as when you decide whether to write ‘Smith (2017) demonstrates that …’ or ‘assumes that …’ (reporting verbs show your attitude to the source).

Narrative is closely related to voice as another instrument for developing your research argument. If your voice expresses your creative and critical thinking, your narrative paces the progression of the argument through all thesis elements, from the research problem through to your methods, results and discussion.

Narrative can be seen most clearly in the structural and content alignment of introductory and concluding messages on the levels of the whole thesis, individual chapters, sections and paragraphs.

Use a U-shaped writing structure

Argument through voice and narrative can be shown through a U-shaped writing structure. Watch the following video to see the movement of ideas at the paragraph level.

Progressing your argument through the U-shaped paragraph

Extrapolate the U-shaped structure

In a model thesis or your own thesis:

  • Can you notice a similar progression from the general to the specific back to the general, not only at the paragraph level but also at the section, chapter and thesis level?
  • Is the thesis argument being developed in small steps at a lower level and in broader strokes at a higher one?
  • Put together the introduction and conclusion to each of the thesis chapters in one document. Do they make a smooth narrative?
  • Use the thesis abstract to overview the author’s voice and narrative.
    • Is there enough rationale and progression of the thesis argument?
    • Does the language help show these?

Use the side menu to go the next section: Demonstrating originality and strength of claim, where we look at an originality checklist and the language for stating your original contribution.

Demonstrating originality and strength of claim

In highlighting your original contribution, the language you use in your thesis should convey your critical awareness and use of disciplinary conventions and terminology, even when you aim to deviate from these.

Originality checklist

There are many ways in which a thesis can be original. Consult the originality checklist below. What box(es) does your thesis tick?

  • You do empirical work that has not been done before
  • You synthesise things that have not been put together before
  • You make a new interpretation of someone else’s material/ideas
  • You do something in a country that has only previously been done elsewhere
  • You take an existing technique and apply it to a new area
  • You work across disciplines, using different methodologies
  • You look at topics that people in your discipline have not looked at
  • You test existing knowledge in an original way
  • You add to knowledge in a way that has not been done before (e.g., a new theory/framework/model/solution)
  • You write down a new piece of information for the first time
  • You give a good exposition of someone else’s idea
  • You continue an original piece of work.

(Adapted from Murray, 2017, p. 69)

Strength of claim

When expressing your claim:

  • Use language that conveys your confidence about your research and its importance as appropriate to the strength of your evidence
  • Use a balanced tone to state both the contributions and limitations of others’ research and your own
  • Avoid absolute terms, for example, ‘perfect’ or ‘prove’, unless your evidence is absolute.

Explore an example

In thesis writing, well-chosen verbs and adjectives can help send a strong message about the original contribution of the work.

In the following activity, you will analyse excerpts from an example thesis to better understand how to do this.

  • Read excerpt 1 and excerpt 2, below.
  • Click to highlight any verbs or adjectives that indicate the significance or implications of this thesis.
    • Remember: verbs are often actions (e.g. write, explore, fulfill) while adjectives are  descriptive (e.g. important, difficult, broken)

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Adapted from Mody, 2018, p. 231
Adapted from Mody 2018, p. 231

The example statement above, with its well-selected verbs and adjectives, establishes the implications/significance of the research.

It shows the writer’s disciplinary expertise by connecting the research to the field, using its language and exceeding its current knowledge.

This statement also shows the originality of the thesis, at least in two ways:

  • synthesising things that have not been put together before
  • adding to knowledge in a way that has not been done before

(Murray, 2017)

Write your statement of original contribution

Use the following prompts to help you reflect on your expertise and contribution in your field. Give yourself 5-10 minutes to free-write, then review your statement to fit your thesis.

Summarise

What’s your original contribution in a phrase? (Think about the title of your thesis)

Elaborate

"My work is/will be original in the sense that…"

Final tip

If you treat writing not as an isolated task, but a tool to help you learn and integrate your readings and research into a cohesive whole, you have the best chance of producing a quality thesis.

Write to think through ideas, test and connect them, increase the precision of your expression, and find your writer’s voice and originality.

For more information and support in your writing,Explore: Academic Skills Graduate Research services