Great Beginnings
and Endings in
Academic
Writing
Graduate Centre of Business, Lecture Series in
Research Methodology - Spring 2010
Lawrence Cleary and Dr. íde O’Sullivan
Research Officers,
Regional Writing Centre, UL, C1065/66, Main Building
www.ul.ie/rwc
Telos
• Teleology is at the heart of Aristotle's his theory of
causes.
– Material cause
– Formal cause
– Efficient or moving cause
– Final cause
• It is the study of purposiveness, or the study of
objects with a view to their aims, purposes, or
intentions
• What motivates our dissertation? What determines
its form? What motivates it? What purpose is
revealed from its realisation?
Dancing the Dance
• Put on your red shoes and dance the
blues
• Dance to the song they’re playin’ on
the radio
• Sway through the crowd to an empty
space
• Let's dance for fear your grace should
fall…for fear tonight is all…
• Because my love for you would break
my heart in two if you should fall…into
Research/Writing Process
• Prewriting
• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing and Proofreading
The Rhetorical Situation
• The context into which you write
• Occasion
• Topic
• Audience
• Purpose
• Writer
Strategy Development
• Cognitive
• Metacognitive
• Affective
• Social
Where are you in the terms of the
dance?
• Prewriting?
• Drafting?
• Revising?
• Editing and Proofreading?
Where are you?
• How much of your thesis is
already written, and how much
writing would you like to do [in
the long, medium and short
term]?
– 5 minutes’ writing
– Write complete sentences
– Don’t edit
– Private writing
– Discussion in pairs/groups to follow
Put on your red shoes
• There are all kinds of things that
you have to do before you start
writing.
• The most difficult part is getting
started.
• The most important thing is to start
dancing now.
Prewriting
• Planning
– Evaluating the rhetorical situation, or
context, into which you write
– Choosing and focusing your topic
– Establishing an organizing principle
• Gathering information
– Entering the Discourse on your Topic
– Taking notes as a Strategy to Avoid
Charges of Plagiarism
– Evaluating sources
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Assessing your writing situation
• Your writing process
• The rhetorical situation or context
• Your own writing strategies
The music they’re playing on the
radio
• Entering the discourse
communities
• Reporting on what they are
saying, on where they agree and
where they disagree, and on how
this pertains to you and your
topic.
Let’s Dance
• What do you already know about your topic and
the specific aspect of the topic are you going to
discuss? What do you still need to pt: A topic in
business that I would like to research is…
– Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes.
– Write in sentences.
– Do not edit or censor your writing.
– Discuss what you have written in pairs.
Drafting
• Writer-based Writing (Writing to gather your
thoughts and to explain it all to yourself so that you
can, later, explain it to everyone else.)
– Don’t worry about order or grammar
– At some point, stop to assess what was
written
– Look for patterns or indications of direction, a
path into a discourse
• Get your thoughts down on paper
Sway through the crowd to an
empty space
• In the literature, identify
–Poorly supported conclusions
–Contested stances
–Gaps in the research
Points of Order
• Research papers are
organized around the
problem, not the topic per se.
• The problem, in a sense, is the
topic.
• Problems, however, exist in
contexts, as do solutions.
What’s your problem?
• Logical denoument:
– Question  Answer
– Problem  Solution
– Hypothesis  Test (affirmation/negation)
– Claim  Defence
• When we talk about Aristotle’s formal cause…
• Not all questions are answered in the same way
– How will your questions be answered?
• Your problems solved/hypotheses tested?
• Your claims defended?
Rowena Murray’s page-98 paper
• My research question is … (50 words)
• Researchers who have looked at this subject are … (50
words)
• They argue that … (25 words)
• Debate centres on the issue of … (25 words)
• There is work to be done on … (25 words)
• My research is closest to that of X in that … (50 words)
• My contribution will be … (50 words)
• Murray, R. (2006) How to Write a Thesis, 2nd ed.
Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.
Dissertation Structure
• Preliminaries
• Main Body
– Introduction, Lit. Review, Methodology,
Presentation of Data, Analysis of Data,
Conclusions and Recommendations
• End Matter
Drafting your Dissertation or Thesis
• Try to visualize your dissertation or thesis. Work
toward that vision.
• Begin to structure it—establish your section
headings; give them titles. These do not have
to be permanent.
• Examine the logical order of ideas reflected in
those titles.
• Do not get hung up on details; elements of the
draft are subject to change in the revision
stage.
• Start to write the sections that you are ready to
write. Don’t try to write the Introduction merely
because it comes first.
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Writing Prompt
• What question will I try to answer / problem will I try
to solve / hypothesis will I try to affirm / claim will I
try to defend?
• What do I need to know in order to answer that
question? Defend the claim? Test the hypothesis?
• Layers: What other questions do I need to answer?
Claims to defend? Hunches to test?
Arguments & Logic
• A good argument will have, at the very least:
– a thesis that declares the writer's position on the
problem at hand;
– an acknowledgment of the opposition that nods to, or
quibbles with other points of view;
– a set of clearly defined premises that illustrate the
argument's line of reasoning;
– evidence that validates the argument's premises;
– a conclusion that convinces the reader that the
argument has been soundly and persuasively made.
(Dartmouth Writing Program 2005)
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Literature Review & Logic
• The Lit. Review that you wrote for your proposal
will not necessarily be the same review that you
submit as part of your dissertation.
• Think in terms of your argument and the support
that you provided for claims:
– Include a review of all the literature that you read to learn
about your topic and the particular aspect of your topic that
you focus on.
– Include a review of the literature on the methodologies that
you used.
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Pints of Porter
• The literature that you read informs both the
immediate context of the problem and the
larger context of which it is a part.
• The methodology you choose determines the
data you get, as does your analytical
methodology determine what you get from that
data.
Writing the Literature Review
• What is it?
• What is its purpose?
– To guide and inform your process
– To identify the discourse(s) into which you
write
– To locate your position within the
discourse/knowledge field
– To inform your audience about the credibility
and value of your conclusions
Issues of Credibility
• Definition from Merriam-Webster: “an interpretation
and synthesis of published research” (Merriam qtd
in Murray 2006: 108).
• Choices speak to your understanding of the
puddle.
Organization
• How will I organize my literature review?
• Can I classify or categorize the stuff I’ve read so
far?
• Can I say how each piece of literature has helped
to inform my over-riding questions and/or subquestions?
Writing Prompt
•
•
•
•
What do I know about my research topic?
What I am looking for in the literature is...
What are the schools of thought in the literature?
The ‘great debates’ in my area are...
Questions Your Lit Review
Should Answer (Murray 2006: 115)
•
•
•
•
Why is this subject important?
Who else thinks it’s important?
Who has worked on this subject before?
Who has done something similar to what I am
doing?
• What can be adapted to my own study?
Questions Your Lit Review Should Answer
(Murray 2006: 115) (Con’t)
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are the gaps in the research?
Who is going to use my material?
What use will my project be?
What will my contribution be?
What specific question will I answer?
[What specific questions will my research not be
able to address?]
Writing Prompt
• If we can frame the main question in a hierarchy,
below which are framed the sub-questions, and we
can put these frames in a larger frame called the
Literature Review, what frames are you ready to fill in?
• If you do not organize your literature around your
question and sub-questions, how else will you
categorize the literature in order to organize your
discussion?
Organizing the Methodology
Section(s)
• How will you organize your text in each section?
• How would you logically organize the information
in this section?
• Will you organize the methods around the
questions? Or around the methodological type?
Writing Prompt
• If you were to think about your main question and
your sub-questions, what methods will you employ
to answer each question?
• If you haven’t figured out what questions you are
asking, do some backward engineering.
The Methodology Section
• “A thesis focuses on a central question and is
unified by that focus” (Murray 2006: 123).
• In the methodology section, we have two kinds of
data:
– The methods used to gather data
– The methods used to analyze the data
The Methodology Section
• Ultimately, your methodology section(s) will
– Define and explain your method, your theoretical
approach, naming your instrument (e.g. Case study,
interview, etc.)
– Show links between your method and the methods
used by others
The Methodology Section
• Ultimately, your methodology section(s) should
– Justify your choice of methods
– Report what you plan to do
– Show how you will select and analyse the data and
how you will document it
– Say what you expect to find
Some Questions Your Methodolgy Section
Should Answer
• Why will the data be admissible?
• Why is your choice of measuring instrument
appropriate to your context / to the data you are
aiming to retrieve?
• By what criteria will you measure the validity of
your measuring instruments?
• How do we know that your method will yield
reliable data?
Valid, reliable information
• “Sometimes there is universal agreement that a
particular instrument provides a valid instrument for
measuring a particular characteristic. We could all
agree that a ruler measures length, a thermometer
measures temperature, and a barometer
measures air pressure. But whenever we do not
have such universal agreement, we must provide
evidence that an instrument we are using has
validity for our purpose” (Leedy and Ormrod, 2005:
92).
Sometimes the Tail Wags the Dog
• Research methods affect:
– data the researcher records about the phenomenon
– the sorts of phenomena that can be studied
– the sorts of understanding of the phenomenon that the
researcher is likely to arrive at
– the sorts of knowledge claims they will be able to sustain
•
(Guba & Lincoln 1994 in Nandhakumar 2003)
Sometimes form follows content: Sway to the moonlight
Content and Form
• ‘Understanding organisational behaviour has
never been more important for managers’
(Robbins, 2003:14).
• Explain why this is the case, outlining in your answer
the challenges and opportunities faced by
managers, and the value of understanding
organisational behaviour to a practicing manager.
‘Writing in Layers’
(Murray 2006: 125-27)
• Outline the structure: write your chapter or section
headings.
• Write a sentence or two on the contents of each
chapter/section.
• List out sub-headings for each section.
• Write an introductory paragraph for each section.
• At the top of each section, write the word count
requirement, draft number and date.
Conclusion
• As you write, your organization may change.
• Many things determine order:
– Arguments have a logical order, as do comparisons,
cause/effect relationships, temporal or spatial descriptions,
etc.
– However, dissertations are thesis driven. Your question,
and what you need to know, strongly influences the
organization of your final product.
Don’t Forget
• Logical Choices and Unity of Purpose
• Methodologies & Logic
• Methodologies & Credibility
• Unity and Coherence
• Writing Strategies
Logical Choices and Unity of Purpose
• Every choice serves to defend a claim, answer a
question, or confirm a hypothesis
– Word, phrase, sentence-structure
• Does the choice satisfy audience expectations?
• Does it speak to your authorial credibility?
• Does it further your argument, analysis?
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Methodologies & Logic
• When you know what you need to know in order
to answer a question, then it is logical to choose
methods of inquiry that will supply the reliable
verifiable data that you need in order to answer
the question.
• Don’t forget to qualify your data—what does it tell
you and what is it unable to tell you?
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Methodologies & Credibility
• All data has to be analyzed. You need a
methodology for analyses as well.
– Quantitative data: can it be generalized?
– Qualitative data: what criteria will be used to establish its
value?
• Do not overstate your results. An honest, quality
analysis will speak volumes about your credibility,
regardless of the quality of the data.
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Unity and Coherence
• If information included in your dissertation does not
contribute to an understanding of the value of
your conclusions and recommendations, then it
only serves to befuddle the logic of your piece.
• A unified text is a more coherent text.
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Writing Strategies
• Map your paper
– What sections or subsections are completed (keeping in
mind you still have to revise),
– Pick one or two of the holes in your paper that you would
feel comfortable filling,
– Assess the reasons for any anxiety you have over the
unfinished parts that cause you anxiety
• Do you need to read more?
• Do you need to rethink your paper?
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Writing Strategies
• Outline your paper
– Devise headings and subheadings for
uncompleted sections
• This helps you see the logical progression (or lack of it) of
your ideas
• It identifies the main ideas
• It helps detect omissions
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Writing Strategies
• Write about why you are having difficulty making
advances in your paper
– It gets the fingers tapping and the cerebral juices flowing
– An awareness of fears and anxieties helps you to develop
strategies to overcome those emotional roadblocks
– You may discover that the reason that you are having
difficulty is that there is some chink in the logic of your
argument that you must either fill or that requires a major
rethinking of the line of reasoning.
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Writing Strategies
• Don’t allow yourself to freeze up. When you are
feeling overwhelmed…
– Satisfy yourself with small advances until you feel more
confident and unstuck
– Free-write or write to prompts.
– Seek help. Talk to friends. Talk about how you feel, but talk
about your ideas as well.
– Eat lots of ice cream and candy.
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Sources
• Bowie, D. 1983 “Let’s Dance” [online], available at:
http://www.elyrics.net/read/d/david-bowie-lyrics/let_sdance-lyrics.html [accessed 08 Feb. 2009].
• Leedy, P.D. and Ormrod, J.E. 2005 Practical Research:
Planning and Design, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
Pearson
• Murray, R. 2006 How to Write a Thesis, 2nd ed. Maidenhead,
England: Open University Press.
• Nandhakumar, J. 2003 Interpreting Information Systems: A
reflexive account of grounded theory analysis [ppt.
online], available:
http://project.hkkk.fi/gebsi/files/nav_activities/material/Na
ndhakumar_slides.pdf [accessed 15 Aug 2008].
• UEfAP.com 2008 Writing: Rhetorical Functions, Comparing
and Contrasting Exercise 2 [online], available:
http://www.uefap.com/writing/exercise/function/compco
n2.htm [accessed Aug 16 2008].