Essay Writing

[fry_lover]

cant really find the best forum for this to go in???

Bit of a long shot this, am doing a dissertation, have basically gathered all the info i need but am stuck in writing style and how present my findings.

To be honest the college is using the term "dissertation" but apart from having to do contents page and abstract its pretty much a glorified essay. Its quite short (7500 words) and i wasnt required or expected to do any of my own research.

does anyone have any dissertations or essays they have done in the past that i can look over just for ideas on writing styles. I havent found google much help.

I am not really looking to cheat as it can be a completely different subject matter to mine (which is counselling / psychotherapy based). I cant show "drafts" of my work according to the rules and for my own sense of achievement i want to stay within the rules, but i am perfectly fine to look over other essays to get ideas on structure.

especially interested in peices of work that are in the 7,500 - 10,000 word range.

Its doing things like "abstracts, introductions and conclusions" thats getting me stuck.

The theme of my work is discussing WHY one type of counselling seems to be less successful and known in this country than another type of counselling.

 

[Underwurlde]

Dissertation, that's an americanism for thesis no?

Anyway, wiki to the rescue! http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesis

50% of my job is document writing (Engineering), but I guess the same principles apply.

I never write in the first person: It is always utterly impersonal.

Make your Abstract as short, to the point and concise as possible. If an abstract contained just a single word to explain the main body content it would be perfect.

Introduction: Expand on the Abstraction: What is it you are doing, why are you doing it, how you are going to gather test data, why is the test data relevant, how will this test data will be correlated into a meaningful result even if the results turn out to be inconclusive.

Test Procedure: Main thing to remember here is to go about recording everything you do such that it can be exactly repeated by someone else. No point doing a test with a result if the result cannot be repeated and proven to be true. (Peer reviewed). Any references made during testing should also be referenced. "Global warming is a result of burning too much fossil fuels [1]" etc.

Conclusion: The most important part! Re-read the abstraction and then jump straight to the conclusion to make sure it makes sense. It should flow. The parts in between is just a logical path from one to the other. Base your conclusions on purely on the test results: Do they positively correlate to your initial assumptions, negatively correlate or do not correlate at all.

I would bore you with the stuff I write at work, but it is all company confidential!

GL

Andy

 

[fry_lover]

thanks mate, useful stuff

basically its a glorified essay mate, only 7500 words but some of the priniples you mention definitly apply