Professional freelance editors are great for any graduate student or Ph.D. candidate looking to improve a thesis, dissertation, or journal manuscript. Using a professional editing service can help you get better feedback from your adviser as you move through the stages of writing your dissertation, and can also help you craft your full dissertation into publishable articles. Even in cases where the ideas within a dissertation are innovative, important additions to the literature, a poorly written document could diminish the value of the document.

A professional editor can make sure your essay, research paper, thesis, or dissertation is easily understandable and free of errors. When choosing an experienced editor, it is important to choose someone who has familiarity with your topic, is responsive to your needs, and can provide quality editing. It is important to ask your editor to focus on what is important to you, such as focusing on APA style, ensuring an error-free document, or improving the flow of the document. An editor with an academic background is an added benefit since that individual is familiar with the general process of writing a dissertation.

For more information on the cost of professional editing services for your paper, thesis, dissertation, resume, cover letter, vita, statement of purpose, or other important document, visit Editor World LLC at http://www.editorworld.com and choose one of our expert editors based on his or her qualifications and skills. Our editors have a variety of academic backgrounds and editing skills. Submit a free sample request to help you select your editor.

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2. It can be very frustrating for an academic adviser to give feedback on the content of your research paper, thesis, or dissertation if he or she is spending a lot of time correcting the clarity, grammar, and spelling of your document. You should give your adviser well-written chapters and sections of your paper, thesis, or dissertation so he or she can focus on your work rather than spend time trying to figure out what you are trying to say.

3. A professional editor can make sure your paper is understandable and free of errors. You can ask the professional editor you hire to focus on what is important to you.

4. Your academic adviser will think more highly of your written work if it is, at a minimum, well-written. He or she does not want to spend hours deciphering the meaning of a paper and correcting minor mistakes. Using an editing service will make your work easier to read.

5. Don’t forget to thank your academic adviser for the time he or she spends helping you! You will need him or her to inform you of new jobs opening in your field, write recommendation letters, and work with you to submit journal articles from your thesis or dissertation. This makes your relationship with your academic adviser crucial for your career. People with poor relationships with their academic adviser are less likely to receive a good recommendation and to obtain their desired academic job.

For more information on academic editing services and to choose a professional editor of your choice to edit your research paper, thesis, or dissertation, visit http://www.EditorWorld.com.

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Professional freelance editors provide a great service for anyone looking to improve an academic paper, whether it is an essay, research paper, thesis, or dissertation. Using a professional editing service can help you get a better grade or better feedback from your adviser or teacher. If you are submitting your nonfiction work for publication, such as in a book, journal, or even online, the reviewer or editor will view your work more positively if it is well-written and error-free. Even if the ideas behind a written paper are innovative and important, a poorly written document prevents the reader from seeing the value of the paper.

A professional editor can make sure your essay, research paper, thesis, or dissertation is more understandable and free of errors. You can ask your freelance editor to focus on what is important to you, your adviser, or your teacher, whether it’s making an argument, focusing on APA style, or being clear and concise.

For more information on academic editing services and to choose a professional editor of your choice to edit your research paper, thesis, or dissertation, visit http://www.EditorWorld.com.

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Selecting an advisor requires you to make an honest assessment of your working style. What type of working environment maximizes your true potential? Do you need someone to micro-manage every aspect of your thesis or dissertation project? Do you flourish when you are given a task and allowed to work at your own pace? Do you excel when you are allowed to figure things out by yourself? Are you willing to ask for help when you need it? To successfully complete your thesis or dissertation, you need an advisor who complements your working style.

Here are 7 tips to managing your advisor and committee members:

1. Interview Potential Advisors:

Remember, you and your advisor should be enthusiastic about your thesis or dissertation topic. When selecting a selecting a topic you have to think of whom on the faculty is an expert on that topic and would be willing to work with you. Prior to your interview for an advisor, consider writing a three-page draft of a proposal to discuss with your potential advisor. Be sure to ask if the faculty member is planning a sabbatical in the next two years.

Selecting the right advisor is critical to your success in graduate school. Your advisor can propel or hinder your academic progress. As a graduate student you have very little power in your academic department. Hence, you need to select an advisor who can be an advocate for you. To be your best advocate, your advisor should have tenure and the respect of his peers. As chair of your committee, peer respect will be invaluable when your advisor has to supervise the other committee members and facilitate your defense hearing.

2. Interview Fellow Students/Advisees:

Although a faculty member might be respected in his or her discipline, be aware that some faculty members might be difficult to work with; advisors sometimes ask for a draft when what they really want is a polished piece. Some advisors might prefer to work with the same sex graduate student. Others may or may not be willing to co-author with their graduate students.

Your peers are your greatest resource; advanced graduate students are often willing to share information about what it is like to work for or with a particular faculty member. As a possible advisee, you need inside information on:

o Availability and accessibility of the advisor

o Timeliness and quality of the feedback

o His/her expectations–are they realistic?

o The working atmosphere in the lab

o Management style–micro or macro

o Facilitation skills during defense hearings

o Average time his/her advisees take to finish 3. Be Professional With Advisor/Committee Members:

The quality of the advisee/advisor relationship varies and is based on the commitment level and personalities of your advisor and yourself. Both of you have some responsibility for making this relationship work successfully. You should be as professional with your advisor/committee members as possible.

o Let your advisor/committee member know that you value his or her time. Get to your scheduled meetings on time. Don’t sweat it if your advisor/committee member is late.

o Be prepared with an agenda for your regularly scheduled meetings– prepare questions ahead of time.

o Call and cancel if you will not be able to make your scheduled meeting.

o Send a follow-up email confirming any items and resolutions that were discussed during the meeting.

o Prepare a coversheet with an outline of your document indicating the type of feedback you are looking for.

o Don’t get frustrated if they ask for another copy of the latest draft of your document even if you haven’t made any changes since you gave it to them last week.

o Always bring a hard copy of the chapter to be discussed with you.

o Takes notes at all meetings; you won’t remember everything once you leave the office.4. Don’t Assume, Ask:

The relationship between you, your advisor and committee members varies by the amount of direction, personal interaction, and psychological support. In addition, the type of criticism given and the frequency of interaction will depend on the type of relationship you and your advisor has established. It is quite possible that each committee member could have different expectations of you.

It is your responsibility to find out what level of participation each member of the committee is willing to commit to. I know of a student who directly asked each committee member “what do you need to see in this dissertation for you to sign-off on it?” By asking ahead of time, she was able to address each member’s concerns with the help of her advisor.

5. Understanding Your Advisor And Committee Members:

The best academic advisor does not have the time to hold your hand throughout your academic career. The academic advisor’s time is limited because, after all, he or she is a professor first and is getting paid to teach courses, advise graduate students, supervise graduate research, write books or journal articles, and serve on campus- and university-wide committees.

Moreover, your advisor went through the same process without much assistance from his/her advisor when he/she attended graduate school. Therefore, the tradition of completing a thesis or dissertation is a lonely process and an unsympathetic advisor does not want to cheat you out of having the same experience he/she suffered through years ago. Hence, your academic advisor’s main commitment is to supervise your research project. He/she will not be your friend, therapist, financial aid counselor, or marital advisor.

6. Choose your battles wisely–Handling Conflicts
and Disagreements:

Your advisor is the coordinator of your thesis or dissertation project. While the major role of your advisor is to share his or her expertise with you to help you develop your ideas, your advisor is also supposed to advocate on your behalf as well. Should your committee members give you conflicting advice you should bring this to your advisor’s attention.

Resolving conflicts among committee members is part of your advisor’s responsibilities. After you resolve the issue with your advisor, ask if she/he is going to be responsible for communicating the solution to the other committee members. If she/he suggests that you handle that issue it might be prudent to send your advisor an email confirming the agreed upon resolution. You might consider copying the other committee members with this confirmation.

If you and your advisor disagree you might consider writing a more persuasive argument addressing his concerns. Arguing with your advisor is not time well spent. If you spent the time choosing a well-qualified expert, an active supporter and head cheerleader, these disagreements should be minor and short-lived. You need him/her—Your advisor will be writing recommendations for you well after you have left the university.

7. Seeking Feedback And Advice From Your Advisor
and Committee Members:

If you are having problems getting timely written or oral feedback from your advisor there are many things that you can do to move this process along. Your advisor and committee members are busy people. Consequently you must make the best use of their time. First, if you cannot get feedback from your advisor, try another committee member to keep things moving along.

Second, when you submit your thesis or dissertation chapters for review you should provide some guidance on how you want your advisor / committee member to read your document. Sometimes you might just be looking for answers as to whether or not your methodology or reasoning is logical and going in the right direction. If you want this type of feedback your advisor might not have to read as closely as he might think if you do not provide any instructions. It would be a good idea to provide an outline of your chapter so that your advisor can get a good overview of what the chapter is about and where it fits into your thesis or dissertation. Without instructions your advisor is likely to place your document in a pile of “must-read” items. Leave the grammar and editing to an editor; your advisor will give the final grammar edits on your final draft.

About the Author:

As a single mother, professor Wendy Y. Carter, Ph.D., completed three masters’ degrees and a PhD. Her motto is a Good Thesis/Dissertation is a Done Thesis/Dissertation. She is the creator of a new innovative interactive resource tool on CD—TADA! Thesis and Accomplished.

To learn more contact the author at drcarter@tadafinallyfinished.com or visit ==>http://www.tadafinallyfinished.com

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A review of the relevant literature on a particular topic is a vital component of all research degrees. There are many reasons why a review of the current literature should be conducted before beginning a research project. These include:

* To identify any gaps in the literature
* To avoid unnecessarily repeating work that has been carried out already
* To identify important research, sources, views and theories in your field
* To identify other researchers working in the same field
* To allow you to understand and explain the context into which your thesis will fit
* To develop ideas on how best you could undertake your own research

There are four stages to conducting the review. The first stage is to define your project. To do this you will need to know the topic or field you wish to write your thesis on. The second stage is to search for the literature. This involves searching through libraries, journal databases, the internet and other places to find all the relevant sources on your topic. You will be looking for books, monographs, journal articles, conference papers, theses, reports, papers, and studies.

The third stage is to evaluate and analyse the literature you have found. You will evaluate the sources to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to discover which sources make the most significant contribution to the field. You will analyse and interpret the literature in order to discover what information is relevant to your thesis. At this point, you will begin dividing the literature into categories. The fourth stage is to write the Literature Review itself.

The introduction should contain:

* A definition of the topic or field and the objectives of the Literature Review
* A introduction to the overall trends, conflicts, conclusions or themes that will be discussed
* An indication of how the sources have been divided for discussion
* An indication of the gap found in the literature that the thesis aims to fill

The body should contain:

* A division of the literature into categories for review
* A summary and analysis of each of the sources, a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses, an explanation of what they contribute to the field, and a description of how the sources differ from each other
* A discussion of the gap identified in the current literature and how your thesis will attempt to fill it
* Remember to structure the body of the Literature Review as you would an academic essay, making sure it is well organised and structured

The conclusion should contain:

* Conclusions regarding which sources make the most valuable contribution to the understanding and development of the area of research, maintaining the focus established in the introduction
* A summary of the gap identified in the current literature and how your thesis will attempt to fill it

Once you have written your Literature Review, the final step is to have it professionally edited by an academic editor. This will ensure that your work is presented in the best possible way, in formal academic language, and free from grammatical and other errors.

Our PhD qualified academic editors will professionally edit your essay, assignment, thesis or dissertation. We provide online Essay Editing and Thesis Editing for high school, college, university and postgraduate students worldwide.

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1. Know what constitutes plagiarism. Simply put, plagiarism is the use of the words or ideas of another person without giving credit to the person from whom they are borrowed. Right off the bat, this tells us something important: you can’t simply change a few words of a borrowed text (so that the passage is no longer a direct quotation) and think that you are out of danger. Unless the material is “common knowledge,” a citation is needed for any material you borrow–whether it is a direction quotation, a paraphrase, or even just an idea.

2. Know what your professor will look for. Even before the advent of the computer, professors caught students who plagiarized; the Internet has just made it much, much easier. So what might give a clue to a professor that the material you’ve presented as your own really came from someone else?

* Fluctuations in style
* Vocabulary that isn’t typical for you
* Harsh connections between passages
* Deviations in the point of view from which the text is written
* Contradictions in the theories or positions maintained in the paper
* The failure of the paper to address the specific topic assigned (suggesting it may have been borrowed or purchased)
* The unavailability in your university/college library of the sources referenced in the paper
* The use of exclusively Web-based sources
* Recognizing the material (Your professor is probably an expert in this field, after all!)

On its own, nothing on this list is a guarantee that material has been plagiarized. However, the combination of several of these points will certainly raise suspicions and will probably cause your professor to dig deeper.

3. Know how anti-plagiarism programs work. If your college, university, or professor is using a Web-based anti-plagiarism service, it’s a good idea to know what the program searches for. If you’re intentionally plagiarizing, chances are that you won’t outsmart these programs; if you’re not intentionally plagiarizing, understanding the programs will help you to avoid plagiarizing inadvertently. Anti-plagiarism programs currently in use do a combination of the following:

* Search the Internet for word strings that may have been lifted. The easiest way to get caught plagiarizing is to take something from a source available on the Internet. You will almost certainly get caught, as even the simplest and cheapest programs do this much.
* Search cached sources. Even if your source is no longer available on the Web, it may still be available to the anti-plagiarism search as long as it was on the Web at one time.
* Search databases of papers, theses, dissertations, articles, and books, usually comparing your paper against millions of archived sources. This means that even print sources that have never been available on the Internet may turn up in the search.
* Compare documents. This allows professors and universities to submit multiple papers (even over a number of years) to compare them for material that they share in common.
* Make internal comparisons. The more sophisticated programs use algorithms to examine sentence structure and synonyms, allowing them to catch even paraphrased material that has not been copied exactly.

4. Don’t cut-and-paste. By definition, if you are doing this, you are borrowing material, and you’re likely to leave clues (see tip #2, above). NOTE that this rule applies even to borrowing your own material from papers you’ve written previously. If you ignore this rule, then be sure to cite the source of whatever you’ve borrowed.

5. Don’t paraphrase without citing the source. Yes, it’s plagiarism even if you change the words. If it’s someone else’s idea, a citation is needed. Always.

6. If you use someone else’s words, always use quotation marks (or block quote formatting). No exceptions. Period.

7. Know your style sheet. Each academic style sheet (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian), has its own conventions for citing sources. If you don’t follow the right conventions, you could inadvertently wind up being accused of stealing the material.

8. Beware of “common knowledge.” This is the one big gray area–what really is “common knowledge”? If there’s the slightest doubt in your mind, find the source and cite it. If you can’t find the source, drop the material from your paper.

9. Get your work edited. Whether you rely on a professional editing service, a professor, someone from your college’s writing center, or a really smart friend, a second set of eyes may catch what you missed, saving you a major hassle in the end.

10. When in doubt, CITE!

Wishing you success in your writing,
Albert L., Ph.D.

Academic concerns like this are among the wide array of writing issues we deal with at EditsMadeEasy, an online editorial agency offering coaching services, online writing classes, fact-checking, pre-publication services, and resume/career services–in addition to editing and proofreading, of course. Because more and more colleges and universities are making use of Web-based anti-plagiarism programs, our company has decided to include free anti-plagiarism checking on every thesis and dissertation project–When it comes to plagiarism, you just can’t be too careful! To read more about other writing-oriented topics, visit our blog at http://www.EditsMadeEasy.com/blog

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In your area of study, there will be a variety of topics from which you can choose to focus on. It really doesn’t matter what topic you decide on, as long as you make it straightforward and manageable for yourself, and making something too difficult for you to complete wouldn’t be a good start to the choice of topic at all. There are generally considered two trains of thought when coming to the point of how to choose your topic, and how this will form the direction of the paper. This is through a straightforward hypothesis, that is usually found in undergraduate research papers; leaving this part in question form is usually for the advanced researcher/writer, and is usually reserved for postgraduate research theses. The choice in topic that you choose to write on will also shape the content and format of your paper – essentially what it will look like to the reader.

When considering your topic, you should be looking for something that is both narrow in scope, but well defined. You don’t want to restrict yourself and your research potential by focusing on something that is too restrictive; yet, you don’t want a topic that encompasses everything in your chosen area – you aren’t here to conquer the world.

When you are thinking of what you are going to be concentrating on, you should be wondering if you topic is going to be explanatory, narrative, or a compare and contrast a topic, as well as many more. It is never going to be straightforward when thinking and actually writing your thesis, but, having a clear understanding of what you are actually going to be writing about, or at least a guide/view, is of great importance.

As a student writer, you should also be aware of what is required of you in the different areas that you can choose. Your paper should be interesting to read and therefore be of equal interest to your lecturer/supervisor, colleagues, and other academics in your field of research. Therefore, you should avoid a broad range of ideas that can often be off topic and too vague to produce a concisely written paper.

At the planning stage of your paper, you should also be choosing an avenue that will be something unique and individual to you. You do not want to be researching and writing about something that has been written about over and over again, many times before. That doesn’t mean to say that because there has been many authors writing on a certain topic that it would rule it out. On the contrary, you should embrace such a theme and keep in mind that you will need to refer to previously written pieces of research, by other academic authors, throughout the theoretical part of your paper. A main part of this process is making sure that you conduct an initial reading of a few topics that you are interested in, to review whether they are viable options, and if there is sufficient availability of previously researched material.

Overall, your thesis should be an attempt at addressing an existing or imminent problem within a given topic. Also, this problem may have had much research previously conducted on it, but has come up with non-defining analyses; therefore, your independent aspect, as long as it is different enough from other material, will have the ability to convey a new angle on such given information.

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a online thesis editing services company, specialising in editing and proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for online dissertation editing and proofreading.

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The central topic of a thesis statement generally means that this paper is concerned around an individual topic and the author won’t usually venture far, as can be found in a general essay or report. The key element of this paper will be to provide the reader with examples to prove an overall point.

The thoughts and understanding of the topic should be clearly established in the writing, as you the author, will want to paint a realistic picture of what you want to achieve through accurate analyses and definitive information, which will be reviewed in the research process of the paper.

The key element that you need to remember with this paper is that you need to have both contrast and control – you should be providing valid arguments and discussion of the topic/area, on the one side, and the paper should be well structured and planned on the other. You should lead your reader along a road to your understanding and scope of the paper.

Also, you should have a central theme to the paper, as well as specific areas that the paper looks into and analyses. You will need to plan and execute the thesis statement well, in order to understand the whole process. If you plan and execute the paper well, then the rest of your thoughts, understanding, and actual writing will fall into line. You should also remember that this type of paper is persuasive in nature and should lead the reader to a specific ending; your writing and conclusions need to look more realistic, but at the same time definitive.

An ideal view of a thesis statement would be to look at it as a paper that needs to be packed full of accurate and reliable data, which is easily verifiable by the reader; you will not want to write this crucial and critical paper placed on some un-found facts and opinions.

Being in full control of what you are writing and presenting to the reader is a must with this type of paper, and you can not afford to ’slip up’ or make a mistake. Your professionalism is important here and you do not want to detract the reader from your understanding and ability to deliver on what you set out to do. If your writing looks unfocused and all over the place, then this will provide a haphazard appearance of your work.

You should take advice from lecturers and professors on the content, flow and clarity of your work, and especially if any comments are made on the structure of your work. If your structure isn’t positive and linked together, then this can have negative affects on the reader’s impression of what your thesis statement is going to achieve.

A thesis statement is also much of your own work and opinions, and you will be more than likely come into contact with people that will disagree categorically with what you have stated or written. You will need to be able to handle this criticism and opinionated argument, and face them with proof and understanding that what you have stated is true and reflective. Most of all, you will need to be able to ’stand your ground’ through the writing in your thesis statement and when you are questioned verbally about your paper.

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a thesis editing services company, specialising in editing and proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for dissertation editing proofreading

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There are many such topics and subjects that the student can look into and conduct research, whether through an experiment, investigation, or other primary research area. The thesis will be measured for originality, findings and conclusions, as well as whether the paper has been kept within a set word-count that is established by the school, college or university.

The main part of the thesis, the research, will often start a long time before the student is thinking about what hypothesis he/she is trying to prove or disprove. A plan is an ideal position to start the actual research process, planning what they want to achieve and by when – as theses will have a submission deadline.

In general, the research element of a course, both in undergraduate and postgraduate terms, will be an extra part to the course. On an undergraduate course, the thesis is a main part of the final year grade that counts heavily to the final grade of the course, and is often found on degree courses that award honours. On a postgraduate course, such as a masters degree, the thesis part of the course will be a separate module of the course and will be conducted over the summer term of the year; this will count between 5 and 20% of the final grade. Generally, all masters degrees will require the student to complete a thesis.

Therefore, the thesis is an important part of any degree course and should be considered highly valuable to your final degree grade. There are strict guidelines to submission, other than the deadline, and these should be followed, as they are often more stringent than that of an essay.

Production of a thesis may require the student to put up a plausible defense in-front of the awarding panel, at their institution. Generally, only a few people will be chosen, and in some cases none, when they are submitting a thesis on an undergraduate degree or masters degree course. It is usually at this point where a defense is only seen for doctoral theses. However, the student should be aware that they may be called upon to defend their writing and research, as well as opinions, view and conclusions of their paper. Keeping in mind here, that it is often best to provide tangible examples when referring to what you have written in your actual paper.

Nick Sanders is the owner and founder of Supaproofread.com, a thesis editing services company, specialising in editing and proofreading services. You should visit them if you are looking for dissertation editing proofreading

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1. Choose a Topic

The first step is to choose a broad topic for your thesis. For example, if you are undertaking a PhD in History, the topic might be as broad as women’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War. You will refine and narrow this topic at a later stage. Choosing the topic for your thesis is an important step that requires a great deal of thoughtful consideration. Many factors need to be considered. Ask yourself these questions:

•What topic in my field interests me the most?

If you are writing an Honours thesis, you will need to maintain your interest in the topic you choose for at least one year. If you are completing a PhD, you will be researching this topic for three or more years! For this reason, it is important that you choose a topic that will hold your enthusiasm, interest and passion for an extended period. There is nothing worse than being locked in to studying a thesis topic that no longer interests you.

•Will I be able to find an appropriate supervisor for that topic?

Finding a supervisor is an important step in your postgraduate journey and it is something you need to consider when choosing your topic. There needs to be a balance between your interest in a topic and the ability of a specific supervisor to work in this area. It is not useful to choose a topic that is of immense interest to you if no one at your university has sufficient knowledge in the area to act as your supervisor. However, it is also not advisable to choose a supervisor first and then choose a topic based solely on their research interests, as you may end up studying something that is not of interest to you.

•Will I have access to the appropriate sources to research this topic?

Similarly, it is not useful to choose a topic that is immensely interesting to you if there is very little information on the subject. When choosing your topic, consider what types of sources you would need to be able to research it well, and find out if you will have access to these sources. If, as in the example above, you will be studying the Spanish Civil War, can you speak Spanish? Will you be able to travel to Spain to access sources? Does a wealth of material on your chosen subject exist?

2. Conduct the Literature Review

Once you have chosen a topic to study for your thesis, you need to begin your background research to discover what has already been written on the topic by other researchers. There are several reasons why it is important to conduct a thorough Literature Review:

•Most thesis structures require you to include a well written Literature Review in your thesis, so that you can demonstrate you have conducted in-depth research in the field and possess a sound knowledge of it

•You need to study what has been written on a topic so you can identify a gap in the current literature that can be filled by your thesis, since a thesis needs to make an original contribution to a field of knowledge

3. Narrow your Topic and Define your Research Questions

Once you have conducted your Literature Review and identified a gap in the current field of knowledge in your topic, you will be able to narrow your topic further. This is an important step as this is the point at which you will decide what questions your thesis will answer.

In the example of the PhD student who knew she wanted to study women’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War, after a careful review of the literature she might have found that one unexamined area is the role of Republican women in combat during the war. This is a much narrower topic than ‘women’s involvement in the Spanish Civil War’, and thus it is a suitable subject for a thesis. The student would then need to define her research questions. Her main research question might be ‘Why was the military participation of Republican women in the Spanish Civil War significant?’ In order to answer this main research question, she would first have to answer a set of sub-questions, like these:

•How many women fought in the Spanish Civil War?
•What motivated these women to volunteer for combat?
•Why were these women removed from their combat positions only eight months after the beginning of the war?

Thus, the third step in writing a thesis is narrowing your topic, deciding on a main research question and deciding on sub-questions.

4. Research Proposal

If you are writing a Masters or a PhD thesis, you will normally be required to write a detailed Research Proposal in the first few months of your candidature. If you are undertaking a PhD, for example, you might have six months to write a 10,000 word proposal. This Research Proposal will include information you have discovered in your Literature Review, and will outline what your thesis aims to achieve. For many students, this Research Proposal later becomes the basis for the Introduction and Literature Review in their final thesis. The successful completion of this proposal and its acceptance by your university is a necessary step in order to continue your candidature. Once you have written your Research Proposal, it is important that you have it professionally edited prior to submitting it, to ensure you have the best chance of its acceptance. See ‘The Final Stage: Professional Editing’ below.

5. Conduct the Research

The aim in conducting your research is to answer your research questions and develop a thesis statement. The thesis statement is your answer to your main research question. It defines the argument that you will be putting forward throughout your thesis. In fact, the word ‘thesis’ means ‘argument’ or ‘position’.

Conducting the research is the most important and time-consuming stage of writing a thesis. How you do this will depend on your field of study and the research project you have created. It is important to consult with your supervisor throughout this stage and to use time management skills to ensure that you stay on track.

6. Follow the Guidelines

Your university department or school will have guidelines that you must follow when writing your thesis and it is important to be familiar with these before you begin writing your first draft. These guidelines will vary from university to university. They even vary within universities, as different disciplines follow different guidelines. It is important that you check with your supervisor about where to find the correct guidelines to follow. Often these guidelines will be very detailed and will specify the following things: the length of your final thesis; the structure of the thesis and what elements it should contain; the referencing style to be used; and the formatting and presentation of the thesis. If you have trouble following some of the guidelines, for example the formatting and presentation or the correct referencing of your thesis, your professional editor will be able to assist you in these matters (please see ‘The Final Stage: Professional Editing’).

7. Write the First Draft of the Thesis

Once you have completed your research, you will arrive at what can be the most nerve-racking stage, writing up your results in the form of your first draft. Before you begin writing, it is important that you finalise a detailed plan for your thesis (one that you no doubt will have begun developing during the research stage). With a detailed plan and organised research, you will not feel like you are starting from scratch when you begin writing your first draft. Your professional editor at Elite Editing & Tutoring can help you during this stage, as some students find it helpful to submit individual chapters for editing as soon as they have written them. This is especially helpful for students who have English as a second language. This way you are able to submit drafts to your supervisor that have already been edited to improve the level of English and your supervisor can concentrate on advising you regarding the ideas and arguments contained in your thesis, rather than being distracted by the language use.

8. Thesis Structure

The structure of a thesis varies widely. It will depend on what level you are studying at, what field you are studying in, the guidelines you are following, your supervisor’s suggestions, and how best to present the type of research you have done. Below is an example of a common thesis structure. This is a guide only and you will need to adjust it to suit your needs and adhere to your department’s guidelines.

• Title Page
• Contents
• Abstract
• Declaration of Original Work
• Acknowledgments
• List of Figures and Tables
• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Thesis Chapters
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Appendices

9. The Final Stage: Professional Editing

Once you have completed writing your thesis, it is vital that you have it professionally edited by an academic editor. You have just spent between a year (for Honours students) and over three years (for PhD students) doing your research and writing up your results. After all this effort, it is critical that your work is presented in the best possible way. Using a professional academic editor will ensure that your work is polished, well written, and presented correctly. If English is your second language, having your thesis professionally edited is even more important. You do not want mistakes in your writing to confuse your examiners or distract them from the important arguments you are making.

This article has been written by Dr Lisa Lines, the Director and Head Editor of Elite Editing & Tutoring. For more information on how to write your thesis or dissertation, please visit our website.

Please note that some universities require postgraduate students to obtain the permission of their supervisor prior to having their thesis professionally edited. We recommend that students follow the policies of their universities.

Dr. Lisa Lines
Director and Head Editor
Elite Editing & Tutoring

Web: http://www.eliteediting.com.au
Blog: http://eliteediting.blogspot.com

Our professional, academic editors will edit your essay, assignment, thesis or dissertation to help you improve your grades. We provide an online service to high school and university students all over the world.

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