By: Shawn Cox
Submitted: 2011-02-07 16:15:01 | Word Count: 727
Being able to write a scholarly dissertation this is a dream of every genuine aspirant to scholarship. But just as scholarship and erudition do not come easily to anybody, so is the mastery of this great academic craft. It requires great effort, constant practice and hard work to master the art of dissertation writing, apart from a sound knowledge of the technical know-how involved.
Dissertation What It Is
The dictionary definition would tell you that a dissertation is a detailed discourse on a subject, especially one submitted for an academic degree or diploma. Any piece of scholarly writing will not pass for dissertation. It is a specialized form of academic writing services. There are different forms and kinds of academic writing, like theses, research papers, term papers, seminar papers or articles written for academic journals. Among these, dissertation stands out as possibly the best representative of academic writing because it perfectly balances both the subject matter and the form.
How to Write
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Since both content and form are equally important in writing a dissertation, one should be really meticulous in choosing the subject matter as well as the proper methodology of writing, before embarking upon the task of producing a scholarly dissertation. Only a meritorious topic, well researched and systematically and methodically documented will deserve to be called a proper dissertation. Hence, an aspirant should carefully follow the following steps in the process:
1. Choose a Topic
The very first step towards writing a good dissertation is to identify an area for your research and frame a topic. A carefully selected topic will guarantee that half the work is already done.
2. Develop a Thesis
Once the topic is selected, the next step is to pose a serious and relevant question for which you will be trying to find the right answer. This will be the central thesis of your dissertation.
3. Collect Data
Now that your position is clearly defined, you need to take all the effort to establish it on firm grounds. An extensive research is to be undertaken for collecting all possible material in order to support your thesis. What is to be taken care of at this point is that the material should be collected from appropriate and authentic sources, like books, journals, magazines, newspapers or even personal interviews. In our time, internet has established itself as the most popular means of obtaining any kind of information.
4. Read
Once the sources and material are ready at hand, one should start a careful reading of all of them. Reading is not a passive exercise of filtering the relevant information from the sources; it should be active reading, which will acquire knowledge and construct the right vision for the final writing.
5. Develop the Argument.
An alert reading gives you all the information that you may need to establish your central claim. Now, you have to be a critical thinker, and judiciously frame your argument, by marshalling all possible facts, observations and claims as premises to provide support to your conclusion.
6. Write It Out
The rest of the task is quite formal. Now that the whole thesis is ready to be produced, you should begin to actually write it out. Care should be taken to use appropriate language since it is an academic writing. Proper methodology is to be followed while writing the dissertation.
1. Acknowledge the Sources
The greatest challenge in writing a scholarly dissertation is regarding its authenticity. Your dissertation should never be a plagiarized version of some other piece of writing. Hence, one should take special care to acknowledge the sources where ever they are used. This will ensure the authenticity of one's own dissertation. The sources shall be acknowledged by way of providing end notes and bibliography.
8. Revise and Polish
There is no room for complacency even when the draft of the dissertation is ready. Good writing, they say, is rewriting. Hence you should revise and polish the draft in an objective and detached manner, by employing re-reading, rethinking, deleting irrelevant parts, making value additions, editing and so on, before you give the final shape to your dissertation.
Conclusion
As its Latin root suggests, the goal of a dissertation is to discuss' all the aspects of a particular topic and formulate a well balanced argument. If one can meticulously follow the different steps elaborated above, one can surely achieve the great dream of writing a scholarly dissertation.
