Research Methodology (RM6001): Academic Writing Íde O’Sullivan and Lawrence Cleary Regional Writing Centre, UL www.ul.ie/rwc

Dissertation writing How will you organise your approach to this seemingly sublime, looming task?

Ways of ordering Writing Process—Planning, Drafting, (Discussing / Consulting), Revising, Editing and Proofreading. Rhetorical Situation—part of the planning stage and includes an assessment of the occasion for writing, writer, topic, audience and purpose. Writing Strategies—cognitive, metacognitive, affective and social. Ways of organising your thoughts around any given writing exercise and around your development as a writer. As it is with ideas that you try to organise for your reader, you need to have ways of ordering your ideas about how you will approach each occasion for writing, how you will develop strategies that allow you to accomplish goals as you write and how you evaluate those accomplishments in terms of how suitably you met your goals in relation to the context into which you write. The right way to write is the way that works. If it ain’t working, what are you going to fix? Examining one’s own process and how well one evaluates the situation into which one writes will inevitably help the writer to identify strategies that are not working and which need revision. Evaluating strategies, like evaluating the rhetorical situation, is a cognitive skill. Robert Scholes is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities at Brown University. The Rise and Fall of English Reconstructing English as a Discipline, February 1998 Also by Robert Scholes: Protocols of Reading, Semiotics and Interpretation, Structuralism in Literature, and Textual Power: Literary Theory and the Teaching of English. 3 3

The writing process Prewriting Drafting Revising Editing and Proofreading Writing is a process. Each individual approaches a writing task armed with individual, sometimes well-developed, sometimes not-so-well-developed, strategies. None of us go through the process in exactly the same way. Good writers develop their strategies in response to different elements of the writing process by asking themselves if a particular strategy was working or not working. Strategies that fail are reviewed and altered. Sometimes, a change in one strategy will result is some modifications of other strategies as a function of accommodation to the new development. None of us go through the process in exactly the same order. There is no one “right” way to write. Some of us begin drafting even before we begin to read. Others revise as they draft. Yet others do not begin to right until they have a strong sense of how the ideas that they will express will order themselves logically. Most of us begin writing before we know what we are talking about, just so that we can feel as if we have accomplished something, continuing to read and continually modifying what we had written before we had consulted the latest source. Whatever works is right. In cases such as the occasion that brings me here before you, “right” is measured by how the paper fares in its evaluation for assessment. However, remember, that every piece of writing includes a learning curve for those who monitor their strategies and for those who view and use writing as a learning methodology. Whenever we talk about a topic, we learn about it. We learn about ourselves. We learn to inquire in a way that yields new knowledge. We learn that time and space limitations result in a restriction on our potentials, and we learn to be comfortable with this fact. Finally, writing is recursive. It is a back and forth process. What we begin today may be moved to another location in the dissertation than we had originally intended. We may elaborate on particular ideas that we had not originally conceived of as being of such importance. As we read, though, we discover that the particular idea was central to our project, and everything around it is refocused on this central point of order. We put something in. We take something out. We edit a sentence, then decide to change it back to its previous form. We decide on one direction, then change our minds and reestablish our course of action or line of inquiry. As the proverb so aptly states it: “The opera ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings”.

Prewriting Planning Gathering information Evaluating the rhetorical situation, or context, into which you write Choosing and focusing your topic Establishing an organising principle Gathering information Entering the discourse on your topic Taking notes as a strategy to avoid charges of plagiarism Evaluating sources Though you all are probably well into your writing process by now, it pays to review all of the stages of the process, even now, as writing is this recursive activity. Considering that you are so far into your writing process, in fact, I had contemplated skipping this section on planning and gathering information altogether. Then it occurred to me that if you were experiencing difficulties with organisation or structure or with how to construct the argument, some of the problem may be due to inattention to necessities in these early stages. Because writing is a recursive activity, a back and forth process, I thought it would be beneficial if I presented the process in its totality and allow you to assess how well you laid the foundations of your project in those early stages. The Rhetorical Situation: Triangulation of a consideration of your audience, yourself as a writer or communicator, and your purpose. What do you know about your audience? What do they expect to see in your document in terms of content, format, organisation and style? What prejudices or preconceptions do they hold (truth values, methodologies,…; in relation to the topic you have chosen and the inquiry you are pursuing)? Will the topic you have chosen be valued by your audience? On what basis will they evaluate the credibility of your conclusions? What do they need to know in order that your project is valued and your conclusions achieve credibility in their eyes? How do you want to appear to your audience? How will you demonstrate that you are an authority on your subject? How will you show that you are trustworthy? What impression do you want to make on your audience? What are you trying to achieve with your writing? Are you trying to inform? Persuade? Or express your feelings? What is your purpose for writing? At this point, you have submitted a proposal and two progress reports. The question is: have you received any feedback on your progress reports? Has your topic been approved? Has your line of inquiry been approved? Has your methodology been approved? Are you reading topical material that is pertinent to the line of inquiry and valued in the discourse community? Are you documenting your sources?

Planning: Assessing the rhetorical situation Occasion Audience Topic Purpose Writer An assessment of the rhetorical situation is usually done early in the writing process, but again, writing is recursive. Changes made in revision necessitate a re-evaluation of the situation. Too, you may have learned of something late in the process that you had not originally realised. This new “something” has to be considered in terms of this situational context. All major revisions should be checked to see that each word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, section or chapter, each resource or methodology employed in pursuit of your goal and your paper’s goal, is suitable to the rhetorical situation or context into which you are writing.

Occasion What has prompted you to write? What do I need to know? What are my obligations? What are the procedures? When is it due? How much time do I have? What’s involved? My guidelines tell me about procedures that I must follow. When do I submit a proposal? Do I need to submit project reports? When? When do I submit my finished document? Do I need to defend my discoveries orally? What kind of project will I choose? How do I write about it? This could as easily be a course in Hotels, Catering & Tourism, here, at IT Tralee, or a course in Nursing & Health Care Studies. The questions one asks oneself are the same. What do I need to know? What is expected of me? Many of these questions (at this stage), I am sure, you have already answered. Still, as writing is a recursive activity, we keep coming back to this, revisiting it. As the occasion is a constant, it is a point of order around which everything spins. One aspect of the occasion that does change is the time remaining. As the time remaining before the due date lessens, one’s strategies need to be reassessed to be sure that they accommodate this new condition.

Occasion When we consider the occasion for writing, we think about What has prompted me to write? How much writing do I have to do? How much time do I have to do it? How much time should I allot for planning and organising, and for drafting and revising? What tone should I adopt? Formal? Informal? Authoritative? Conciliatory? Assertive?

Audience Your audience affects how you write. Terms that need not be explained for one audience, may need to be explained to other audiences. General audiences may not have your subject knowledge, but they are usually thought of as intelligent, thoughtful readers willing to be informed or persuaded. Your classmates make good audiences. Write for them. Let them read your dissertation and give you feedback on the ease with which they were able to read and understand it. Who am I writing for? Can my peers understand what I’m saying? Am I fulfilling the criteria established by my instructors? How much revising and polishing will be necessary to meet the instructor’s standards? What format appeals to my audience? (from [Ebest et al. 1997, 9])

Topic Your topic is something that will have your supervisor’s approval. Some things to think about: How much do you already know about this topic? How much am I going to have to know in order to do this project and report on it? To say something meaningful? How much research am I going to have to do? How much time do I have to do it? These last considerations have to do with scope. Should I narrow or broaden my topic to exclude certain aspects of my topic or to include other aspects in order to accommodate the audience’s expectations. Length and time are two big determinants in your decisions about scope. Purpose may also play a role. That some purposes require greater scope is one possible reason no page limit was set. Some writing tasks require greater space than others.

Topic Strategies for choosing topics and narrowing or broadening the coverage you will give it. Taking suggestions from your supervisor Brainstorming (individually or in groups) Listing Clustering or mind-mapping Free-writing or discussing Asking wh-questions—who, what, when, where, how and why? Brainstorming, listing, clustering and free writing are all ways of “drawing on your unconscious mind to bring ideas to the surface” (Ebest et al. 1997 9).

Topic Topics do not stand in isolation. They exist in a context. What is the relationship of your topic to your course of study? What are people saying about your topic in the literature you have read? What are the issues of concern? When choosing a topic, get involved in the community that is talking about this topic. What are they saying? How can you add to that conversation? Enter that conversation! When it comes time for revision, you will want to come back to these considerations, to ask yourself if you have located a discourse community that is talking about the aspect of your topic that you have chosen and whether you have entered that conversation or have just relied on their knowledge and opinions without comment or scrutiny.

Purpose What is your purpose for writing? To express your feelings? To inform? To persuade? As you draft, revise and edit, make sure that every contribution to your report works to realise that purpose. Here, you are informing and persuading (logos / ethos—in equal measure).

Purpose If informing is the purpose of your report, then the point of order is a triangulation of your audience, your topic and your purpose. Audience analysis Relevance Rhetorical appeals What does your audience want to know about your topic (audience analysis), what do they already know (relevance), and how will you keep their attention and persuade them that your thoughts are worth consideration (appeals).

Writer What do I already know about this topic? How quickly do I learn? Read? Write? How much writing have I already done? Have I developed an academic or authoritative voice? Have I addressed this audience before? What are my weaknesses? What are my strengths? What are my weaknesses? Organisation? Structure? Paragraphing? Clarity of Expression? Sentence structure? Punctuation? Grammar? Speaking with authority? What are my strengths? Knowing who I am, how much time will it take ME to write my dissertation? Am I a ditherer? A procrastinator? Having assessed and prioritised my weaknesses, what should I work on first? Knowing my strengths, how can I turn this strength to my advantage?

Drafting Try to visualise your report. 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. Start with the sections that you are ready to write about. Usually, introductions and abstracts are the last things written. Write your reference pages as you research and as you draft. Write the parts that can be finished quickly or do not need a lot of revision: The cover sheet can be finished immediately. You may revise the title, but for all intents and purposes, its done. Get started right away on your reference page. Save preliminary sections as separate documents so that they aren’t subject to movement as when making changes in the body of your report. Also, saving the preliminary section, the body and the end matter as separate documents allows you to vary your pagination—roman numerals for preliminaries, Arabic for body, letter / Arabic combinations for appendices. (Having said this, the guidelines ask for an individual electronic document—one way around this is to send several documents as a zip-file. This will keep them together. Ask if this is okay.) Begin writing by formatting your pages. Using styles for headings helps later when it comes time to set up your table of content. Set up your margins, establish your font and paragraph style (block or indented style). Just get on the keyboard.

Drafting Continue to reassess your rhetorical situation. Does what you have written so far contribute to the achievement of your purpose? Experiment with organisation and methods of development. Don’t get bogged-down in details; focus on the big issues: organisation and logical flow. As you develop your method of organisation, reassess your section and sub-section titles. Good titles inform the reader of what to expect. They also help you maintain a sense of logical order: Does it make sense to talk about X before talking about Y? Mmmn. Maybe I should rearrange the sections so that they flow more logically toward my conclusions and recommendations. Try to establish a point of order. Usually, this is your thesis statement, a question, or a hypothesis that you are struggling to confirm. Write out the organszing principle as a simple single sentence: “The aim of the dissertation is to establish if the use of mobile computing is more cost effective than the traditional form of data collection and processing” (O’Donnell 2007, p. vii).

Drafting How should it look? Do you have a vision? What should the dissertation look like? Do you know what goes in each chapter? What chapters can you already title? Do you have a general idea of what they will contain?

Revision Is your dissertation logically organised? A good way to check the logical flow of your ideas is to outline your report AFTER you’ve completed your draft. How did you introduce your topic? By giving it definition? Describing its development? Explaining what it is? Does each section contribute to your reader’s understanding of your topic? Does your report service your purpose, aims, and objectives?

Revising Outline each section. How does each paragraph contribute to our understanding of the topic of that section? Take a close look at paragraphs: Does each paragraph have a central idea? Does it have unity? Is it coherent and well developed? Is there a correspondence between the title of your report, your section headings and sub-headings and the central ideas in your paragraphs? Hyperlink: What is this paragraph’s topic? What is this paragraph’s controlling idea? Are there any sentences or ideas that do not belong? Is the paragraph coherent? Is it well developed?

Revising Do the methods used to illuminate your topic lead to logical discovery? No truths are self-evident. Claims have to be defended with evidence. Processes have to be described and explained; Design features and research methods have to be justified; The justification for generalisations and conclusions need to be made explicit; The criteria used to qualify our results also needs to be explicitly put forward and evaluated for objectivity; Underlying assumptions need to be evaluated for their objectivity. Methods of development include: comparative / contrast, analysis, evaluation, synthesis, explanation, cause and effect, classification and categorisation, definition and description (spatial / temporal), etc. Data: When we use data as the foundation for a claim, does the data in fact support the claim? Claims: Do we in fact establish the merit of our claims? Warrants: Do the assumptions on which our claims rely give us license to proceed with our argument? Backing: Do we support our claims with credible evidence and examples? Rebuts: Do we identify those who would oppose our claims and unveil the weakness of their claims? Qualification: Do we qualify our claims, revealing limitations or degrees of certainty?

Editing and proofreading Once the report is cogent, it must be made to be coherent. Work methodically, checking one feature at a time. Do not exclude formatting issues. Editing and proofreading is more than just grammar and punctuation; it is also about voice, rhythm, tone, style and clarity. Begin, for instance, with global issues: Unity, Order and Logical flow of ideas. Check for unnecessary or irrelevant ideas or information. Look for illogicalities in the arrangement of ideas. On the local level: Check paragraphs for internal logic and unity. Check sentence rhythm, grammar, syntax, register and mechanics.

Editing and proofreading Check for ambiguity Check for comma splices, run-ons, stringy sentences and fragments. Check for how sentences introduce new information: is it in the beginning of the sentence or at the end? Check that you use sentence types that are appropriate for your discipline. Squinting: The mob that had immediately gathered stormed the jail. Possible solutions: The mob that had gathered stormed the jail immediately. Recasting the sentence: A mob immediately gathered and stormed the jail. A mob gathered and immediately stormed the jail. Misplaced modifier: We almost lost all the parts. When what was meant was: We lost almost all the parts. Dangling: After finishing the research, the paper was easy to write. Implied subject in the adverb clause: I, but…”the paper” is the subject in the main clause. After finishing the research, I found the paper easy to write. Both clauses should refer to the same subject.

Editing and proofreading Check word order and usage. Are you using an indefinite article when a definite article is more precise. Check for agreement: Subject / verb; pronoun or noun substitute / antecedent or concatenation. Check for bias (gender, race, religious, creed, persuasion, etc).

Editing and proofreading Check for obstacles to clarity: Poorly chosen words Vague references Clichés and trite language Jargon Inappropriate connotations

Editing and proofreading Check for clarity: Effective subordination and emphasis Sentence variety Parallel structures Choppy writing Explicit logical links

Editing and proofreading Check formatting issues (appropriacy and consistency): Margins Font (size and style) Section heading numbers Paragraph style (block, semi-block, indented) Open document. Highlighted are problems.

Editing and proofreading Check for plagiarism Check the form of your in-text citations and of your full references in your References page. Check the content of your citations. Is everything that should be there there? Check that paraphrases are not too close to the original. Check that all figures, tables and graphs are captioned and cited (below figures and graphs; above tables) Check that any borrowed ideas, words or methods of organising information are referenced and clearly marked.

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, Again, in summary, every word choice and its position in every sentence works to situate the paper as either a player within the genre or else on the margins or completely outside of the genre into which they write. Each choice either seeks to convince or trouble the audiences sense of the authority of the writer, her credibility. Each lexical and grammatical choice either explicitly establishes or befuddles logical links to contiguous choices. The effect of this choice seeps through the system like water through a concrete foundation.

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) An argument should be able to be mapped. Reviewing Your Argument's Evidence So how do you create an argument with solid premises? You review your evidence, making sure that it is fair, objective, and complete. Ask yourself the following questions about the evidence in your paper. Have you suppressed any facts? The opponent's point of view needs to be reckoned with, not ignored. Perhaps you are in the middle of writing what you think is a brilliant paper that argues that Christianity as we know it was created (or recreated) by Paul. You discover a compelling argument that states otherwise. (Or, even more depressing, you discover a book that steals your thunder.) Resist the temptation to pretend that you never saw these books. Work them into your argument in such a way that your work as a whole is strengthened by their presence. Have you manipulated any facts? Sometimes we dig up information that can only loosely support our point of view. But we need that information in order to make our argument stand. Is it fair to stretch the information to suit our own purposes? Absolutely not - unless you are going to acknowledge the stretch to the reader, and leave it to him to decide whether your stretch is a fair one. Do you have enough evidence? Review the main points of your argument and consider whether or not each point is convincing based on the evidence alone. Do you find yourself relying on your rhetoric alone to make a point? If you are, you may need to return to your sources for evidence. Do you have too much evidence? Take a look at your paper. Do your quoted passages outweigh your own prose? If so, perhaps your argument has been buried under the arguments of others. It's likely, too, that your reader will find so much information difficult to wade through. She'll be looking hard for an argument that may in fact be impossible to find. Is your evidence current? Reputable? It's not that you can't use dated sources in a paper, it's simply that you run the risk of not considering more current information that might challenge your point of view. You've also got to make sure that your evidence is reputable. Remember the dictum, "You can't believe everything you read." This is especially true of information you find on the Internet, where anyone can post anything, sometimes without the slightest concern for its validity. (Dartmounth Writing Program 2006)

Literature Review & logic 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. Say why you relied on these resources. Why did you read these and not some others? Did they support or dispute your initial claim or hypothesis? What particular information or area of study did they offer, and why were they more reliable sources than others you might have chosen. Categorise your lit review Lit about the topic—subsection subtopics. …about the particular aspect of the topic—subsection subtopics. …about the methodologies employed …subsection the literature into types of methodologies you employed. What did you read about interviews or surveys. What did the literature give you that you used in your research and demonstrated with evidence in the paper? Did you use models from the texts? Procedures and processes? Why were these methodologies more reliable than other possible methodologies?

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?

Methodologies & credibility All data has to be analysed. You need a methodology for analyses as well. Quantitative data: can it be generalised? 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.

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.

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? When you are not making progress…

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 Sometimes, the verbalisation of the heading organises your thoughts for that section or subsection

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. If the research is not yielding the data you need to support the claim that you want to make, then you have to consider either the validity of your claim or else the wisdom of your line of inquiry. Perhaps, for instance, a survey was not a bad research methodology to use for gathering the kind of data you needed, but the questions were poorly designed. Solution: A redesign and a renewed effort.

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 Seek help. Talk to friends. Talk about how you feel, but talk about your ideas as well. Eat lots of ice cream and candy

Works Cited Dartmouth Writing Program (2006) “Logic and Argument” [Online], available: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/ student/toc.shtml [accessed 08 Jan. 2008]. Discourse Community Analysis (n.d.) “Discourse Community Analysis Assignment Sheet”, Center for Writing Excellence, West Virginia University [online], available: http://www.as.wva.edu/~lbrady/202discourse.html [accessed 20 Aug. 2008]. Ebest, S., R., Brusaw, T., Oliu, W., and Alred, G. (1997) Writing From A to Z, Mt. View, CA: Mayfield Publishing. Glucksman Library (2007) “Cite It Right: Guide to Harvard Referencing Style”, 2nd edition; University of Limerick’s Referencing Series [Online], http://www.ul.ie/~library/ pdf/citeitright.pdf [accessed 08 Jan. 2008]. University of Hertfordshire (2008) “Describing & Analysing Language: Handouts”, University of Hertfordshire, School of Combined Studies, BA (Hons) in English Language for Commercial Communication [online], available: http://www.uefap.com/courses/baecc/dal/handouts.htm [accessed 08 Jan. 2008].