Academic Guide For Students: How To Ace In Writing A Simple Dissertation

The title of this piece is somewhat misleading. While it is a guide to writing a dissertation, there really is no such thing as a simple dissertation. The idea of a dissertation is to support a thesis with research and in many cases, the writer needs to conduct first-hand research, not just look in articles for answers. However, if you have been assigned a “simple” dissertation, you most likely get to skip the first-hand research and just use articles from professional journals to support your thesis. So, here is the best way to ace your small, but difficult project:

Find a template. Once you are assigned a dissertation, you should immediately find a well-written sample to use as a template. You should never use the template as one of your sources or as the dissertation that you turn in as your own, but having a template will help you stay on track.

Choose an appropriate topic. Your topic will need to be connected to your degree, so pick something that your instructor will approve of and one that will help you learn more about your future profession. The topic needs to severly narrowed and it needs to reflect the cutting-edge trends in your degree and future profession. Most dissertation topics are several words long and show correlations between two topics.

Know what you need to include. If you are writing a simple dissertation instead of a full-blown project, you should pay close attention to what needs to be included in the project. Do you need to write a proposal? Do you need acknowledgements? What about a methodology section? How many sources should you have? How many pages and chapters should be included? What should the abstract look like? What type of formatting do you need to use? If you miss a section, you might not be awarded class credit until you have completed the entire project.

Find someone to proofread the project for you. Most students are not good at proofreading their own writing. Since a dissertation, even a simple one, is a long writing assignment, it is more likely that students will not find their own errors. You can hire a proofreaders on a freelance site or ask a fellow student to proofread the paper (you can proofread hers in return). The proofreader will find mistakes that you would never see. Your instructor will appreciate the time you took to correct the small grammar errors and you might earn some extra points because of your precise writing.