Academic Writing Lessons: What Is A Doctoral Dissertation

A doctoral dissertation is the final piece which you must write before you graduate. Much like a final paper, it serves as the key component that you must work on throughout your doctoral program, which must be approved and published in the end in order for you to receive your doctorate.

If you are writing a doctoral dissertation, consider the following tips:

When you are writing any type of paper, it is important that you focus on having all of the key components:

• The introduction is the first part. This is where you focus on presenting a summary of the information to the reader, without going into too much detail. You want to present them with a roadmap of sorts that will show them where your essay is headed and what they can expect.
• After that is the body. The body is where you present the bulk of your findings. It is where you showcase the key arguments or ideas in support of your writing and where you present relevant evidence that you have uncovered in support of your writing.
• When all is said and done, it is time to write the conclusion. The conclusion is where you can weigh the different arguments that you presented and try to weigh them in light of the new evidence that you presented. You do not want to repeat the same points that were presented in your introduction. You want to remind the reader of the justification that you offered in the body of your paper.
• Students often wonder exactly how much they should write. They might stop, almost mid-sentence, because they are given a word count and they reached it. But this is not how you should judge your paper. Sure, you want to meet the word count that is required of you, but you do not want to limit yourself or your paper by merely stopping as soon as you hit the “1000 word” mark. You have put a lot of effort into this paper that the last thing you want is to insult it by not finishing properly. Remember that your goal is to write as much as you are able within the allotted time frame or word count. True quality will be considered much more important by your teacher than quantity.
• And of course, double and triple check that you actually answered the right question, or followed the right prompt. You don’t want to uncover this at the end.