MPhil General Research Methodology Oct 2010 - Academic Writing

Dear MPhil Scholars,

Shortly I will give links to resourceful websites on various issues I discussed on Academic Writing. Keep checking this page for updates.

In the meantime, feel free to give your feedback on the Academic Writing classes.

Warmly
anil

MPhil General Research Methodology Oct 2010 - Academic Writing MLA Stylesheet

MPhil General Research Methodology 25 Oct 2010 - Academic Writing Classnotes

Notes by Madhushree S Bhat, MPhil. English Studies.

• Works Cited, Reference and Bibliography are commonly used words while writing a thesis.
• Works Cited and Reference mean one and the same. Reference is the term used in the APA (American Psychology Association).
• Bibliography: This is a list of books which may have helped you in writing the thesis directly or indirectly. It also contains works cited.
• While writing a thesis we lay down our arguments on certain strong foundations. If half of the thesis is based on that has already gone into the field of research, the other half is built referring to the work already done.
• During research we have to be careful not to plagiarize. If a thought or ideas is taken from another author and you try to pass it off as your own without giving credit to the original author it is plagiarism. The word plagiarism comes from the Greek word-plagiarius meaning to kidnap. The consequences of plagiarism are many. The chances of plagiarism detection are higher with UGC is requesting all universities to put all the thesis submitted to them on INFLIBNET
•  Plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional.
• Avoid unintentional plagiarism.
• Presenting someone else’s idea as your own or paraphrasing it and then, presenting it as your own also constitutes plagiarism. 

E.g
“The lack of distribution of food grains caused Bengal famine”-Amartya Sen.
If it is reproduced as “In fact the main reason for the great Bengal famine was lack of proper distribution of food grain,” It amounts to plagiarism.

To avoid plagiarism the same idea could be presented thus giving credit to the writer. E.g. “According to Amartya Sen the main reason for the great Bengal famine was lack of proper distribution of food grain.”
If it is exact words then use quotes“     ”. E.g. According to Amartya Sen “The lack of distribution of food grains caused Bengal famine.”

• The principle of Citation is: Move the idea forward with minimum distraction and maximum precision.
• One should never plagiarize as it is injustice to the person who formulated the idea. Apart from that one’s thinking as well as his/her personality remains unexposed.

Work Cited

Pinto, Anil. "Plagiarism and Citation Styles." Christ University,          Bangalore. 25 Oct. 2010. Lecture.  

MPhil General Research Methodology 19 Oct 2010 - Academic Writing Classnotes

Notes by Sreyashi Dhar, MPhil. English Studies. 


In the fourth session of academic writing the following areas were touched upon and discussed in detail.

1) Chapters

2) Timeline/Duration of Proposal

3) Writing Titles

4) Visual Structure of the Dissertation

5) Collaborative Writing

6) Synopsis

These class discussions have been provided in detail in the following paragraphs.

Chapters:

Literature review is the second chapter of the dissertation. Literature review is the chapter which needs to be written first and introduction is to be written last. Second, if it is a quantitative study, one needs to work on Research Design and Methodology chapter. Then one needs to deal with the Analysis and then the Conclusion chapter. One should keep working on the Bibliography from the very beginning. Never think that you will be able to do it at last.

Whenever you read any book for your dissertation, immediately take down the name of the author, title of the work (including the subtitle), place of publication, publisher, year of publication and page no(s). Third page of any book is the publisher’s information page.

If it is a journal, you need to even take down the volume and issue nos. Cutting-edge journals have not more than three issues in a year.

In case of online journals, you need to take down the date of access. This is because of two reasons. Firstly, in case of online information, the data can always change. Secondly, sometimes your mentioned date will help someone to access previous date’s data. E.g. Google dox backup date or wikipedia entries.

Timeline/duration of the proposal:

Time is provided to the scholars for data collection, analysis and writing. In a qualitative dissertation, primarily its textual analysis, so one needs time to think, and then only one can start writing.

Titles:

While writing titles, few things need to be kept in mind.

1. Area of study----E. g., if the major area is psychology, one needs to specify whether its child psychology or developmental psychology or social psychology and so on.
2. The key elements--- main focus in your research.
3. Methodology/Approach

(The above mentioned guidelines are mostly for quantitative research)

Conceptual Shift: What is your research on/ problem of your research. This angle is in regard to qualitative research. The title should contain the key words. Type the key elements in the research. If you are using one particular theorist, then his/her name should appear in the title.

E.g.1) “Freud, Return to Freud and the Feminist Turn”. Here turn denotes deconstruction. Post-structuralism has turns, not shifts. ‘Return to Freud’ here indicates Jacques Lacan, who revisited Freud in his psychoanalytic study.

Your titles need to sound these things.

2) “Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India ”. This title is given by Gauri Vishwanathan for her published PhD work.

It is important to state the problem in your title.

We can even coin new words and concepts. E.g. Lacan’s gaze concept, orientalism as a concept. Many times one’s entire academic word is just one word, but that’s a big deal.

Marx’s concept is ‘labour’, Freud’s concept is ‘unconscious’, Derrida’s concept is ‘turn’, Jung’s concept is ‘archetype’ and so on.

Visual Structure of the Dissertation:

Politics and Censorship in Persian Translation: A Study

(Bold 18-22, you can choose between these font size, font type, Times New Roman. This is for the cover page of your dissertation

(Details of this are put up on Mr. Pinto’s blog. Please refer to it.)

CHAPTER II (Capital letters and bold)

Next line: small letters and bold (font times new roman,12)

Double space between lines.

First paragraph of a chapter begins at the margin.

Either you give a tab for the next paragraph, or you give an extra line space and start at the margin.

Books for writing style:

Law: Blue Book

English: MLA Handbook, 7^th ed.

Sociology, Social Work, Education: APA (2009)

Harvard style: business schools

Chicago style

All these styles have come from the US.

You need to print your dissertation in Executive Bond or A4 size paper.

Page nos.- Insert page no- options

All punctuation marks matter a lot.

Double quotes should be used when you are quoting someone exactly.

Single quote should be used to quote a special concept. Don’t do it repeatedly. Do not transfer your spoken English into academic writing.

Collaborative Writing:

When more than one person writes a work then it is called collaborative writing. You cannot do it in your dissertation because it is considered unethical. It is very necessary that analysis, and interpretation and report are written by you.

Someone/ guide gives dimension to your ideas, so he/she is the second author of your work. But the person who really wrote it is the first author. He/she needs to be given the first credit.

Collaborative writing has taken new turn because of internet. Different people are writing on the same page at the same time. Social sciences have to take this route in the future. Ideas are emerging only through collaborative work. There is collaboration of different disciplines.

You can create a document and use the button ‘share’ in Gmail.

Synopsys:

Summary or gist is synopsis. It has multiple standards and multiple vocabularies.

Proposal= Synopsys.

Synopsys is what you give your guide after first draft of the dissertation. This is to find out whether you can go ahead with your final draft or not. It is a 2 page write-up (summary) of your entire dissertation.

Synopsys can be just the title and then complete two pages of text. It might not have any headings. A lot of IITs demand synopsis (1000-4000 words) after your dissertations. You can’t quote from your dissertation or lift from your dissertation in it.

Proposal format holds good for synopsis format too. 

MPhil General Research Methodology 18 Oct 2010 - Academic Writing Classnotes

Notes by Sumitha Nair, MPhil. English Studies.

Topics covered

1. Thesis Statement.
2. Structure of Dissertation.
3. Preview. 

A Proposal has to be submitted within a year of admission to the course. If a proposal is not accepted, it has to be re written. It is important to mention the duration of the proposal. A Proposal can either be accepted, accepted with corrections, re written or rejected.

Dissertation is a document given to a university for the award of degree presenting your study and results. Structure of a dissertation might vary depending on the discipline and university and sometimes the guide.

Simple Proposal (1 ½ pages)

• Heading (E.g. Proposal for M. Phil. English Studies dissertation).
• Tentative Title
• Objectives
• Methodology. (Analytical, what are the theories used to prove a phenomenon).
• Chapter Divisio:         
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Literature Review
• Chapter 3:  Research Design and Methodology. (Crucial for Qualitative Research. Must mention why one has chosen this sample or this particular phenomenon. Tools and testing techniques have to be established.)
• Chapter 4: Findings / Deduction / Analysis
• Chapter 5: Conclusion.
• Works cited/reference
• Appendix/ces

• Limitations: Time cannot be a part of the limitations
• Selected Bibliography: Works that are crucial for your research. Key texts crucial for the formulation of your research questions should be mentioned especially recent works.

Detailed proposal

• Heading
• Title
• Abstract (Summary of the entire proposal. 150 -350 words.)
• Introduction (State Research problem. Give the context of the research problem and then evolve the major issues of your research and then come to a specific issue. E.g. This research will find out….)
• Need for the study
• Methodology (Research background. Quantitative research will include the hypothesis which one must prove or disapprove. Qualitative Research will include Thesis which is normally one line. Research questions and objectives are also a part of methodology)
• Chapter division.
• Budget (If it is a funded research)

 Work Cited

Pinto, Anil. "Structure of Academic Writing." Christ University,          Bangalore. 18 Oct. 2010. Lecture.  

MPhil General Research Methodology 12 Oct 2010 - Academic Writing Classnotes

Notes by Arul Gasper, MPhil. English Studies.
What is writing?

Writing is a representation of language in textual medium.

Difference between Academic writing and other writing

Academic writing is critical and it is for the informed audience. To start any academic writing, one has to learn concepts. Any writing that occurs outside this type of writing is called other writing.

Features of Academic writing

Objective: It is to show the foundation of argument and upon which you build your thesis. A specific methodology is followed.

Significance: You are here to show how important your argument is. It is demonstrated through literature reviews or studies: why your study is so important.

Adequate details – Statistical values, data and data analysis are provided to support your stand.

Types of academic Writings

Abstract: It’s a summary of your entire thesis, what you have exactly done. The summary will introduce the area of enquiry. It will have the problem statement. In the summary, you have to show what methodology you will use followed by conclusion.

Research paper: It has a topic, authors, and abstract at the beginning, entire paper, literature reviews, methodology and conclusion. Word limit for a science paper can be around 1000 but any social science papers will range from 3000 to 6000 words.

Dissertation: It means a piece of written work that reports on the findings of a theoretical or empirical investigation and is undertaken in accordance with the regulations for an honors or first masters’ degree Word limit will range between 6000 and 20000

Thesis: Word limit would be around 50000 words

Proposal: refers to your area of enquiry, significance: why is it so important, methodology you choose, resources, budget in case of longer researches, duration and names of the investigators

Reader:  It is a collection of seminal essays in a particular area.

Book: If you are passionate about a certain area of study, you read books in that particular area.

Chapter: Sections

Collaborative writing – two or more people together doing a research on a particular area of study

Digital writing -   online writing and so on   

Work Cited

Pinto, Anil. "Academic Writing." Christ University,          Bangalore. 12 Oct. 2010. Lecture.  

MPhil General Research Methodology 11 Oct 2010 - Academic Writing Classnotes

Notes by Binoy C.U., MPhil. Psychology

Research

• A Research becomes a research only when it is published
• The most important idea of research is not reading or writing but providing matter for Academic Debate for further building on of knowledge
• 1904 Einstein came out with five papers and four of them redefined physics (the spirit of real research)
• The structure of academic writing we see today is only Fifty years old
• Looking in to the history – during the times of Socrates and Plato there was constant citing.  But Aristotle did not cite Plato but quoted him
• The first secular university was established only in 1810 at Berlin
• Wars have given rise to most of research break-through
• Many disciplines took birth due to war. A lot of psychometric tests in psychology came in the context of wars, like Vietnam War.  In ELT communicative English method is said to have emerged from the Vietnam War.  Anthropology is a colonial discipline. The discipline of English literature is also a product of colonialism and First World War.
• Research building is always a  community activity not an individual activity
• Only when others comment on your knowledge you can build up knowledge
• Research really means debate with an established system
• Knowledge has no escape from the debate
• In a research your first and foremost duty is to find out ‘when, where and who’ of a statement.  Then establish why you differ from it
• Three approaches to research or theory - 1. Prove it wrong based on researcher’s own arguments in the articles 2. Agree it is right 3. Modify or build on

Academics & Research

• One should not mix these two
• What is an academy – it is an institution where we have formal rules, regulations, protocols
• It is useful to make a distinction between academics and research as two separate domains.
• Every research should push human understanding further
• One should question and crack actual theory and establish something new
• Research is not re-searching  

Work Cited

Pinto, Anil. "Introduction to Academic Writing" Christ University,          Bangalore. 11 Oct. 2010. Lecture.