Thesis writing Course for students at IDI

Stewart Clark

Student and Academic Division

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

stewart.clark@ntnu.no

tel. 73 59 52 45

Contents

1. Report and thesis writing 1

2. Web resources 8

3. Style and standards 16

4. Academic language (from MIT) 33

Module 1-Report and thesis

writing-• Structure of theses

• Editing your work

• Vocabulary

• Link words

• Words to avoid

• Word order

IMRAD structure

• Abstract• Introduction

(problems to be solved)• Methods• Results and Discussion

(analysis of findings)• Conclusions and further

research

(logical result of the process)• Appendix: Details

general > specific

specific > general

Scientific reports and theses 1Audience: Scientific peers, scientific

community, academic work and theses

Organization: Paper published in journals, house-

style rules.

Organization is inductive, a logical process.

Scientific reliability is central

Scientific reports and theses 2

• Abstract• Introduction

(problems to be solved)• Methods• Results and discussion

(analysis of findings)• Conclusions and further research

(logical result of the process)• Appendix: Details

(detailed analysis of findings)

Title

- Label not a sentence, no final stop (period)- Lower case for articles, conjunctions

(and, but, for, or, nor), and most short prepositions

- Avoid articles and fuzzy words (some, certain)

as the first word:

Use

Boolean Functions, Transforms, and Recursions

Not

Some Boolean Functions, Transforms, and Recursions

Abstract - format (For scientific reports and theses)

Summary of the information in the report • brief statement of why the work was

undertaken (objectives)• brief statement of methods (methods)• clear statement of the significant

facts/findings/ideas in the text (results-recommendations)

• An abstract should be as long as is necessary to sum up the essential information (250 to 500 words as a rule of thumb)

Abstract - format

Index Terms • After final paragraph of the Abstract• Written in bold as in the Abstract• In alphabetical order• Acronyms are defined in Index Terms if

defined in the paper.

Abstract - style

• For spelling, IEEE uses Webster’s College Dictionary, 4th Edition.

• For guidance on grammar and usage, consult The Chicago Manual of Style

• Write good continuous prose• Abstracts are stand alone texts• ‘By nature, Abstracts shall not contain

numbered mathematical equations or numbered references’ (IEEE Style Manual)

http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/publications/authors/transjnl/stylemanual.pdf

‘Abstract’ for comment

Consider the following: 'Certain problems (specify them)

concerning dynamic Boolean systems (without saying which) in some high performance associative memory systems (unspecified) have been studied. Conclusions have been drawn and recommendations for analytical approaches are made.'

Format - AcknowledgementBe formal - I wish to thank my supervisor Professor Arne

Olsen at the Department of XZY, Norwegian University of Science and Technology for his invaluable assistance.

- I would also like to thank…

- I appreciate the assistance from…

- Special thanks are given to…

- Gratitude is also given to…

- I am grateful for the help from Anne Olsen, research technician and other department staff in preparing the FEM analysis

- Finally, I acknowledge the generous financial support from the Research Council of Norway

Format – Contents

Table of ContentsThe structural pattern of the report

Have a planned layout: fonts, capitalization, indentation

THIS IS CHAPTER 1

This is Section 1.1

Section 1.1.1

Contents – layout example

Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iAcknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iiContents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iiiList of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vList of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .viNomenclature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31.1 Thesis Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Other front material in theses

Nomenclature • Nomenclature lists the symbols and their

definitionsList of Abbreviations• Some these have an alphabetical list of

abbreviations and acronymsList of TablesList of Figures• Check that the captions correspond to those

in the text

Format – Introduction 1

Presentation of the nature/scope of the subject-matter

- explains what the situation was before you began the work that you are about to report

- your objectives and strategy in writing the report- your assumptions about the audience's

expertise/needs

Presentation of relevant literature for orientation - how the report relates to other sources of

information- a review of previous work and theoretical

considerations

Format – Introduction 2Should NOT contain information you know as a

result of having completed the work you are about to report

Shows how the thesis/report is organized (only the chapters in a thesis:

Chapter 2 considers…

Then, Chapter 3 turns to the issue of …

After this, Chapter 4 demonstrates …

This is followed by Chapter 5 which presents the conclusions and applications of this work for the fish farming industry. Finally, Chapter 6 outlines the implications and potential for further research in this field.

Format – Body

• Methods

- The defence of your results and their reliability

• Results and Discussion

- Presentation of principles, relationships and generalizations

- Exceptions/unsettled points- Applications/implications

• Conclusions and Recommendations for Further

Work

Format – End matter

• References

This has no section number in front

• Appendix/Appendices

Presentation of important experiments, data and computations.

Label: Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C...

“See Figure A.12 and Table C.11 for…”

Order of writingB >C> I> A> T

>Body

methods (details to appendices)

results (details to appendices)

> Conclusions

recommendations for further

work

> Introduction

> Abstract/Executive summary

> Title

Editing your work 1

Formal editing: • Do the section titles in the report match the contents

list?• Are tables and figures in chronological order?• Are words like table, figure, equation, section correctly

capitalized?• Are terms like figure, equation, section consistent?

(Figure 3/Fig. 4. Equation 6/Eq. 4)• Use of brackets. Are sections and

equations easy to pick out? What is (3.3)?• Check the cited references for consistency.

Use (Olsen 1997) or (Olsen, 1997), not both.

Editing your work 2Stylistic editing:• Check the recommended style in "Instructions to

Authors" from the journal you are submitting to? • The Harvard reference system, preferred in this journal,

uses the name of the author, the date of publication and, following quoted material, the page reference, as a key to the full bibliographic details set out in the list of references.

Examples in the text:• ‘This has been questioned by several authors (Smith

1990, Jones and Cook 1998, Dobbs et al. 1991)’.

(N.B. et al. is used in the text when

there are three or more authors.)• ‘Swanwick (1988, p. 56) has attempted to …’

Editing your work 3Reference list:• Where there are two or more works by one

author in the same year, use 1997a, 1997b, etc.• The reference list must include every work cited

in the text. Ensure that dates, spelling and titles used in the text are consistent with those listed in the reference list.

• All co-authors are to be cited. Do not use et al. here.

• Check the correct use of italics and

punctuation in the reference list.

Editing your work 4Reference list:• Check the reference list for consistency

- institution names,

- names of journals, • Avoid Norwegian and English terms for

the same institution.

(Use Google to check on the home page.

Be careful: a PhD degree from NTNU in 1995

is impossible in two ways).

IEEE Style ManualDecide reference format

’NOTE: Editing of references may entail careful renumbering of references, as well as the citations in text.’ (From IEEE Style Manual)

My suggestion: use the Harvard system (name and year) as a working tool, then convert to IEEE style when finished.

IEEE Style ManualReference format

References in Text: In square brackets, inside the punctuation. e.g.,

…as shown by Brown [4], [5]; as mentioned earlier [2],

or as nouns:

as demonstrated in [3]; according to [4] and [6]–[9].

IEEE Style Manual Reference format

Reference list: Basic Format: [1] J. K. Author, “Name of paper,” Abbrev. Title

of Periodical, vol. x, no. x, pp. xxx-xxx, Abbrev. Month, year.

Example: [1] R. E. Kalman, “New results in linear filtering

and prediction theory,” J. Basic Eng., ser. D, vol. 83, pp. 95-108, Mar. 1961.

NOTE: IEEE style use pp. for both printed works and papers

IEEE Style Manual Caption format

Suggest: consecutive numbering in each chapter with stops

Fig. 3.1. Example of linear filtering. Fig. 3.1. Example of linear filtering ’See Figs. 3.1 – 3.4’

alternativeFig. 3-1. Example of linear filtering.Fig. 3-1. Example of linear filtering

But if you take this format, consider ’See Figs. 3-1 – 3-4’

A or an?

’Indefinite articles are assigned to abbreviations to fit the sound of the first letter (e.g., an FCC regulation; a BRI).’ (From IEEE Style Manual)

Note A is #4 in the 100 most frequent words

Abbreviations are read letter by letter, NTNUAcronyms are read as a word, SINTEF, CERN

ARTICLES: A/AN

RULE: THE SOUND, NOT THE SPELLING, DECIDES. A BEFORE A CONSONANT SOUND AN BEFORE A VOWEL SOUND

Mark which of the letters of the alphabet could take AN if they start an abbreviation:

A B C D E F G H  I

J K L M N O P Q  R

S T U V W X Y Z

 

Mark A or AN:a) A/AN European Commission regulation

b) A/AN EU national

c) A/AN euro

d) A/AN UV-spectrofluorimeter

e) A/AN ultraviolet light change

f) A/AN HES regulation

g) A/AN Health, Environment and Safety regulation

h) A/AN 8 mm gap

i) A/AN Master of Science degree

j) A/AN MSc degree

Module 2 -Useful web resources-

Collocation

English Matters

British National Corpus

Academic writing

Lix – readability

Collocation – natural word partnerships

Some words belong together naturally, others do not.

Insert the opposites:• Heavy traffic/ ________traffic on the

roads• He suffered from a heavy cold/_______

cold• A cup of strong coffee/________coffee• A strong/_________wind was blowing

Collocation exercise

• Match each of these nouns to one of the groups of verbs. All the verbs must collocate with the noun:

battle struggle fight war

A.avoid, get into, pick, provoke

B.declare, go to, lead to, prolong, wage

C.be engaged in, continue, give up, take up

D.fight, force, go into, lose

(See English Matters, Vocabulary exercises from Stewart)

Resources on the Web• Oxford Teachers’ Club

www.oup.com/elt/global/teachersclub/

• British Council Education and Training

www.britishcouncil.org/education

• English Matters

www.ntnu.no/intersek/english_matters

English mattersNettportal for deg som bruker engelsk som arbeidsspråk.

www.ntnu.no/international/english_matters/

Online dictionaries – EN/EN• Longman (BE), Miriam Webster (AE),• Roget’s Thesaurus, Slang dictionary• Dictionaries with pronunciation and

translation helpOnline dictionaries – EN/NO and NO/EN• Ordnett, Clue, UMB’s Green Dictionary

English matters

Longman online dictionary - Collocations Chance - collocations • there's a chance (that) (=it is possible that) • there's every chance (that) (=it is very likely) • some chance little chance no chance a

good/fair chance (=something is likely) • a slight/slim/outside chance (=something is

unlikely) • a fifty-fifty chance (=the possibility of

something happening or not happening is equal)

• a million to one chance/a one in a million chance (=something is extremely unlikely to happen)

British National Corpus (BNC)

• 100 million word collection of BE texts

• Oxford UP, Longman, Chambers and British Library

• Free search samplerhttp://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html

Exercise:

something that is quite likely to happen

Is it a large? great? big? possibility of …

or a strong/real/distinct possibility?

Use Longman and BNC to find out, and which verb to use

Use to BNC to check collocations

Standard collocations ’I found it on the Web’ absolutely convinced (20) extremely convinced (0)(adverb + verb)slight breeze (20)light wind (25) weak wind (0) (adjective + noun)

Numbers refer to hits on the British National Corpus

English matters

Just the Word Helps you to find word combinations

Based on British National Corpus

Use ’suggest alternatives’ option

Generates suggestions, note colour code

Try it with ’weak wind’

English matters

Terminology – EN/NO and NO/EN• UHR Termbase (educational terminology),

EØS base• Norwegian ministries• Norwegian legislation (Lovdata)

Style• Emails and letters• English Style Guidelines• Academic writing portal, self study exercises• CV writing

English mattersVocabulary • Vocabulary and current affairs BBC World

Service, select "News English" 3 new stories a week. Often lesson plans in pdf

• BE and AE newspapers

Self-study • Collocation exercises• Agreement exercise • Phrasal verbs• Prepositions• Prefixes (BBC English 1)

Using English for Academic Purposes

A Guide for Students in Academic Writing

Linked on:

English Matters

Writing paragraphs

Click on Paragraph• Try Exercise 2 (Pesticide Suicide)

Continue to Topic- Identifying topic sentences • Do Exercise 7 in groups of 3

Click on Flow- Flow of information in paragraphs using key words• Try Exercise 8

Writing paragraphs

Click on Paragraph

Continue to Signalling = link words

Note all the examples• Do exercises 10 and 11. • Any contrasts?

Writing paragraphs

Continue to Cohesion,

see lexical cohesion = key terms

use reference words like…

this process, this view, this solution, these approaches

Words that summarize the text in the first sentence and connects the next sentence.

Writing paragraphs Group exercise: Add suitable reference words to

complete this paragraph:

’As soon as it gets to a certain size, every organization begins to feel a need to systematize its management of human resources.’

Some suggestions: account, advice, answer, argument, assertion, assumption, claim, comment, conclusion, criticism, description, difficultly, discussion, distinction, emphasis, estimate, example, explanation, fall, finding, idea, improvement, increase, observation, proof, proposal, reference, rejection, report, rise, situation, suggestion, view.

Functions

• Click on functions in academic writing No.16. Introducing - note useful phrases at the bottom

No. 9. Including tables- note language tips at the bottom- Click on Exercises and try Ex. 1 and 2

(Gap filling)

Functions/Citing sources

Functions

• Click on functions in academic writing

No. 17. Conclusions

- note useful phrases at the bottom

Citing sources

• Reporting and summarizing

- note useful phrases at the bottom

Academic vocabulary

Academic Word List (AWL) about 600 core terms

An AWL term has to occur over 100 times in the 3.5 million word Academic Corpus.

The AWL is like the icing on a cake.

BUT don’t overdo it. A text that is full of AWL terms will be heavy to read.

Details of the Academic Corpus: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/corpus.aspx

Academic Word List

Note the derived terms = 3000 words Dictionary link on left Pronunciation help Visual thesaurus Two sets of exercises based on AWL

Readability How can this text become clearer?

Creditworthiness decreases with increasing debts and increasing cash-flow problems caused by an increase in ordinary depreciation, an increase in provisions for bad debts, an increase in loss reserves and increasing bad debts for the company.

LIX – readability index – gives this text 78

(> 60 ’Mycket svår, byråkratsvenska’

http://www.lix.se/index.php

Readability How can this text become clearer? Creditworthiness decreases with increasing

debts and increasing cash-flow problems caused by an increase in ordinary depreciation, an increase in provisions for bad debts, an increase in loss reserves and increasing bad debts for the company.

LIX – readability index – gives this text 78 (Score of 60 or more = Very heavy language

’byråkratsvenska’) http://www.lix.se/index.php

Readability

Creditworthiness decreases for several reasons. First, there are increasing debts and cash-flow problems, which may be caused by a rise in ordinary depreciation or an increase in provisions for bad debts. Second, the cause may be the need to raise loss reserves, or more bad debts for the company.

LIX – readability index – gives this text 43

(40 – 50 Average difficulty, normal for journals)

http://www.lix.se/index.php

Analysis of the changesCreditworthiness decreases for several reasons. First, there are increasing debts and cash-flow problems, which may be caused by a rise in ordinary depreciation or an increase in provisions for bad debts. Second, the cause may be the need to raise loss reserves, or more bad debts for the company.

---------------- header = more to come for several reasons- link words first, second, or- blessing of punctuation: 2>4 commas 1>3 stops- explanatory clause: which

Sentence lengthEven though pervasive gaming is a fairly new field, and there are just a few pervasive games developed, it is already possible to identify several unique types of pervasive games such as smart toys, affective games, augmented tabletop games, augmented reality games and location-aware games (ref).

(Over 40 words). The Lix readability score is 76.Very heavy language ’byråkratsvenska’ What can be done to make this more readable?

Sentence lengthEven though pervasive gaming is a fairly new field, and only there are just a few such pervasive games have been developed, it is already possible to identify several unique types of pervasive games. These include such as smart toys, affective games, augmented tabletop games, augmented reality games and location-aware games (ref).

What are the changes?Red = deleted textUnderlined = inserted text

Sentence length

Even though pervasive gaming is a fairly new field and only a few such games have been developed, it is already possible to identify several types of games. These include smart toys, affective games, augmented tabletop games, augmented reality games and location-aware games (ref).

(Two sentences). The Lix readability score is 52.

(Normal for official texts)

Readability exercise

Exercise – take a text of about 100 words on your laptop and enter it in Lix

http://www.lix.se/index.php

Results over 60 need revision, aim at 50.Discuss changes with your neighbour.What features are interesting with Lix?

Other readability indexesMost other readability indexes are computed using 5 steps: • Count the number of words in the document. • Count the number of syllables in the document. • Count the number of sentences in the document. • Compute the index – formula given

The result is the number of years of formal education needed to understand the text

Examples:http://www.online-utility.org/english/readability_test_and_improve.jsp

http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/