Keywords

General description

The course aims to provide students following the Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research international Master’s degree programme with the knowledge and skills required to write a well-structured master’s degree thesis following general academic as well as more field specific conventions.

Learning outcomes

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to
• identify and refine those areas in the mechanics of writing (grammar, punctuation, paragraphing and cohesion) they have difficulties with
• identify the structure, moves and linguistic features of a master’s degree thesis
• review a thesis critically
• know and employ a formal academic style (grammar and vocabulary)
• express their own voice in their writing
• express clearly the aims, background and conclusions of their research
• write a data commentary

Contents

The course will cover the thesis writing process from choosing a research topic and formulating initial research questions to writing the thesis itself, the common structures and linguistic features of a Master’s thesis and its constituent parts (including the introduction, literature review and conclusion), ways of synthesizing and evaluating previous research to support one’s own study, and the differences between academic and non-academic style conventions including formatting and writing references. In addition, there will be an associated writing clinic to improve and refine students’ command of the mechanics of writing.

Teaching methods

The average student workload for a 5 credit course is 135 hours (5 x 27). This will be divided between class work (26 hours), the writing clinic (26 hours), tutorials, online work and other independent work. The course will be one period long.

Teaching language

English

Evaluation and evaluation criteria

Pass/fail.
- Satisfactory completion of tasks, including a representative sample from the students’ own theses work in progress - Active participation - Other criteria will be given by the teacher

Study materials

Will be distributed by the teacher and/or through Moodle.

Belongs to following study modules