THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO WRITING YOUR DISSERTATION Process, techniques and insights that will help you enhance your grades TESTS IN Steve Ball PRICE EXTENT BINDING FORMAT ISBN PUB DATE
£12.99 240 pages Paperback 234 x 153 mm 978-1-84528-454-1 26th August 2011
BIC CODE
JNZ, CBW, GP
CATEGORY
Study Skills
TERRITORIES
World Rights
STEVE BALL is Senior Lecturer in Publishing at the Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies, Oxford Brookes University. For many years he has supervised dissertations and projects at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and runs research methods classes. With over 30 years of editorial experience, he was also a founder member of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders.
The undergraduate or masters dissertation is often the largest single piece of work undertaken by students – and the hardest. It is a sad fact that many good pieces of student research and inquiry are devalued – and sometimes fail – because they are badly planned, structured and presented. ● This fresh guide from an expert author shows you how to make all that hard work count! Find out how to succeed from the beginning. KEY POINTS This thorough and accessible handbook encompasses everything from decoding the academic language of research questions to delivering a successful dissertation on time A genuine ‘how to’ guide, includes devices to keep yourself on track and demonstrates the difference between good and bad practice Learn how to transform an adequate dissertation into a good one The first book of its type to confront plagiarism head-on (an increasingly complex issue due to internet research), devoting an entire chapter Intended as a self-study resource for students’ independent use, will also be a suitable course text Launched in How To Books’s new study skills livery – a series which delivers a suite of resources for students to rely on CONTENTS 1. RTFM – succeed from the start by understanding what you’re doing 2. Scheduling and planning 3. What is a dissertation? 4. Some formal elements 5. How the technicalities of research affect your dissertation 6. Using and managing your resources 7. ‘Descriptive’, ‘analytic’, ‘critical’… RELATED TITLES JAN 2011 978-1-84528-445-9
8. 9. 10. 11.
Starting to write the dissertation Some finer points Working with notes and references Managing the length and retaining your focus 12. When things go wrong (and they will...) 13. The dark side: plagiarism and other evils 14. The final frontier
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