A Final Dissertation Revision: Last Stepping Stone to PhD

So you have completed writing your dissertation? Congratulations! Sit back and relax for a while before you analyze and revise your dissertation to present it your supervisor. While you take a break from it, why not think of the ways to analyze and improve its overall quality. Isn’t it necessary that you pay minute attention to every little aspect of your dissertation now since the big picture of your PhD research is already created?

Be the voice of your dissertation

You are the author of your dissertation. You do realize the responsibility of being an author, right? As you read and analyze what all you have written in your dissertation, focus on your voice as an author also. Is your argument clearly stated for the reader to differentiate between what you have studied in the recent research papers, books, or journals and what you come up to. Make your voice a priority. Because the reader is not reading  or a summary of your PhD research and the entire process.Instead, he is curious to know what arguments you have put in, what you have discovered, and precisely how you have discovered it after researching and evaluating the existing knowledge. So, try to chop down the literature review, discussion and conclusion section of your dissertation that is not specifically related to your research question.

Segmented or structured?

Note the structure and order of your dissertation. Is it well-structured with a proper base to the topic it rose? Are the chapters titled and organized correctly and chronologically? The title of your chapters should give an insight of what the reader is in for. Make sure the titles are not long, cute, or fancy but should be precise to the chapter with subheadings to the paragraphs. Your dissertation should be organized in a progressive order covering how you turned up to this research question and the conclusion with an appropriate research method. It should lead the reader to the end in a synchronized chronological order rather than jumping from one point to another in a chapter.

Don’t be a generalist, be a specialist

Don’t try to be a generalist with your writing but be a specialist in your research. Show your reader that he is reading a specialised research, and not an ordinary academic book on a mediocre topic. Your dissertation should be broad, specific, relevant and manageable to be opened up, and extended to a larger audience. Nonetheless, it should show a sound grasp of the methods and knowledge of the broad discipline with a specialist insights into a narrower field. That is, you should convince the reader that the used research methodology is the best way to come to a conclusion for the raised research question.research.

Beneficial to the reader?

The quality of your work should benefit the readers. It should influence a field of knowledge and bring advance work in that field. The reader should not think of it as a vague research and a waste of time. Show how important this research was and what the scholars have missed for so long. Leave an imprint in the mind of the reader with a next possible question for them to use your research as a stepping stone.

Make it different

Your academic writing should be specific, to-the-point and persuasive if not different from that of the previously written and published dissertations. The journals, dissertations, and theses that you read might be recent but not much old. Therefore, the competition in writing and dissertations is stringent today. To make your dissertation competitive, ensure that your dissertation is a standalone masterpiece. Now don’t start to change the pattern, style, and tone of writing into creative writing but make sure that the overall presentation and writing style is engulfing slowly moving to a convincing argument. Aim at your voice, style and language of the dissertation making it worthwhile for the readers to invest in it.

While you analyze the structure and organization of your dissertation, do not forget to alter and make amendments with the grammar, punctuation, spellings. You could have misspelled or made other language errors in the glide of writing your dissertation. However, a thorough analysis and the final revision would strengthen your dissertation for easy approval.