Keywords

General description

This course is primarily intended for students of the International School of Social Sciences and other Faculties who will have to write their Master’s thesis in English.

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to make the participants aware of how to express in English the results of their critical thinking in a form that is consistent with the conventions governing the writing of theses. To this end the students will be analyzing past theses in their field and will also be working with the Master’s degree thesis that they have in process.

After successful completion of the course the students will be able to...

- review a thesis critically
- express clearly the aims, background and conclusions of their research
- structure a research plan in English
- write a literature review

Contents

The course will go through...

- the thesis process from choosing a research topic and formulating initial research questions to writing the research plan
- common structures 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
- the differences between academic and non-academic style conventions including formatting and writing references

Further information on prerequisites and recommendations

This course is especially recommended for international master’s degree students as well as students who are thinking of writing their thesis in English.

Teaching methods

Teaching method	Contact	Online
Tutorials	26 h	0 h
Personal instruction	2 h	0 h
Group work	10 h	0 h
Independent work	0 h	42 h

The course will be made up of class sessions, an out-of-class group analysis task, independent writing and reflection through a journal as well as an individual tutorial. The class sessions will include whole class discussions on information introduced through Moodle as well as the presentations of the group analysis tasks. The independent writing task will consist of a representative sample from the students’ research plans or theses which will then be discussed in the tutorial.

Teaching language

English

Evaluation and evaluation criteria

Pass/fail.
To achieve a pass, the student is required to complete the following tasks to a satisfactory level: - Weekly readings and journal entries through Moodle - A group analysis of a thesis - A representative sample from the student’s own research plan or thesis

Study materials

The necessary materials will be available on-line through Moodle.

Belongs to following study modules