Six Attributes of a Successful Thesis

Today I am going to share with you some snippet from the book called How to Write a Better Thesis, written by David Evans, Paul Gruba and Justin Zobel. I think it is very informative and inspiring, expecially for the first-year graduate students like me.

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Attributes of a Successful Thesis (About Candidates)

• The thesis demostrates authority(权威性） in the candiate's filed and shows evidence of command of knowledge in relevant fields.
• It shows that the candiate has a thorough graph of the appropriate methodological techniques and an awareness of their limatiations.
• It makes a distinct contribution to knowledge.
• Its contribution to knowledge rests on originality(原创性) of approach and/or interpretation of the findings and, in some cases, the discovery of new facts.
• It demostates an ability to communicate research findings effectively in the prefessional arena(舞台) and in an international context.
• It is a careful, rigorous(严格的) and sustained(持久的) piece of work demonstrating that a research "apprenticeship"(学徒期) is complete and the holder is admitted to the community of scholars in the discipline.

Guidelines for Examiners(About Thesis)

• Does the candidate show sufficient familiarity with, and understanding and critical apprasial(评价) of, the relevant literature(文献)?
• Does the thesis provide a sufficiently comprehensive(综合的、广泛的) investigation of the topic?
• Are the methods and techniques adopted appropriate to the subject matter and are they properly justified and applied?
• Are the results suitably set out(陈述) and accompanied by adequate exposition(阐述) and interpretation?
• Are conclusions and implications(影响) appropriately developed and clearly linked to the nature and content of the research framework and findings?
• Have the reserach questions in fact been tested?
• Is the literary(书面的) quality and general presentation of the thesis of a suitably high standard?
• Does the thesis as a whole constitude(构成) a substantive(真实的) original contribution to knowledge in the subject area with which it deals?