Chapter 8: Writing and presenting your project report • Undertaking writing • Structuring your project report 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 1 Outline • Undertaking writing • Structuring your project report 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 2 Undertaking writing • Writing may be approached as a continuous process throughout your research project. • Before you commence your research, you will need to draft your research proposal. As you undertake your research you will be writing summaries, self-memos or entries in your research notebook and keeping a reflective diary. • You may also be consulting literature related to your research topic and drafting an early version of your literature review, and then revising this as your research progresses.
• We now consider some practical hints to assist you in undertaking your writing: 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 3 Create Create time for your writing Undertaking Write Write when your mind is fresh writing Find Find a regular writing place Create Create a structure for your writing Set Set goals and achieve them Finish a writing session on a high point and provide a link to a new Finish session Commence Commence a new writing session by reviewing your previous session Ensure Ensure you keep earlier versions and back-up copies of your work Get Get friends to read your work 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 4 Step 1: Create time for your writing • Writing is not an activity that can be allocated an odd half-hour whenever it is convenient. • It requires sustained effort and concentration. Some people prefer to write all day until they drop from exhaustion! Others like to set a strict timetable where a few hours a day are devoted to writing. • You may find it helpful to set aside a particular period each day to write.
Writing on successive days will also help to ensure the continuity of your ideas and avoid having to keep ‘thinking your way back’ into your research.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 5 Step 2: Write when your mind is fresh All of us have jobs to do that Writing is a creative process, require little or no creativity so it is important to write at so arrange your day to do the time of day when your uncreative jobs when you mind is at its freshest. are at your least mentally alert.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 6 Step 3: Find a regular writing place • Writing is often best undertaken in the same place. This may be because you are psychologically comfortable in a particular space. • It may be for more practical reasons.
If that space is your own room you will already be familiar with the need to make sure you do not disturb yourself or allow others to do this. • Switching off all distractions such as your mobile phone, social media and television and putting a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door may allow you to work undisturbed in your own room. • However, if this doesn't work, you may be able to concentrate better if you find a neutral space, such as an area in your university's library, where you can write without your possessions or your friends being able to distract you! What is important is to know what distracts you and to remove those distractions 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 7 Step 4: Create a structure for your writing Writing requires structure. Your research project is likely to be one of the largest pieces of written work you undertake.
You must create an overall structure to write up your research project. You will also need to create a structure for each chapter. It is important to think about what you want a chapter to contain before you attempt to write it. As you work though the material you have assembled to write a chapter and jot down ideas that flow from this, you will start to work out how your ideas and this material may be grouped and how such groupings may be related to one another.
Your purpose will be to create a sequential structure for the chapter you intend to write up. Once you have a structure for the chapter composed of a number of sections and possibly sub-sections, you can start to write each section in turn. Even if you alter this structure or rearrange the order of the sections within it, you will have a framework to guide the writing of the chapter on which you are working.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 8 Step 5: Set goals and achieve them • Writing may involve goal or target setting. • You may decide to set yourself the goal to write a section of a chapter in a given period, or to target writing a number of words.
• This can be helpful where you have allocated yourself a certain amount of time to write the chapter on which you are working, to be able to judge if you are ‘on time’. • However, it is important to be realistic about these goals. If you are too ambitious the quality of your work may suffer as you rush to meet your target.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 9 Step 6: Finish a writing session on a high point and provide a link to a new session • Writing is about ideas. Many writers prefer to get to the end of a section before they finish writing so that they do not lose any ideas they develop during that session.
• This also allows them to tidy up one set of materials and possibly to lay out those for the next session of writing. The worst thing you can do is to leave a complex section half completed as it will be difficult to pick up your thoughts and ideas.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 10 Step 7: Commence a new writing session by reviewing your previous session • We each find it helpful to commence a new writing session by reviewing and revising what we wrote in the previous session. If you do this it should provide you with two benefits: • Firstly, it will allow you to review what you wrote previously with a fresh mind. This will allow you to revise what you wrote previously.
• Secondly, it will allow you to think yourself back into the ideas that you were working with previously. This should help you to progress your writing in this new writing session.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 11 Step 8: Ensure you keep earlier versions and back-up copies of your work • Writing is time-consuming and enables you to develop your ideas and complete your analysis, so don't forget to create a back-up copy of the current version of your writing as well as earlier drafts. • You may need them if your computer dies, or you wish to revert to an earlier version.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 12 Step 9: Get friends to read your work • Writing is creative and exciting, but checking our work may not be! The importance of getting someone else to read through your material cannot be overemphasized. • Your project tutor should not be the first person who reads your report, even in its draft form.
• Ask a friend to be constructively critical. Your friend must be prepared to tell you about things in the text that are not easy to understand – to point out omissions, spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. • Overall, your friend must tell you whether the piece of writing makes sense and achieves its purpose. This is not an easy process for you or your critical friend.
Most of us are sensitive to criticism, particularly when the consequence of it is the necessity to do a lot more work.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 13 Structuring your project report • There are different ways to structure a project report, dissertation or thesis. • The way you write up your project report may follow the traditional structure or an alternative structure that better reflects your choice of research strategy. Whether you have a choice about how to structure your project report will depend on the requirements of your examining body. • This may be something you can discuss with your project tutor.
Before you consider different ways to structure your project report, it is important to realise the structure you use will emphasise (or reflect) certain aspects of your research. • Yin (2018) summarises underlying ‘reporting approaches’ in terms of what they emphasise or reflect. Of these, five may, potentially, be suitable for your project report. They are linear-analytic; comparative; chronological; theory building; and suspense.
• We outline these before discussing the traditional and alternative ways to structure your research report.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 14 Linear-analytic approach • In a linear-analytic approach a project report is structured logically to reflect the research process. • The traditional way to structure a project report is essentially a linear-analytic approach. • It is well suited to a deductive, theory-testing approach but is also adaptable to other research approaches.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 15 Comparative approach In a comparative approach the emphasis is placed on devising a structure that allows analytical comparisons to be made. Different types of comparisons may be made.
In one type of comparative approach, the structure used will reflect the fact that the same set of data is analyzed more than once using different analytical perspectives to allow the results of these analyses to then be compared. In another type of comparative approach, the structure will reflect the fact that different but related data sets are analyzed so that the results of these may then be compared 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 16 Chronological approach • In a chronological approach a structure is devised that allows the emphasis to be placed on the sequence of events evident in the data set. • At its simplest, this is essentially an historical account, where it is important to use a structure that allows the data to be reported in a chronological way to understand how the order of events and contextual factors produce cause-and effect sequences.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 17 Theory-building approach • In a theory-building approach a structure is devised that allows the emphasis to be placed on the emergence and refinement of research ideas and the development of themes, relationships and explanations as data are collected. • Whereas the linear-analytic approach presents the research process in a logical, rational and ‘sanitized’ way, the theory- building approach is likely to present research as an emergent and messy process, but which ultimately produces a convincing story and compelling theoretical explanation.
• This approach may resemble a chronological approach, albeit that it reports how a theory is developed rather than documenting the sequential development of explanations.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 18 Suspense approach • In a suspense approach, the emphasis is placed on devising a structure that allows the reader to understand how an explanation has been built. • Yin (2018) suggests that the explanation or answer to the research question is presented in the introduction. • The structure of the project report is then devoted to exploring alternative explanations of the phenomenon being studied to be able to evaluate why the chosen explanation is the most convincing.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 19 How might these underlying structural types affect your choice of report structure? These reporting approaches should help you to evaluate what type of structure will best suit your project report. They should prompt you to ask yourself the following questions: • How does my research design affect the way I might structure my project report? • How does the way I analyzed my data affect the way I might structure my project report? • How does the purpose of my research affect the way I might structure my project report? 10/6/2023 V.Mai- FIE- maivp@ftu.vn 20 Structuring your report • Charmaz (2014) refers to the traditional way to structure a project report as a ‘logicodeductive’ approach.
In this approach, the report's structure reflects the logic and linear nature of the process used to undertake a deductive approach.