How-to-Write-a-Better-Thesis

70
5 The Introductory Chapter
the first chapter of a thesis should be an extensive review of the literature ending
up with a research hypothesis, which seems to cut across my advice. However, as
pointed out in Chap. 2, what he was really advocating, without realizing it, was
omitting the first chapter of the thesis altogether. This is dangerous! If you do this
you will inevitably get the aim, research questions and the hypothesis mixed up.
As a result, you run the risk of never identifying the purpose of your thesis clearly.
Your first mention of the word hypothesis should be in the chapter concerned
with your own work. When you do use it, stick to its formal meaning. You should be
able to deduce from the combination of your review current theory and practice, and
possibly from your own preliminary studies, that there are certain lines of thought
that are worth investigating by careful tests. These tests are the ones that, in the classical
‘scientific method’, are called crucial experiments. They will tell you without
doubt whether your hypothesis has stood up or whether it has been demolished.
Either way you have made progress.
Revising the Aim, Aligning the Conclusion
It is necessary to revise this introductory chapter as you make new discoveries in
your work. Almost imperceptibly, your aim can change as you go along, or your
work may no longer lie within the scope you first established. When I wrote my
thesis, the first draft of my introductory chapter was essentially a summary of my
first go at understanding the literature. It turned out to be over twenty pages. Later,
I trimmed it to a much more focused and manageable seven-page chapter. One of
the holdovers, however, from my earlier attempts of writing out the introduction
was that I had made a ‘promise’ that a key implication for my work rested in classroom
practices. During the course of writing my thesis, my focus became much
more theoretical than I had originally planned. Unfortunately, I failed to delete my
earlier concerns from my introductory chapter. The examiners noted this point and
wondered why I had not addressed it in my final discussion. When I re-wrote the
first chapter after examination, the first thing I did was to delete any suggestion that
was work was focused on something that I had failed to discuss beyond the first
few pages!
Many students resist writing the introduction early in the project because they
suspect that its direction is likely to shift as they develop their thinking. Don’t resist,
or delay and let this stop you. Write the introductory chapter as confidently as you
can when you first start out. In this first draft you may not see the need to put any
limit on the scope of your study, and almost certainly you will be a bit tentative in
your aim. But you will have made a start. As you come to grips with the complexity
of your research, revisit the introductory chapter periodically and make minor
changes; or just read it over, and make sure that it still applies. Are you still trying
to achieve a particular single aim? Are you still within the parameters of the scope
that you first set out? One way to see if you are drifting from your original thoughts
is to look over your working title. Have you thought about changing the title, and