It's hard to write a degree paper
It's hard to figure out how hard it is
Demolition using modular thinking
Degree dissertations are the core scientific task of the post-graduate stage, and many students face hundreds of pages of writing requirements and are vulnerable to unwritten and unwritten problems. Based on section 4. 1 of the post-graduate academic career navigator, this article presents the source of difficulty in dismantling the degree thesis and presents the core modular tiered structure, helping to break down the heavy writing tasks into small and achievable targets。
01 difficulties in dissertation
The difficulty of a degree thesis can be measured by the depth of the study and the length of the text, not the greater the length, but also the high academic value of short papers。
1. Large space spans and significant differences in disciplines
The top-level research degree thesis can be short and sophisticated, for example, einstein's doctoral thesis is only 12 pages, but it is highly original and technically rigorous; there are also long degree papers, such as the historian joachim schumacher's doctoral thesis on sailboat development, which amounts to 2654 pages。
Statistics on thousands of highly developed thesis at the university of minnesota show that the average length of the master's thesis is less than 100 pages and the average of the doctor's thesis is 177 pages; there are significant differences in the length of the dissertations in different disciplines, with the longest academic dissertation in history, archaeology, the shortest in biostatistics, mathematics and the lowest overall distribution in accordance with the normal pattern of distribution。
Three types of factors affecting the length of papers
The content is presented in form: a paper with a mathematical formula, graphic visualization of the details of the study, which is shorter overall; a paper that requires a large amount of raw material, quotations from interviews, original photographic support, usually longer。
2 writing grinding: condensing is in itself a writing capability, often a result of lengthy and often lengthy content and redundant information, and high-quality papers are often able to articulate core issues within a limited space。
Technological conditions in the three eras: high cost of early printing of printouts and the general pursuit of streamlining of papers to control costs; significantly lower cost of modern electronic printing, unnecessary expansion of many papers and no simultaneous increase in content content。
02 complexity decline: modularized layer structure method
In response to the complexity of writing degree dissertations, a modular stratification approach is proposed, a three-tier closed ring system is to be decomposed for complete writing, and it is to reduce the difficulty of writing one by one, which is common to complex system research。
1. Three-tier core writing system
Module 1: building on the five core elements of the paper, from macro-modules at the highest level, to base-level modules that can be completed at low cost, starting with a complete thesis skeleton。
2 base element writing: in the basic level module, microtext and non-text elements such as paragraphs, graphics, tables, mathematical formulae, etc., are set to fill specific research content。
3 the narrative model demonstrates: to bridge the logical links within and between levels, to achieve a transition from basic linguistic to academic writing functions, to allow for a coherent logic of fragmented content, leading to a complete writing loop。
2. Bottom logic of the methodology
