How to Write a Dissertation: Using Contextual Clues for Research Reading
Students looking for tips on how to write dissertation for Masters or doctorate often miss the essential features of dissertation writing. They may read innumerable articles providing various kinds of dissertation help right from writing a dissertation introduction to citing sources in a dissertation, but miss out on skills that are indispensable for effective dissertation writing: reading for research and information.
The level of difficulty and complexity of texts keep increasing rapidly as one moves from writing coursework to term papers to thesis. With this increase in the intricacies of the written word, a student is required to move beyond the traditional norms of reading, which focuses on the importance of understanding every word in the given text.
It is significant to realize the importance of contextual reading which is a useful tool in decoding texts. Reading and identifying the given information with the help of clues, in contrast to in-depth references from a dictionary or any other secondary source which may prove time consuming and unproductive, is useful in extracting the central idea of the a relatively difficult text.
Some Contextual Clues for Effective Reading
When finding the meaning if an unknown word or a sentence that may seem ambiguous or complex, you can apply these contextual clues to your advantage:
- Presumption: You can deduce the meaning of a given text by presuming its message. This may be done in context of the central idea of the given text, the word usage, or relating the given word or a sentence to its corresponding words/sentence.
- The Elements of Speech: If you do not know the meaning of a given word, figure out its parts of speech, whether it is noun, a verb, adjective or a participle. Doing this gives a vague idea of the unknown word, and at times may even help in understanding the meaning of the whole sentence.
- The style of writing: The tone and style in which a text is written can play an important role in determining its meaning and connotations. Find out whether the author is using sarcasm, humor or making a plain statement.
- Sieve the important from the trivial: When reading a given text, find how important the information is in the given sentence. Do not waste time decoding information that does not contribute to the overall understanding of the text. This is essential when learning how to write a dissertation as there is an overload of information that must be neatly segregated in accordance to its productivity in dissertation writing.
- Presentation Clues: You can make logical guesses even before reading the text. When skimming through a resource material take a look at its presentation. Find out how the layout and design adds to the readers understanding of a given text.
When writing a dissertation, it is important to keep the above contextual reference tricks in mind. These contextual clues help a great deal in enhancing one’s vocabulary in its contextual reference, simultaneously increasing ones understanding of research reading tricks on how to write a dissertation
