How to Write a Dissertation: Using Contextual Clues for Research Reading

Students looking for tips on how to write dissertation for Masters or doctorate 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 and theses. With this rise in the intricacies of the written word, a student is required to move beyond the traditional norms of reading that focus 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 looking for meaning of an unknown word or a sentence that seems ambiguous or complex, apply these contextual clues to your advantage:

• Presumption: You can deduce the meaning of a given text by presuming its message. This can either 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. Figure out ways in which 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 helping one understand the research reading tricks on how to write a dissertation.