As a dissertation mentor, I have guided many undergraduates and postgraduates with their dissertation writing. They spend months and put in lots of hard work to craft their dissertations down to perfection. However, during the process, they often make mistakes that affect the overall presentation and quality of the paper. If you are also embarking on your dissertation writing process, then I’d encourage you to read this blog post to identify and avoid these common dissertation mistakes. In this blog, I will highlight them and offer strategies to prevent them too. So read until the end to perfect your dissertation paper.
What Are Some Common Mistakes Students Make While Completing Their Dissertation
From structuring arguments to grammatical missteps, learn about these dissertation mistakes and how you can avoid them:-
- Using Words From The Proposal Stage
Since you have spent months working on the dissertation, looking at the same document over and over again, you probably didn’t realise you changed tone and tenses over the span of your paper, which can lead to inconsistencies. I have observed this commonly happens when you focus on different parts of your dissertation; you involuntary shift from past to present or vice versa, causing an irregularity.
- Preliminary Pages Are Missing Or Out of Order
Anothe dissertation mistake I’ve seen happen multiple times if having preliminary pages either out of order, incomplete or missing. These pages are the ones that come before your main dissertation content and no matter how insignificant they are, they play a role for the completion of your entire dissertation.
These pages include, acknowledgements, table of contents, dedication or copyright page all of which require certain format, order and layout.
- Poorly Defined Objectives And Aims
Another mistake I have seen students make in their introduction is not clearly defining their research objectives and aims. Now, I understand if you want your objective to fit different contexts or be a generalised one which often becomes challenging to achieve your overall research.
So, narrow down the scope of your research and define the objectives well to make your findings more manageable and understandable.
- Dissertation Abstract Is Longer Than One Page
Writing more than one page for an abstract is also one of the dissertation mistakes I have seen in multiple works. The word itself means brevity and requires you to provide a concise yet informative abstract. On the other hand, I understand that after conducting research all by yourself, you are excited to share the knowledge you have gathered, which is difficult to concise in a single page.
Long abstract can overwhelm the readers, and an abstract is not the place to provide details of each process of the research.
- Insufficient Context To The Topic
A recurring dissertation mistake I have seen many students make is providing inadequate context to their study. The only person aware of the research is you. The readers on the other hand, don’t know anything about this study or how it it even came about. To get your readers on the same page as you, orient them about the how, why, where, what and who of the study to lay the groundwork for easy grasping.
- Academic Integrity Violations
One of the dissertation mistakes I have seen students make is violating academic integrity, and plagiarism is the foremost violation. I’ve seen this occur in various forms–some students blatantly copy word to word, some copy ideas and terms, while some others paraphrase and forget to cite their sources. Whether intentional or not, it is considered plagiarism. Plagiarism damages the credibility of your work and, in some universities, leads to serious consequences.
- Multiple Formatting Problems
We are not all professional writers here, and I occasionally slip up with grammatical mistakes and typos. However, common dissertation mistakes like formatting, grammatical errors and poor organisation are inevitable as a dissertation is a long document. Given your writing content, flaws such as these are inevitable and impossible to catch during the writing stage.
- Lack of Fine-Tuned Literature Review
Literature review is an important part of dissertation writing, and getting it right is crucial. However, you fail to create a well-organised and fine-tuned literature review. By not doing so, your readers may lose interest and find it difficult to see the relevance of your research and the existing literature. Generally, students simply state it as if they are making a shopping list. Rather, the literature review is the place where you lay the foundation of your research, showcasing your findings, sources and key theories to explain your study further.
How To Avoid These Common Dissertation Mistakes For A Better Written Dissertation
Now that we have gone over the various kinds of dissertation mistakes common while writing a dissertation, let us look at how we can avoid them:-
- Beware of Tense Changes: Ensure consistency with the paper’s tone and tense throughout. Use the “find” feature in your writing program and change the present tense words to past tense.
- Always Cite Sources To Avoid Plagiarism: Always cite your sources, no matter what word or idea you borrowed, and always attribute the rightful owner. Cite your sources according to the formatting guidelines of your field or institution.
- Maintain A Clear Structure: To maintain this, always start your dissertation paper with an outline and a structure for every section. This ensures your work is divided logically into sections and chapters, and there is no mishap.
- Proofread And Edit: Never miss the proofreading and editing step, as removing all typos and grammatical mistakes you may have missed while writing is crucial. Use tools like Grammarly to automatically spell-check your paper.
- Ensure Proper Formatting: Follow your institute’s guidelines for formatting and pay attention to all parameters like margins, font, line spacing and headings. It might not seem important to you, but to your professo,r it is.
Minimise Common Dissertation Mistakes With Assignment Global’s Dissertation Writing Help
Common dissertation mistakes are inevitable, especially when it is part of a lengthy dissertation writing process. With so much to research, constant typing, and countless revisions, coupled with all-nighters and increasing deadline pressure, it feels overwhelming. At times, it feels overwhelming to even reach a conclusion because of how out of reach it seems.
But don’t worry, a dissertation writing help has got you! Assignment Global comes to your service. They make the month-long dissertation process easier by supporting you every step of the way. From topic selection, methodology choice, thesis formulation, and proofreading and editing, Assignment Global has proven to be proficient in all these and more dissertation writing steps.
Their expert writers help you through each phase, helping you finish your dissertation on time with a few hiccups on the way. With their assistance, your dissertation will no doubt stand out!
Closing Note
In my line of career, I have seen students make countless mistakes, some minor and some grave. But the ones I have mentioned in this blog post in detail are the ones I have repeatedly seen countless times. The key to avoiding these dissertation mistakes is to use smart strategies and be observant while working on your dissertation. Mistakes will happen, no doubt, but is how you learn from them that truly matters!
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