The Thesis Statement

The Thesis Statement

Discovering Ideas Handbook

1.4 The Thesis Statement

1.4.1 What Is a Thesis Statement?

1.4.1.1 A single sentence.
1.4.1.2 A declarative sentence.
1.4.1.3 States what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand.
1.4.1.4 After having read your essay.

1.4.2 Why Write a Thesis Statement?

1.4.2.1 Why do you need to develop a thesis statement when you write an essay?
1.4.2.2 What's the value of writing out your thesis statement on a piece of paper?
1.4.2.3 Seeing the relationship between your thesis statement and your essay.

1.4.3 How to Write a Thesis Statement

1.4.3.1 Ask and answer the questions "why?" and "how?" of your trial thesis statement.
1.4.3.2 Make your thesis statement a positive statement, not a negative one.
1.4.3.3 Use the active voice in every clause in your thesis statement.

1.4.4 Content of Your Thesis Statement

1.4.4.1 Make it clear.
1.4.4.2 Make it precise and limited.
1.4.4.3 Make it controversial or informative.
1.4.4.4 Make it defensible.

Checklist for Revising Thesis Statements

---

1.4.1 What Is a Thesis Statement?

We will be talking about thesis statements quite a bit this semester. We will be writing thesis statements, revising them, and using them as tools to help us revise our essays. So let me clarify what I mean by the term "thesis statement." By the way, some of the explanation that follows will be more specific or slightly different from some things you find in your handbook. Where there is any conflict, this document rules.

Perhaps the first step would be to clarify what I do not mean by the term "thesis statement." A thesis statement, as we will be using the term this semester, is not necessarily a sentence that appears in the first paragraph of your essay. Your thesis statement might appear in the first paragraph, or the last paragraph, or it might not appear in the essay at all. I do not mean by a thesis statement something that you necessarily write before writing the essay. I will often ask you to write a "trial thesis statement" before submitting a draft of your essay; the term "trial" means that this is not a thesis statement you are committed to. The only reason for asking for a trial thesis statement is to allow us to have something to discuss in class. You will usually not finish writing your thesis statement until you have nearly finished writing and revising your essay.

Because your thesis statement may or may not appear in the body of your essay, I will ask you to always put your thesis statement at the very end of your essay, labeled and printed as a separate paragraph after your last paragraph or after your list of works cited, if you have one.

So what is a thesis statement? A thesis statement is a single declarative sentence that states what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand after having read your essay. If we understand that definition, it will be a lot easier to work with thesis statements, so let's take a minute to break it down into its component parts and make sure we see what it contains.

1.4.1.1 A thesis statement is a single sentence.

A thesis statement, in other words, is only one sentence, not two or three or more. Why? Because the thesis statement is the main point you want to make in one essay; so it should be one sentence. Frederick Crews defines an essay as "a short piece of nonfiction that tries to make a point in an interesting way." What makes it an essay is that it aims to make a point, one point. This doesn't mean that you can only make one assertion in an essay. But it means that all of the many claims you make must fit together, that they must all support or lead to a single point (claim, conclusion) that defines the whole essay. And if everything you say in an essay supports a single point or claim, then you can express that claim in a single sentence. Notice that nobody is saying that it must be a short sentence or a pretty sentence. But it must be one sentence, not two or more sentences. If you can't express the main point of your essay in one sentence, your essay probably doesn't have one point; it probably has two. And that means it should be two essays. Feel free to write them both, but one at a time.

1.4.1.2 A thesis statement is a single declarative sentence.

A declarative sentence is simply a sentence that makes a statement rather than asking a question or making a command. It is really saying the same thing twice to say that a thesis statement is a declarative sentence. It just means that a thesis statement is a statement. The repetition is for emphasis; it helps us to keep in mind that a thesis statement is not a question. You may often start work on your essay with a question in mind. That's a good idea. But the question is not your thesis statement. Your thesis statement will be the answer to the question, an answer that you will defend and explain in your essay.

1.4.1.3 A thesis statement is a single declarative sentence that states what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand.

Different essays will have different purposes, depending on your message and your audience. If you are writing about a topic that your readers know very little about, you will write differently than you would if you were writing about a topic about which your readers were well informed. Some textbooks attempt to break down the kinds of essays into categories like "informative," "persuasive," "expository," or "argumentative." These categories can sometimes be useful in thinking about your essay, but they are always a little artificial. No good essay is entirely informative or entirely persuasive. Almost any good essay will have to inform the reader at some points and persuade the reader at others. But every good essay is unified, moves toward a single major point. Thus every good essay has a thesis statement, though it may be implied rather than explicitly stated in the text of the essay. If you are writing a primarily "informative" essay rather than a primarily "persuasive" essay, that doesn't mean your essay doesn't have a thesis; it just means that your thesis is a statement about which your readers are uninformed, rather than one on which they may have opinions that differ from yours. Whatever kind of essay you are writing, you want to decide before you finish it what the point will be, where it's going. Thus you want your thesis statement to express in a sentence what your whole essay says, what you want your readers to know or believe or understand by the end of the essay. You don't just want the thesis statement to be a general conclusion that someone might reach from your essay; you want it to say what your essay says. One problem with many, perhaps most, trial thesis statements is that they are too general and hence do not really give any guidance as to what issues and what evidence will be in this essay.

1.4.1.4 A thesis statement is a single declarative sentence that states what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand after having read your essay.

You may have been asked in a previous class to put your thesis statement in the first paragraph of your essay. There is nothing wrong with putting the thesis statement in the first paragraph, if that will help you to get your point across to your readers. But many excellent essays do not state the thesis statement in the first paragraph. The decision as to whether to do so should be based on what will work best with your subject and your readers. However, the tradition of putting the thesis in the first paragraph has led some students to mistakenly think of the thesis statement as a kind of introduction to the essay. In some cases, the thesis statement works well as part of the introduction; in some cases it doesn't. But a thesis statement is not necessarily part of the introduction, and in developing your thesis statement you should not be thinking primarily about how you want your essay to start. You should be thinking about what you want the whole essay to say, what you want the reader to know or believe at the end of the essay, not the beginning. This is why you often cannot finish your thesis statement until you finish your essay.

1.4.2 Why Write a Thesis Statement?

Why should you write a thesis statement when you write an essay? What is it good for? Is it just busy work? Something English teachers are required to impose on students to keep them from having any free time? One of those long traditions that everyone has forgotten the reason for? I don't think so. Developing a thesis statement is an important part of the process of writing an essay. In fact, you really can't write a good essay without developing a thesis statement. Of course, to "develop" a thesis statement doesn't necessarily require writing it down on a piece of paper and handing it in with your essay. But that is what I will ask you to do for every essay you write. So I'll have to answer this question in two parts: First, why do you need to develop a thesis statement? Second, why do I ask you to write it down and hand it in?

1.4.2.1 Why do you need to develop a thesis statement when you write and essay?

First, why do you need to develop a thesis statement when you write an essay? The reason is that, using the definition of a thesis statement given above, you can't write a good essay without one. In fact, it flows from the definition of an essay that an essay cannot fail to have a thesis. An essay is "a short piece of nonfiction that tries to make a point in an interesting way." The thesis statement, as we have defined it, is merely a statement of the point the essay makes. If it doesn't make a point, if it's just a random bunch of paragraphs about the same topic that never come to any conclusion, then it isn't really an essay. Notice that the definition says that an essay tries to make a point in an interesting way. Most essays don't completely succeed for all readers. Having a thesis is no guarantee of a good essay. You might try to make a point, and fail. But if you don't have a point to make, if you don't have a thesis, then you can't possibly succeed.

When I talk about "having a thesis," I don't mean that you have to have the thesis before writing the essay. When you write you are creating ideas. One of the things that makes writing so interesting and exciting is that, in the process of writing, you almost always discover ideas and connections between ideas that you didn't recognize before. Even if you have a clear idea of what you think you want to say before you start to write, you will usually discover that in the process of writing your idea changes. Often you will have to start writing with only a question to answer or a topic to explore, and you'll have to write your way to a thesis. You will keep revising your thesis statement as you revise your essay. Where the thesis statement is most important is at the end of the process, during revision. You want your essay to come to a point, to have a clear thesis that every reader will understand.

1.4.2.2 What's the value of writing out your thesis statement on a piece of paper?

This brings us to the second question. Even if we accept that every good essay does have a thesis statement, often that thesis is implied by the essay and not explicitly stated. But I am going to ask you to submit your thesis statement in writing with every draft and every essay you write. What's the value of writing out your thesis statement on a piece of paper? If you know the point you are trying to make, isn't that enough? The basic answer is "yes." If you really do know what you're trying to say in the paper, if it's crystal clear in your own mind, then it really isn't necessary for you to write down your thesis and label it in order to produce a good essay. On the other hand, if your thesis is clear in your mind, it is very easy to write it down on a piece of paper. It just takes a few seconds. No problem. Unfortunately, most of us are not absolutely clear in our minds about what point we are making when we write. Even when we think we know exactly what we want to say, we often discover when we start to write it down that it isn't all there. The main reason I ask you to write down your thesis statement and submit it before, during, and after you write your essay is that we will use the trial thesis statement as a tool to discuss and revise your essay.

1.4.2.3 Seeing the relationship between your thesis statement and your essay.

Think of your essay as a building. You are the architect. As you design the building you construct a scale model so that you and your clients can see what the finished building will look like. It doesn't have all the detail the finished building will, but it does allow us to see the shape and overall design. If you make changes in the design, you will alter the scale model. People's reactions to the scale model may help you to decide how to alter the design. Your thesis statement is to your essay as the scale model is to the building. Until construction is complete, you can always make changes. And so your scale model will not be "final" until the building is finished. If you think of the thesis statement as a scale model of your essay, you can see why your thesis statement must evolve and develop as your essay does, and you won't worry about having a finished thesis statement until you have a finished essay. But you will recognize that in working on your thesis statement you are working on your essay. If the thesis statement is a good model of your essay--if everything in the essay is reflected in the thesis statement and everything in the thesis statement is developed in the essay--then we can give you useful feedback on your trial thesis statement that will help you to decide how to revise your essay.

Having to develop a written thesis statement along with your essay also helps you to discover problems with your essay and solve them. For example, unless you have a very clear idea of what you want to say when you start writing your essay, you are likely to "drift" as you write the first draft. That is to say, you will change your argument as you develop it. This is a good thing because you usually improve your argument as you change it. But it often results in a draft that starts out by posing one question and ends up by answering a different one. The essay will often seem to be two separate half-essays pasted together in the middle. This problem is usually not hard to fix, but it may be hard for you to see at first because you are so close to the essay that you have just written. A thesis statement can help you to recognize that your essay has changed from its original intention. And in trying to revise your thesis statement so that it summarizes your whole essay, you will see that that is an impossible task until you have settled on a single direction in which to revise the essay. If you think of the thesis statement as a scale model of your essay, it will point you toward answers to many of the questions that arise in the process of revision.

Sometimes it will not be easy to see the relationship between your thesis statement and your essay. This can be frustrating. You may be tempted to think that if you could just ignore the thesis statement your essay would be fine. Usually, this is wishful thinking. One of the reasons why it may be hard to come up with a thesis statement that matches your essay is that you haven't really decided what you want to say in the essay. You may have seven or ten decent paragraphs down on paper. They might even be interesting. But if you can't say for sure what they add up to, what point they make, you probably don't have an essay yet. A good thesis statement will tell you when you have finished. This may not sound important, but it is. One of the hardest things about writing good essays--even for very experienced writers--is knowing when you're finished, knowing when you should stop revising, knowing when you've reached the end of the process. Most essays that don't work very well fail because they were never completed. And one reason we hand in incomplete essays is that we don't know how to tell when they are finished. If you make the effort to really develop and revise your thesis statement, you will find that it gets much easier to tell when the finished essay has done what it needs to do.

1.4.3 How to Write a Thesis Statement

If you understand why you are writing a thesis statement, it will be easier to write one. To get started, use whatever techniques seem to work for you: freewriting, clustering, talking it over with friends, brainstorming. By the time you write a thesis statement, we will have discussed the topic in class, and you will have an idea how your fellow students--your audience for the essay--are thinking about it. You will have read about the general topic and written on your reading. Throughout the whole process of reading, writing, and discussing the topic in class, be on the lookout for questions and problems that interest you. Don't try to think of the one perfect topic for an essay; there probably isn't one. Try to think of interesting issues, several of them. I'll probably ask you to suggest three or four topics that might lead to interesting essays.

Once you have a topic, the actual development of a thesis statement begins. At first, your goal is just to get your rough idea down on paper. You should not expect to just sit down and write a perfect thesis statement. It doesn't work that way. Your first trial thesis statement is only a rough approximation of what you will eventually end up saying. But it gives you something to work with, something to improve. Usually, the process of revising a trial thesis statement consists of making your point clearer and more specific, narrowing down and filling in what you can really do in the essay, saying more about less. This is a process that writers have to go through in order to produce good work. It's normal and healthy. It's a form of success, not a sign of failure. If you expect not to have to revise your thesis statement, you are bound to feel bad when you do. It's the false expectation that causes the problem. So expect to revise your thesis statement and you will neither be surprised or disappointed. You can just get on with it.

Your handbook has good advice on how to revise a trial thesis statement. My suggestions here are just a supplement to your handbook, not a substitute for it. Several of the most important things you want to look for I have already mentioned while discussing the definition of a thesis statement. In addition to those, the following techniques can be useful in revising and trying to improve a thesis statement once you have one to work with.

1.4.3.1 Ask and answer the questions "why?" and "how?" of your trial thesis statement.

One of the most common problems with a trial thesis statement is that you have given the final conclusion you want to reach in the essay, but you haven't stated your reasons. Often you will devote much more space in your essay to giving reasons than to stating conclusions. A quick test is to look at your trial thesis statement and see if it makes sense to ask either "why?" or "how?" of your thesis statement as you have written it. If it does, then answer the question and write the answer down. The answer to that question will often be a better thesis statement than your original.

Some thesis statements need to state both a conclusion and a premise. Often these take the form of "X because Y." If you don't answer the question "why?" in your trial thesis statement, try adding a "because clause." If you do so, be careful to make it a clause and not a phrase. That is, make it a group of words with a subject and a verb, not just a string of nouns and modifiers. If you use "because" in your thesis statement, don't ever follow it with "of." "Because of" leads to a prepositional phrase; it will give you a static topic, but won't tell who is doing what to whom. Always use "because" in the form "because somebody does something."

1.4.3.2 Make your thesis statement a positive statement, not a negative one.

Tell us what somebody did, not what they didn't do; what caused the problem, not what didn't cause it; what you know, not what you don't know. Be very careful about using the word "not" in a thesis statement. The problem with making your thesis statement a negative claim is that the only way to support it is by making a positive claim. So if your thesis statement is worded negatively, you probably haven't said what you need to say yet. Notice that if you ask the question "why?" of a negative claim, you will almost always have to answer it with a positive one. This suggestion is about the wording of your thesis, not your attitude. I don't mean that your statement must be "positive" in the sense of optimistic, just that it must be worded as a positive claim, rather than one that uses terms like "not."

1.4.3.3 Use the active voice in every clause in your thesis statement.

Clauses that use transitive verbs are in either the active or the passive voice. A transitive verb is an action verb that transmits the action to a receiver. An example would be the verb "throw" in the sentence "Jane throws the ball." The action, throwing, is transmitted from the doer, Jane, to a receiver, the ball. When a transitive verb is in the active voice, as in this example, the doer of the action is the subject of the sentence or clause. Jane did the throwing, she does the action, she is the subject of the sentence. When such a clause is in the passive voice, the receiver is the subject of the sentence: "The ball was thrown by Jane." All of these terms are also defined in your handbook. Look them up if you need to, as often as you need to, until the meanings become clear. And don't hesitate to ask questions if you are confused.

Most of the time, the active voice is clearer, more informative, and more direct than the passive voice or than clauses using linking verbs (for example, "is" or "was"). But we are sometimes, though very rarely, justified in using the passive voice in writing for variety or emphasis. But when we are writing thesis statements, I think we should always use the active voice when we can. And we almost always can. We want a thesis statement to express action, not just join topics together. We want a thesis statement to express what we are going to say, not just what we are going to write about. If we try to put every clause in every thesis statement in the active voice it will help us to find out what we really want to say and to write better essays faster.

One corollary to the rule that we should use the active voice is that we should never, or hardly ever, use a form of the verb "to be" as the main verb in a clause. So if you find yourself using a verb like "is," "are," "was," or "were" as a linking verb rather than just a helping verb, revise. Ask yourself "Who's doing what? Who's kicking who?" And rewrite your thesis statement in the active voice.

If you still find the concept of the active voice confusing or difficult, don't think you're the only one. Many students come into English Composition without a clear understanding of the idea of voice. But it is important. So please do the tutorial on The Active Voice.

1.4.4 Content of Your Thesis Statement

So far, we have been discussing fairly formal tests of a thesis. But as you start working with actual thesis statement, you will have to look at the meaning of the thesis, the ideas it contains, and ask whether what your thesis says expresses the right content, the meaning you want the essay to have.

1.4.4.1 Make it clear and unambiguous.

Make sure it couldn't be interpreted to mean something other than what you want it to mean. It should be unambiguous. Ask whether the sentence could mean different things to different people. If it could, revise it to remove the possible meanings that you don't want to convey.

1.4.4.2 Make it precise and limited.

State no more than you are willing to defend. Probably the most common problem with trial thesis statements is that they are too broad, that they claim too much. In a good essay, you will say more about less, not less about more. That is, you will develop your essay through specifics, examples, evidence of some detail that you can directly relate to your own experience or to specific sources. The test is will you answer the question "how do you know?" to the satisfaction of your readers for every major claim you make?

1.4.4.3 Make it controversial or informative.

Your thesis statement should be a statement about which your audience's knowledge or thinking is deficient or erroneous. You should be telling them something they don't already know or don't already believe. The point you make in your essay shouldn't be obvious. If most of your readers are likely to believe your thesis without even reading your essay, you probably don't need to write an essay to support that thesis.

1.4.4.4 Make it defensible.

Can you move your audience to accept this thesis statement in an essay of the length you propose to write? Just as you can't write a very good essay pointing out something that is already obvious to your readers, you shouldn't make a claim that is so controversial that you really don't have a chance of getting your readers to accept it.

Remember, for all working drafts and essays, you will put your thesis statement for the essay at the very end, as the last lines in the document, labeled "Thesis Statement."

Checklist for Revising Thesis Statements

Use this checklist to revise your trial thesis statement. Each item in the list is liked back to its explanation above. For a copy of this checklist that can be printed out on one page for easy reference, click here.

1. Is your thesis statement a single declarative sentence?
2. Does your thesis statement state what you want your readers to know, believe, or understand after reading your essay?
3. Does your thesis statement reflect everything in the essay? Does your essay develop everything in the thesis statement?
4. Can you ask and answer the questions "why?" and "how?" of your trial thesis statement?
5. Is your thesis statement a positive statement, not a negative one?
6. Do you use the active voice in every clause in your thesis statement?
7. Is your thesis statement clear and unambiguous?
8. Is your thesis statement precise and limited?
9. Is your thesis statement controversial or informative?
10. Is your thesis statement defensible?

Use the On-line Tutor to help in Developing Your Thesis Statement.

---

1.5 Writing a First Draft

---

Copyright © 2004 by John Tagg

Handbook Table of Contents

Discovering Information Class Page

Thesis Statements

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can discover or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you'll make in the rest of your paper.

top

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

top

How do I get a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a "working thesis," a basic or main idea, an argument that you think you can support with evidence but that may need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming.

top

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there's time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following:

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question.
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose?If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it's possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough?
Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like "good" or "successful," see if you could be more specific: why is something "good"; what specifically makes something "successful"?
• Does my thesis pass the "So what?" test? If a reader's first response is, "So what?" then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It's o.k. to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the "how and why?" test? If a reader's first response is "how?" or "why?" your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

top

Examples

Suppose you are taking a course on 19th-century America, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: Compare and contrast the reasons why the North and South fought the Civil War. You turn on the computer and type out the following:

The North and South fought the Civil War for many reasons, some of which were the same and some different.

This weak thesis restates the question without providing any additional information. You will expand on this new information in the body of the essay, but it is important that the reader know where you are heading. A reader of this weak thesis might think, "What reasons? How are they the same? How are they different?" Ask yourself these same questions and begin to compare Northern and Southern attitudes (perhaps you first think, "The South believed slavery was right, and the North thought slavery was wrong"). Now, push your comparison toward an interpretation—why did one side think slavery was right and the other side think it was wrong? You look again at the evidence, and you decide that you are going to argue that the North believed slavery was immoral while the South believed it upheld the Southern way of life. You write:

While both sides fought the Civil War over the issue of slavery, the North fought for moral reasons while the South fought to preserve its own institutions.

Now you have a working thesis! Included in this working thesis is a reason for the war and some idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you write the essay, you will probably begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your working thesis may start to seem too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral reasons, and that they just focused on different moral issues. You end up revising the working thesis into a final thesis that really captures the argument in your paper:

While both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their own right to self-government.

Compare this to the original weak thesis. This final thesis presents a way of interpreting evidence that illuminates the significance of the question. Keep in mind that this is one of many possible interpretations of the Civil War—it is not the one and only right answer to the question. There isn't one right answer; there are only strong and weak thesis statements and strong and weak uses of evidence.

Let's look at another example. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn. "This will be easy," you think. "I loved Huckleberry Finn!" You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

Why is this thesis weak? Think about what the reader would expect from the essay that follows: you will most likely provide a general, appreciative summary of Twain's novel. The question did not ask you to summarize; it asked you to analyze. Your professor is probably not interested in your opinion of the novel; instead, she wants you to think about whyit's such a great novel—what do Huck's adventures tell us about life, about America, about coming of age, about race relations, etc.? First, the question asks you to pick an aspect of the novel that you think is important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

Here's a working thesis with potential: you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation; however, it's still not clear what your analysis will reveal. Your reader is intrigued, but is still thinking, "So what? What's the point of this contrast? What does it signify?" Perhaps you are not sure yet, either. That's fine—begin to work on comparing scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck's actions and reactions. Eventually you will be able to clarify for yourself, and then for the reader, why this contrast matters. After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain's Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave "civilized" society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

top

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing the original version of this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout's topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find the latest publications on this topic. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial.

Anson, Chris M. and Robert A. Schwegler. The Longman Handbook for Writers. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 2000.

Hairston, Maxine and John J. Ruszkiewicz. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers. 4th ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.

Lunsford, Andrea and Robert Connors. The St. Martin's Handbook. 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.

Rosen, Leonard J. and Laurence Behrens. The Allyn & Bacon Handbook. 3rd ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1997.

Questions about External PhD Examiners | Ask Metafilter

Questions about External PhD Examiners | Ask Metafilter: "Questions about External PhD Examiners
June 8, 2007 7:31 AM RSS feed for this thread Subscribe
PhD students and graduates: If you have/had an external examiner on your committee, can you talk about how you choose them, approached them, interacted with them, what role they played relative to other members of your committee, etc?

I'm getting ahead of myself, but wanted to give it some thought earlier rather than later. I know my advisor will help me with the process when I get to this stage, but I'd like to think ahead a bit and find out what other peoples experiences were.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow to education (18 comments total)"

Postgraduate Forum | Accountability Partners - Write your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day

Postgraduate Forum | Accountability Partners - Write your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day

Nasty PhD Viva Questions

Nasty PhD Viva Questions

Dr. Andrew Broad
Computer Science
CS710
Nasty PhD Viva Questions

---

A PhD candidate needs to anticipate the questions that are likely to be asked in the viva - the "horrible ordeal where you have to defend your thesis in person before they rip you to shreds." Actually, it's not nearly as bad as it sounds, provided that you enter it having prepared to your utmost.

There are three reasons why PhD candidates have to have a viva: it is so the examiners can see:

• whether it is your own work;
• whether you understand what you did;
• whether it is worth a PhD (i.e. is a contribution to knowledge).

These are the points being examined (according to Alex Gray from the University of Cardiff):

• Understanding: that you're ready to become an independent researcher.
• Relationship to other work: that you have a command of your subject-area. Similarity to the work of others doesn't detract from novelty!
• Novelty - is your work publishable? If you have already published a couple of papers, that should be proof of sufficient originality. Don't panic about recent publications that are very similar to your work - the important thing is to be aware of them, and to know the differences between your work and theirs.
• What you have achieved, and that you are aware of its implications. What will it make a difference to?
• Demonstration of hypothesis (what you set out to achieve). How have you evaluated/tested your hypothesis? Always be prepared to reconsider your hypothesis if you end up demonstrating something else - it's vitally important that your results match your hypothesis, and that you have a convincing argument for this.
• Why did you do it the way you did? Not just your practical work, but everything. For example, your literature review should be focused towards your hypothesis.

---

Preparing for the Viva: Before you submit

It's crucial to get the philosophy of your thesis (as set out in your Chapter 1) absolutely correct, and clear in your mind by the time of the viva, because if the examiners find holes, they'll run rings round you.

They could ask you to explain/justify any statement in the thesis, so beware of baring nasty branches for clarification at the viva! Identify the contentious statements in the thesis, which you anticipate having to defend in the viva. A good supervisor will point out the contentious statements and grill you over them. Start a file of anticipated viva questions.

The conclusion chapter is a major one to focus on in anticipating viva questions - especially where you criticise your work!

Obviously, it's essential to know your own thesis thoroughly. I think it's a great idea to compile a brief summary of each section before you submit - enough to remind you of what's in each section, paragraph by paragraph or similar (my thesis summary is very different to, and shorter than, my thesis plan, where I basically wrote down all the points I could think of, then when I wrote it up, I added and deleted points, and changed the structure). Compiling a thesis summary before you submit has the advantages that you may spot strategic-level flaws in time to fix them, and will enable you to revise for the viva from the thesis summary rather than from the thesis itself.

Don't try to get the thesis perfect and free of minor corrections at the expense of delaying submission. It's almost certain that the examiners will find something to correct, anyway.

---

Preparing for the Viva: After you submit

The most important goal in preparing for the viva is to keep the subject alive in your head.

Try to anticipate the questions you'll be asked in your viva and keep working on a file of anticipated questions (both the generic questions listed on this web-page, and questions specific to particular sections of your thesis) and your answers. If you said anything without understanding it 100%, or anything you have doubts about having justified properly, add it to your viva file.

You can go into university after you've submitted your thesis and your registration has expired - doing some more practical work may (or may not) help to keep the subject alive in your head (you could do experiments and take printouts of the results to the viva).

However, the main preparation for the viva is reading. These are the things to prioritise:

1. Know your thesis inside-out. Compile a thesis summary (see above) if you didn't do so before you submitted - revising from that rather than from the thesis itself will help you focus on the strategic level (a half-line summary of each paragraph in the thesis should suffice to remind you of every important point in the thesis). You should read your thesis summary in a continuous cycle while you're waiting for the viva, and you should read the thesis itself at least once after you submit it and before the viva. Try to read it from the perspective of the examiners.
   • If your thesis contains mathematical formulae, check them carefully so that you're confident, by the time of the viva, that they're correct. If they're not correct, work it out in advance so that you're not flustered by mathematical mistakes at the viva.
2. Be familiar with the references cited in your thesis, because that's the literature your examiners are most likely to ask you about. Read anything you have cited without reading (not that you should cite things without reading in the first place!).
3. The examiners could also ask you about literature not in the thesis, to test whether you are widely-read in your area.
   • So make sure you're familiar with the literature - not everything you've read in the last three years, but the more important stuff.
   • Look for recent review/survey papers of related areas. You need to be able to discuss the state of the art in any area related to your thesis.
   • Recent publications tend to be particularly important (what are the recent developments in your field?), although they can't ask you about anything published after you submitted your thesis.
   • Read the examiners' publications to get a feel for where they're coming from, what things they consider important, and which topics they consider relevant.
   • Don't stop reading until after the viva.

It might be an idea to publish a paper or two between submitting your thesis and the viva - I wish I had done so. Try to write papers from different perspectives.

The time between submitting the thesis and the viva varies greatly. I submitted my thesis on 28th September 2001, and had my viva on 18th September 2002! My thesis was very long (390 pages including appendices), and there was a delay in finding a suitable external examiner, but above all you have to remember that your examiners will be busy with other things too!

The shortest time I've heard of between submission and viva is three weeks (different subject, different university).

They have to give you at least two weeks' notice before the viva. I got five weeks' notice. My internal examiner suggested a couple of dates, I chose 18th September and asked for 14:00 in IT406, and this was officially confirmed a few days later.

---

The Viva itself

The PhD viva is an open-book exam: you can bring any materials you want. Here is what I think one should bring to the viva:

• a copy of your thesis, obviously - you can stick yellow `post-it' notes on it (e.g. anticipated questions and answers), although I personally abhorred the idea of preparing from my thesis itself;
• your list of anticipated viva questions and your answers;
• printouts of the results of any post-submission experiments;
• the chapter-summaries you made for revision;
• all the notebooks you should have been keeping since the start of your research (the notebooks need to be indexed so that you can look things up);
• any papers such that when you reviewed them in the thesis, you regurgitated something they said blindly without really understanding it (in my case, I identified two such papers, but I brought a dozen potentially contentious papers to the viva);
• printouts of any files or emails containing useful ideas which you haven't documented elsewhere;
• tissues, paracetemol, &c. in case of any unexpected bouts of sneezing, headaches, &c.

At my viva, I gave a presentation (using slides) about some experiments I did after I submitted my thesis. But it's unusual for the candidate to give a presentation, and your supervisor should advise you if it is appropriate to do this. If you do give a presentation, be prepared to be flexible - I was asked to speed up and just give the highlights.

It is not the norm, in this department (I do not speak for other departments/universities), to be expected to give a practical demonstration of your work at the viva, but you could always offer to do so if you think it will help your cause (unlikely).

Anyone can attend a PhD viva, but only the examiners and the candidate can participate. (This means it may be a good idea to attend someone else's viva before your own, though I've never had the balls to gate-crash a viva! :-o )

Your supervisor should definitely attend your viva, although (s)he is usually not allowed to participate unless invited to do so by the examiners. It might be an idea to keep an eye on the body-language of your supervisor to see if you're going wrong! ;-)

A viva typically lasts two hours (but as long as it takes - mine lasted 2h22m), and a common approach is for the examiners to go through the thesis sequentially, asking questions.

Just because they ask a lot of questions doesn't mean you're going to fail. They don't give away the result before or during the viva, but you may be asked to wait around for the result at the end (about half an hour), so that they can explain the result to you - particularly if you have to resubmit your thesis (failure without the option of resubmission is very rare, and is not going to happen if you submit anything resembling a sensible thesis).

Tips:

• Relax and enjoy it, if possible!
• Ideas should flow out from you without a lot of prompting.
• Listen carefully to the questions and take your time answering them.
• Answer your questions succinctly (a rough guideline is 2 to 3 minutes each - no 20-minute diatribes!). Avoid going off at a tangent.
• Try to make your answers initially inclusive (spot overlaps), analytical, and then if appropriate dismissive or point out the limitations - and the effects of these limits.
• Generic viva questions, such as the ones given in the section below, require imagination to answer well!
• Answers may utilise a wide variety of examples and domains. They are a test of your breadth of knowledge as well as depth of knowledge which is expected of a PhD student.
• Handling difficult questions:
• If you don't understand the question, ask for clarification. Paraphrase the question in your own words and say, "is this what you mean?" State your assumptions.
• Treat vague questions as invitations to tell the examiners that you know your area and how it fits into related areas. Try to link the question to the questions you have anticipated and their stock answers. After writing a thesis, you should have one big, connected network of discussion in your head, so you need to jump in at the appropriate place for a given question.
• If they have a misconception about your work, try to pin it down and explain it.
• If you think the question is irrelevant, explain why you think it is irrelevant (it may be that you need to be more broad-minded).
• If you really can't answer a question:
• Be honest.
• If you have any idea at all, say it.
• Say, "I can't answer this on the spot, but I should be able to work it out in my own time."
• If it's about literature you haven't come across, thank the questionner and ask for a reference.

---

Typical Viva Questions

Here are some generic viva-questions - you should instantiate each question for your particular thesis, and have a framework for answering it worked out before the viva.

I have tried to cluster related questions together here - they are not necessarily in order of importance, nor in the order that they are likely to be asked at the viva.

General Questions

• What is the area in which you wish to be examined? (particularly difficult and important if your thesis fits into several areas, or has several aspects, or seems to fit into an area of its own as mine does).


• In one sentence, what is your thesis? (Resist the temptation to run from the room!)


• What have you done that merits a PhD?


• Summarise your key findings.


• What are you most proud of, and why? This may be asked (again) towards the end of the viva.


• What's original about your work? Where is the novelty? Don't leave it to the examiners to make up their own minds - they may get it wrong!


• What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?


• Which topics overlap with your area?
  For topic X:
  • How does your work relate to X?
  • What do you know about the history of X?
  • What is the current state of the art in X? (capabilities and limitations of existing systems)
    What techniques are commonly used?
    Where do current technologies fail such that you (could) make a contribution?
  • How does/could your work enhance the state of the art in X?
  • Who are the main `players' in X? (Hint: you should cluster together papers written by the same people)
    Who are your closest competitors?
  • What do you do better than them? What do you do worse?
  • Which are the three most important papers in X?
  • What are the recent major developments in X?
  • How do you expect X to progress over the next five years? How long-term is your contribution, given the anticipated future developments in X?


• What did you do for your MPhil, and how does your PhD extend it? Did you make any changes to the system you implemented for your MPhil?


• What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?


• Where did you go wrong?
• Why have you done it this way? You need to justify your approach - don't assume the examiners share your views.


• What are the alternatives to your approach?
  What do you gain by your approach?
  What would you gain by approach X?


• Why didn't you do it this way (the way everyone else does it)? This requires having done extensive reading. Be honest if you never thought of the alternative they're suggesting, or if you just didn't get around to it. If you try to bluff your way out, they'll trap you in your own words.


• Looking back, what might you have done differently? This requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.


• How do scientists/philosophers carry out experiments?


• How have you evaluated your work?
• intrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated that it works, and how well it performs?
• extrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated its usefulness for a specific application context?


• What do your results mean?


• How would your system cope with bigger examples? Does it scale up? This is especially important if you have only run your system on `toy' examples, and they think it has `learned its test-data'.


• How do you know that your algorithm/rules are correct?


• How could you improve your work?


• What are the motivations for your research? Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?


• What is the relevance of your contributions?
  • to other researchers?
  • to industry?


• What is the implication of your work in your area? What does it change?


• How do/would you cope with known problems in your field? (e.g. combinatorial explosion)


• Have you solved the field's problem that you claim to have solved? For example, if something is too slow, and you can make it go faster - how much increase in speed is needed for the applications you claim to support?


• Is your field going in the right direction? For example, if everyone's been concentrating on speed, but the real issue is space (if the issue is time, you can just wait it out (unless it's combinatorially explosive), but if the issue is space, the system could fall over). This is kind of justifying why you have gone into the field you're working in.


• Who are your envisioned users? What use would your work be in situation X?


• How do your contributions generalise?
  To what extent would they generalise to systems other than the one you've worked on?
  Under what circumstances would your approach be useable? (Again, does it scale up?)


• Where will you publish your work? Think about which journals and conferences your research would best suit. Just as popular musicians promote their latest albums by releasing singles and going on tour, you should promote your thesis by publishing papers in journals and presenting them at conferences. This takes your work to a much wider audience; this is how academics establish themselves.


• Which aspects of your thesis could be published?


• What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD? Remember that the aim of the PhD process is to train you to be a fully professional researcher - passing your PhD means that you know the state of the art in your area and the directions in which it could be extended, and that you have proved you are capable of making such extensions.


• Where did your research-project come from? How did your research-questions emerge? You can't just say "my supervisor told me to do it" - if this is the case, you need to talk it over with your supervisor before the viva. Think out a succinct answer (2 to 5 minutes).


• Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the research?


• You discuss future work in your conclusion chapter. How long would it take to implement X, and what are the likely problems you envisage? Do not underestimate the time and the difficulties - you might be talking about your own resubmission-order! ;-)

Particular Questions

Most of the viva will probably consist of questions about specific sections of your thesis, and the examiner should give a page-reference for each question. According to Alex Gray, these questions fall into six categories:

• Clarification. The examiners ask you to explain a particular statement in the thesis. In some cases, their lack of understanding may be due to a typo, e.g. "Why did you connect the client to the sewer?" Also, "not" is a small word which makes a big difference! ;-)
• Justification.
• Alternatives considered. Be honest if you didn't consider alternatives, otherwise you'll be digging a hole for yourself.
• Awareness of other work.
• Distinction from similar work. Especially recent publications where others are working in the same area - what are the similarities and differences between your work and theirs?
• Correction of errors (typos, technical errors, misleading statements, and so on).

Acknowledgements

Much of the material on this page comes from my supervisor Nick Filer, from CS700/CS710, from questions I've been asked at the end of various presentations I've given, and from my own viva (most of the questions there were thesis-specific). I added questions from the external websites given at the end of this document. I also updated this document in the light of Alex Gray's keynote speech, "Surviving the PhD Viva: An External Examiners Perspective" at the 2002 Research Students' Symposium.

If you can think of any viva-style questions that are not covered by the above, please do not hesitate to tell me, and I will consider them for inclusion on this page.

Finally, I found my own viva much less stressful than I thought it was going to be. The examiners know that it's an ordeal for anybody, so they should go out of their way to put you at your ease and make you feel comfortable. I was amazed how calm I was, even when I went back to hear the result. If you're worried about getting an `impossible' resubmission-order, remember it's not the examiners' job to set insurmountable hurdles - they want you to pass as soon as possible.

---

External links

PhD Vivas - the end is in sight? (Medical Sociology UK)

Preparing for the Viva Voce (University of London)

How to survive a thesis defence (Physics, University of New South Wales)

Preparation for the Oral Examination (Brunel University)

Procedure for Viva Examination (University College London)

How to survive your viva (Lancaster University)

PDF file: Preparing for Your PhD Viva Voce (Warwick Business School)

Research Papers: Types of Research Papers

Research Papers: Types of Research Papers

Writing a Research Paper

---

Genre

The two main types: to analyze or to argue? That is the question.

Regardless of the type of research paper you're writing, we hope the previous discussion of what a research paper is has established that your finished paper should be a presentation of your own thinking backed up by the ideas or information of others in the field. However, whether your paper is ANALYTICAL (uses evidence to analyze facets of an issue) or ARGUMENTATIVE (uses evidence to attempt to convince the reader of your particular stance on a debatable topic), is definitely going to have a bearing on your strategy from here on in. In fact, it will determine your paper's purpose. So here's a more thorough discussion of the difference between the two types, followed by a concrete example that directly compares the two.

---

1) Analytical Papers

As the staff at the SUNY Empire State College Writer's Complex so aptly explains it: "To analyze means to break a topic or concept down into its parts in order to inspect and understand it, and to restructure those parts in a way that makes sense to you. In an analytical research paper, you do research to become an expert on a topic so that you can restructure and present the parts of the topic from your own perspective." 1

In this brand of research paper, therefore, you go into the researching stage with a specific topic about which you have not made any kind of conclusions. Often you will hear this called your research question. Your task is to survey the information and views already out there--both before and once you become familiar with the topic. That will require critical thinking and reading, plus evaluation of the resources you handle. By the end of the paper you will be able to contribute your own thoughts to the academic discussion by drawing some conclusions about the topic you have just analyzed.

---

Your task is to survey the information and views already out there--both before and once you become familiar with the topic. That will require critical thinking and reading, plus evaluation of the resources.

---

What exactly does critical thinking mean though?

A term thrown around at the post-secondary level, "critical thinking" is a broad concept that encompasses a lot about college or university academic expectations. But for our purposes it's enough to say that in a research or reading context it means not considering any view as "truth" simply because a source has been published or seems to be an expert. It requires you to maintain some objectivity and ask questions to yourself as you read (or watch or listen). This slight air of initial skepticism urges the resource to convince you of its authority. In short, a critical eye teaches you to regard anything-- especially if it's published or in other media-- as if you're doing a peer edit or with the attitude your own professor will be adopting while marking your paper. No matter what your knowledge level, as a student with fresh eyes and unique experiences, you always have inquisitiveness as a skill; this is how students enter a research community with some authority of their own.

For more guidelines about what critical thinking and reading actually are, visit:

Thinking Critically from the University of Victoria Learning Skills Program page

Critical Reading from the University of Saskatchewan's "U-Study" Library Instruction Guide

---

2) Argumentative (or Persuasive) Papers

In addition to the concept of critical thinking (which any paper at the university level will demand of you), another widely-used term at the college level which you may or may not be familiar with in its academic context, is the term argument. This is the basis of the persuasive kind of research paper.

The Student Services staff at Charles Sturt University in Australia defines an argument as "a series of generalizations or propositions, supported by evidence or reasoning and connected in a logical manner, that lead to a justified conclusion. You must sustain your argument by giving evidence and reasons."

In direct contrast to the analytical paper, your approach here is to take a stand on an issue and use evidence to back-up your stance, not to explore or flesh out an unresolved topic. We have included an entire step just on this aspect of the research paper writing process, but it's probably worth your while now to know that this stance, this debatable statement or interpretation is known as your thesis.

---

In direct contrast to the analytical paper, your approach here is to take a stand on an issue and use evidence to back-up your stance, not to explore or flesh out an unresolved topic.

---

Argumentative or persuasive papers, as these names suggest, are attempts--after all, essay does come from the French word essai, or "attempt"--to convince the reader of a debatable or controversial point of view.

That point of view--your thesis--and not some research question, is the core of this breed of paper.

Convention has it that theses are generally found in the introductory paragraph(s), which makes sense considering your reader will get frustrated if your persuading point isn't stated early on. This is why guides to true ANALYTICAL papers--even our short description above--avoid using the word "thesis" altogether and describe you as "drawing conclusions." They recognize that your critical evaluations, insights, and discoveries are going to be located toward the end of the paper and so are not theses in the true sense of the word.

Note: While it would be really useful to call them thesis papers from here on in (since a proper argumentative paper should always have a thesis statement), we can't use that name. Technically, a real "thesis paper" is the name given to the research projects pursued at levels of university beyond a Bachelor's Degree. Since you're probably still an undergraduate, refrain from calling argumentative papers "thesis papers" and you'll avoid confusion.

---

In true research paper fashion, we have just laid out the difference between analytical and argumentative papers in a more abstract form. To drive the point home, here is the concrete example we promised earlier:

Example

For an ANALYTICAL research paper, let's say you have decided to explore "the purpose of madness in Renaissance tragedies." You don't have an answer in mind to turn that into a sentence (that wouldn't be following the purpose of your paper!) so you do some research to locate instances of insanity in various plays.

The body of the paper would analyze or break down the topic into three or four "parts" which will later become the main paragraphs of your draft. Perhaps your research helps you discover several purposes to madness in these tragedies, with your paper devoting a paragraph to considering each. Or perhaps there's debate among scholars as to the main purpose of madness, so you decide to present some of these varying opinions. However you choose to explore the topic, in the body of your paper you'd be using evidence from the plays themselves (a.k.a. primary sources) and expert opinions on the plays (a.k.a. secondary sources).

Your concluding paragraph(s) would finally incorporate some of your critical interpretations of both the plays and the experts' essays. Here, you'd include a critical evaluation and discussion of your overall findings as well as some conclusions based on the patterns you've researched or detected yourself to make some final comments about the purpose of madness in Renaissance tragedies.

Now, an ARGUMENTATIVE paper would lay out exactly what you consider to be the purpose of madness in Renaissance tragedies in a declarative sentence right in the introduction--the thesis statement. Thus, the template would change accordingly to "the purpose of madness in Renaissance tragedies is ______ (for comic relief? to provide a reflection of moral chaos? and so on and so forth)." See, it ceases to be just a topic (notice above that our topic for the analytical paper is not a sentence!) and has become instead an interpretation. The course of the paper will develop why you believe--and importantly, why the reader should believe--what you do.

This time, you'll select only that evidence (still examples from plays and opinions from experts) which directly supports your thesis. The body of your paper turns into a site for laying out the proof you've collected rather than a canvas for delineating a topic. And considering that scholars still debate the psychological state of Prince Hamlet (close to 400 years after the play was written!), there is no right or wrong answer. You will not get a bad mark if your professor happens to completely disagree with your thesis. That's not the point. Solid back-up and convincing arguments, not safe thesis statements, are what make for happy profs.

Because your insights, which are what your professors are most interested in, are the very fulcrum on which an argumentative paper balances rather than just interspersed or tacked on the end of analytical papers, argumentative papers are probably the most popular type of research paper. Of course, your experiences may vary depending on the courses and teachers you have.

---

Analysis in Research Papers, by the SUNY Empire State College Writer's Complex crew, gives a different example of what an analytical paper might look like.

Types of Essays is the 1st of many sections of the superb UVic Writer's Guide and outlines six types of essays. The unique titles given to each, but with the same topic, provide another good comparison of the differences between the types.

Nasty PhD Viva Questions

Nasty PhD Viva Questions

---

A PhD candidate needs to anticipate the questions that are likely to be asked in the viva - the "horrible ordeal where you have to defend your thesis in person before they rip you to shreds." Actually, it's not nearly as bad as it sounds, provided that you enter it having prepared to your utmost.

There are three reasons why PhD candidates have to have a viva: it is so the examiners can see:

• whether it is your own work;
• whether you understand what you did;
• whether it is worth a PhD (i.e. is a contribution to knowledge).

These are the points being examined (according to Alex Gray from the University of Cardiff):

• Understanding: that you're ready to become an independent researcher.
• Relationship to other work: that you have a command of your subject-area. Similarity to the work of others doesn't detract from novelty!
• Novelty - is your work publishable? If you have already published a couple of papers, that should be proof of sufficient originality. Don't panic about recent publications that are very similar to your work - the important thing is to be aware of them, and to know the differences between your work and theirs.
• What you have achieved, and that you are aware of its implications. What will it make a difference to?
• Demonstration of hypothesis (what you set out to achieve). How have you evaluated/tested your hypothesis? Always be prepared to reconsider your hypothesis if you end up demonstrating something else - it's vitally important that your results match your hypothesis, and that you have a convincing argument for this.
• Why did you do it the way you did? Not just your practical work, but everything. For example, your literature review should be focused towards your hypothesis.

---

Preparing for the Viva: Before you submit

It's crucial to get the philosophy of your thesis (as set out in your Chapter 1) absolutely correct, and clear in your mind by the time of the viva, because if the examiners find holes, they'll run rings round you.

They could ask you to explain/justify any statement in the thesis, so beware of baring nasty branches for clarification at the viva! Identify the contentious statements in the thesis, which you anticipate having to defend in the viva. A good supervisor will point out the contentious statements and grill you over them. Start a file of anticipated viva questions.

The conclusion chapter is a major one to focus on in anticipating viva questions - especially where you criticise your work!

Obviously, it's essential to know your own thesis thoroughly. I think it's a great idea to compile a brief summary of each section before you submit - enough to remind you of what's in each section, paragraph by paragraph or similar (my thesis summary is very different to, and shorter than, my thesis plan, where I basically wrote down all the points I could think of, then when I wrote it up, I added and deleted points, and changed the structure). Compiling a thesis summary before you submit has the advantages that you may spot strategic-level flaws in time to fix them, and will enable you to revise for the viva from the thesis summary rather than from the thesis itself.

Don't try to get the thesis perfect and free of minor corrections at the expense of delaying submission. It's almost certain that the examiners will find something to correct, anyway.

---

Preparing for the Viva: After you submit

The most important goal in preparing for the viva is to keep the subject alive in your head.

Try to anticipate the questions you'll be asked in your viva and keep working on a file of anticipated questions (both the generic questions listed on this web-page, and questions specific to particular sections of your thesis) and your answers. If you said anything without understanding it 100%, or anything you have doubts about having justified properly, add it to your viva file.

You can go into university after you've submitted your thesis and your registration has expired - doing some more practical work may (or may not) help to keep the subject alive in your head (you could do experiments and take printouts of the results to the viva).

However, the main preparation for the viva is reading. These are the things to prioritise:

1. Know your thesis inside-out. Compile a thesis summary (see above) if you didn't do so before you submitted - revising from that rather than from the thesis itself will help you focus on the strategic level (a half-line summary of each paragraph in the thesis should suffice to remind you of every important point in the thesis). You should read your thesis summary in a continuous cycle while you're waiting for the viva, and you should read the thesis itself at least once after you submit it and before the viva. Try to read it from the perspective of the examiners.
   • If your thesis contains mathematical formulae, check them carefully so that you're confident, by the time of the viva, that they're correct. If they're not correct, work it out in advance so that you're not flustered by mathematical mistakes at the viva.
2. Be familiar with the references cited in your thesis, because that's the literature your examiners are most likely to ask you about. Read anything you have cited without reading (not that you should cite things without reading in the first place!).
3. The examiners could also ask you about literature not in the thesis, to test whether you are widely-read in your area.
   • So make sure you're familiar with the literature - not everything you've read in the last three years, but the more important stuff.
   • Look for recent review/survey papers of related areas. You need to be able to discuss the state of the art in any area related to your thesis.
   • Recent publications tend to be particularly important (what are the recent developments in your field?), although they can't ask you about anything published after you submitted your thesis.
   • Read the examiners' publications to get a feel for where they're coming from, what things they consider important, and which topics they consider relevant.
   • Don't stop reading until after the viva.

It might be an idea to publish a paper or two between submitting your thesis and the viva - I wish I had done so. Try to write papers from different perspectives.

The time between submitting the thesis and the viva varies greatly. I submitted my thesis on 28th September 2001, and had my viva on 18th September 2002! My thesis was very long (390 pages including appendices), and there was a delay in finding a suitable external examiner, but above all you have to remember that your examiners will be busy with other things too!

The shortest time I've heard of between submission and viva is three weeks (different subject, different university).

They have to give you at least two weeks' notice before the viva. I got five weeks' notice. My internal examiner suggested a couple of dates, I chose 18th September and asked for 14:00 in IT406, and this was officially confirmed a few days later.

---

The Viva itself

The PhD viva is an open-book exam: you can bring any materials you want. Here is what I think one should bring to the viva:

• a copy of your thesis, obviously - you can stick yellow `post-it' notes on it (e.g. anticipated questions and answers), although I personally abhorred the idea of preparing from my thesis itself;
• your list of anticipated viva questions and your answers;
• printouts of the results of any post-submission experiments;
• the chapter-summaries you made for revision;
• all the notebooks you should have been keeping since the start of your research (the notebooks need to be indexed so that you can look things up);
• any papers such that when you reviewed them in the thesis, you regurgitated something they said blindly without really understanding it (in my case, I identified two such papers, but I brought a dozen potentially contentious papers to the viva);
• printouts of any files or emails containing useful ideas which you haven't documented elsewhere;
• tissues, paracetemol, &c. in case of any unexpected bouts of sneezing, headaches, &c.

At my viva, I gave a presentation (using slides) about some experiments I did after I submitted my thesis. But it's unusual for the candidate to give a presentation, and your supervisor should advise you if it is appropriate to do this. If you do give a presentation, be prepared to be flexible - I was asked to speed up and just give the highlights.

It is not the norm, in this department (I do not speak for other departments/universities), to be expected to give a practical demonstration of your work at the viva, but you could always offer to do so if you think it will help your cause (unlikely).

Anyone can attend a PhD viva, but only the examiners and the candidate can participate. (This means it may be a good idea to attend someone else's viva before your own, though I've never had the balls to gate-crash a viva! :-o )

Your supervisor should definitely attend your viva, although (s)he is usually not allowed to participate unless invited to do so by the examiners. It might be an idea to keep an eye on the body-language of your supervisor to see if you're going wrong! ;-)

A viva typically lasts two hours (but as long as it takes - mine lasted 2h22m), and a common approach is for the examiners to go through the thesis sequentially, asking questions.

Just because they ask a lot of questions doesn't mean you're going to fail. They don't give away the result before or during the viva, but you may be asked to wait around for the result at the end (about half an hour), so that they can explain the result to you - particularly if you have to resubmit your thesis (failure without the option of resubmission is very rare, and is not going to happen if you submit anything resembling a sensible thesis).

Tips:

• Relax and enjoy it, if possible!
• Ideas should flow out from you without a lot of prompting.
• Listen carefully to the questions and take your time answering them.
• Answer your questions succinctly (a rough guideline is 2 to 3 minutes each - no 20-minute diatribes!). Avoid going off at a tangent.
• Try to make your answers initially inclusive (spot overlaps), analytical, and then if appropriate dismissive or point out the limitations - and the effects of these limits.
• Generic viva questions, such as the ones given in the section below, require imagination to answer well!
• Answers may utilise a wide variety of examples and domains. They are a test of your breadth of knowledge as well as depth of knowledge which is expected of a PhD student.
• Handling difficult questions:
• If you don't understand the question, ask for clarification. Paraphrase the question in your own words and say, "is this what you mean?" State your assumptions.
• Treat vague questions as invitations to tell the examiners that you know your area and how it fits into related areas. Try to link the question to the questions you have anticipated and their stock answers. After writing a thesis, you should have one big, connected network of discussion in your head, so you need to jump in at the appropriate place for a given question.
• If they have a misconception about your work, try to pin it down and explain it.
• If you think the question is irrelevant, explain why you think it is irrelevant (it may be that you need to be more broad-minded).
• If you really can't answer a question:
• Be honest.
• If you have any idea at all, say it.
• Say, "I can't answer this on the spot, but I should be able to work it out in my own time."
• If it's about literature you haven't come across, thank the questionner and ask for a reference.

---

Typical Viva Questions

Here are some generic viva-questions - you should instantiate each question for your particular thesis, and have a framework for answering it worked out before the viva.

I have tried to cluster related questions together here - they are not necessarily in order of importance, nor in the order that they are likely to be asked at the viva.

General Questions

• What is the area in which you wish to be examined? (particularly difficult and important if your thesis fits into several areas, or has several aspects, or seems to fit into an area of its own as mine does).


• In one sentence, what is your thesis? (Resist the temptation to run from the room!)


• What have you done that merits a PhD?


• Summarise your key findings.


• What are you most proud of, and why? This may be asked (again) towards the end of the viva.


• What's original about your work? Where is the novelty? Don't leave it to the examiners to make up their own minds - they may get it wrong!


• What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?


• Which topics overlap with your area?
  For topic X:
  • How does your work relate to X?
  • What do you know about the history of X?
  • What is the current state of the art in X? (capabilities and limitations of existing systems)
    What techniques are commonly used?
    Where do current technologies fail such that you (could) make a contribution?
  • How does/could your work enhance the state of the art in X?
  • Who are the main `players' in X? (Hint: you should cluster together papers written by the same people)
    Who are your closest competitors?
  • What do you do better than them? What do you do worse?
  • Which are the three most important papers in X?
  • What are the recent major developments in X?
  • How do you expect X to progress over the next five years? How long-term is your contribution, given the anticipated future developments in X?


• What did you do for your MPhil, and how does your PhD extend it? Did you make any changes to the system you implemented for your MPhil?


• What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?


• Where did you go wrong?
• Why have you done it this way? You need to justify your approach - don't assume the examiners share your views.


• What are the alternatives to your approach?
  What do you gain by your approach?
  What would you gain by approach X?


• Why didn't you do it this way (the way everyone else does it)? This requires having done extensive reading. Be honest if you never thought of the alternative they're suggesting, or if you just didn't get around to it. If you try to bluff your way out, they'll trap you in your own words.


• Looking back, what might you have done differently? This requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.


• How do scientists/philosophers carry out experiments?


• How have you evaluated your work?
• intrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated that it works, and how well it performs?
• extrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated its usefulness for a specific application context?


• What do your results mean?


• How would your system cope with bigger examples? Does it scale up? This is especially important if you have only run your system on `toy' examples, and they think it has `learned its test-data'.


• How do you know that your algorithm/rules are correct?


• How could you improve your work?


• What are the motivations for your research? Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?


• What is the relevance of your contributions?
  • to other researchers?
  • to industry?


• What is the implication of your work in your area? What does it change?


• How do/would you cope with known problems in your field? (e.g. combinatorial explosion)


• Have you solved the field's problem that you claim to have solved? For example, if something is too slow, and you can make it go faster - how much increase in speed is needed for the applications you claim to support?


• Is your field going in the right direction? For example, if everyone's been concentrating on speed, but the real issue is space (if the issue is time, you can just wait it out (unless it's combinatorially explosive), but if the issue is space, the system could fall over). This is kind of justifying why you have gone into the field you're working in.


• Who are your envisioned users? What use would your work be in situation X?


• How do your contributions generalise?
  To what extent would they generalise to systems other than the one you've worked on?
  Under what circumstances would your approach be useable? (Again, does it scale up?)


• Where will you publish your work? Think about which journals and conferences your research would best suit. Just as popular musicians promote their latest albums by releasing singles and going on tour, you should promote your thesis by publishing papers in journals and presenting them at conferences. This takes your work to a much wider audience; this is how academics establish themselves.


• Which aspects of your thesis could be published?


• What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD? Remember that the aim of the PhD process is to train you to be a fully professional researcher - passing your PhD means that you know the state of the art in your area and the directions in which it could be extended, and that you have proved you are capable of making such extensions.


• Where did your research-project come from? How did your research-questions emerge? You can't just say "my supervisor told me to do it" - if this is the case, you need to talk it over with your supervisor before the viva. Think out a succinct answer (2 to 5 minutes).


• Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the research?


• You discuss future work in your conclusion chapter. How long would it take to implement X, and what are the likely problems you envisage? Do not underestimate the time and the difficulties - you might be talking about your own resubmission-order! ;-)

Particular Questions

Most of the viva will probably consist of questions about specific sections of your thesis, and the examiner should give a page-reference for each question. According to Alex Gray, these questions fall into six categories:

• Clarification. The examiners ask you to explain a particular statement in the thesis. In some cases, their lack of understanding may be due to a typo, e.g. "Why did you connect the client to the sewer?" Also, "not" is a small word which makes a big difference! ;-)
• Justification.
• Alternatives considered. Be honest if you didn't consider alternatives, otherwise you'll be digging a hole for yourself.
• Awareness of other work.
• Distinction from similar work. Especially recent publications where others are working in the same area - what are the similarities and differences between your work and theirs?
• Correction of errors (typos, technical errors, misleading statements, and so on).

Acknowledgements

Much of the material on this page comes from my supervisor Nick Filer, from CS700/CS710, from questions I've been asked at the end of various presentations I've given, and from my own viva (most of the questions there were thesis-specific). I added questions from the external websites given at the end of this document. I also updated this document in the light of Alex Gray's keynote speech, "Surviving the PhD Viva: An External Examiners Perspective" at the 2002 Research Students' Symposium.

If you can think of any viva-style questions that are not covered by the above, please do not hesitate to tell me, and I will consider them for inclusion on this page.

Finally, I found my own viva much less stressful than I thought it was going to be. The examiners know that it's an ordeal for anybody, so they should go out of their way to put you at your ease and make you feel comfortable. I was amazed how calm I was, even when I went back to hear the result. If you're worried about getting an `impossible' resubmission-order, remember it's not the examiners' job to set insurmountable hurdles - they want you to pass as soon as possible.

---

External links

PhD Vivas - the end is in sight? (Medical Sociology UK)

Preparing for the Viva Voce (University of London)

How to survive a thesis defence (Physics, University of New South Wales)

Preparation for the Oral Examination (Brunel University)

Procedure for Viva Examination (University College London)

How to survive your viva (Lancaster University)

PDF file: Preparing for Your PhD Viva Voce (Warwick Business Schoo