Putting it all together: writing a dissertation

Abstract

Here we are then, the final chapter. It's all going to come together now. You have learnt to manage your time, you have been a fantastic contributor to your seminars, you've survived group work and submitted your essays. You are a media and communications rock star! But now you need to prove that, once and for all, with the dreaded dissertation! In the last couple of chapters we have looked at some of the additional skills needed, question writing and research skills, but now it is time to bring these together with the skills from the first nine chapters and create something amazing -I mean, even more amazing that what you have done before.A dissertation usually comes in two halves, a proposal, about what you will do, and a dissertation, about what you did do. This chapter focuses most of its attention on the dissertation, but you can't start a dissertation without a good plan of work, so we will also start by looking at what a good research proposal should look like.