2 DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

The Writing Center (614) 688-5865 • http://cstw.osu.edu

The Ohio State University Writing Center, 2017 Created by Shiao-Chen Tsai

Concept Mapping for Proposal & Dissertation Writers

In general, a thesis or dissertation proposal will cover the information from the abstract to the methods chapter. Some programs require students to write the first three chapters as the dissertation proposal. Other programs may only require students to write a chapter-long research proposal but include section headers that served the same functions of introduction, literature review, and method.

Abstract

Method Chapter

Results Chapter

Introduction Chapter

Literature Review Chapter

Discussion Chapter

Both the introduction chapter

and the literature review chapter

present general information first

before narrowing down the scope

to specific ideas covered in the

present study. The discussion

chapter, in contrast, starts with

specific findings from the present

study to generate boarder

implications for the target field of

study. The methods and the

results chapters vary widely in

their information sequence

patterns.

Writing Center at the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, The Ohio State University

2

Use Different Concept Maps for Different Chapters For the research abstract, introduction chapter, and methodology chapter, use a tree diagram to structure the relationship among a group of related ideas in your study.

Before writing your literature review chapter, use a table to summarize the key concepts and keywords for your draft of literature review chapter or for your research proposal. Author (Year) Key word of

the title Research Method

Results Relevance to my own study

Use the last column to write in your own word to simply explain to what degree and why this particular study is relevant to your research so that you will remember how you should address this key connection when typing your literature review.

Writing Center at the Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing, The Ohio State University

3

When organizing the findings from literatures to identify a gap to fill with one’s own research, try to use a Venn diagram to pinpoint where your study is located in what related areas of interests. Then, address the concepts in the overlapping part when writing your literature review chapter. Usually, your topic sentence for each section/paragraph should address the connection (shown as the overlapping parts) directly to remind the reader about why you need to introduce studies from certain areas to enrich your literature review in this way.

For the discussion chapter, make sure to re-examine the studies about the same issue even though you have mentioned most of them in the literature review chapter. Use the chart below to compare the supporting views) and the counter- augments of an idea that emerged from your research results. This will help you think about how to defend your ideas more carefully in your writing. the supporting views from literature the counter-arguments 1. 1. 2. 2. 3. 3.