Literature Thesis Writing Guidelines to Help You Get Started

Successful submission and acceptance of a thesis is an extremely integral part of completing student’s degree requirements. Many of the schools have very stringent requirements when it comes to a literature thesis. This article will discuss some common thesis writing guidelines to help you get started.

A literature thesis is generally divided into five different chapters. Each chapter includes a certain element of the thesis. Hence, a summary by chapter could be as follows:

Chapter 1: Purpose of the thesis

This includes the purpose of the literature thesis and the reason why it is being written in the first place. Every thesis must focus on this and clearly explain the significance which the thesis represents.

Chapter 2: Review the Literature

In this part, the author must refer to some of the literature he used, to get additional information and understanding into the topic. It should be more than just listing of the sources but rather bring more insight into what it discusses and offers. 

Chapter 3: Methodology

It covers how the data was collected and interpreted. It is very important to specify the data collection methods used and how the gathered information is interpreted.

Chapter 4: Findings

This section includes a detailed discussion about the results and findings from the research conducted. There should not be any additional analysis. It is meant to provide a section where the direct results of the research are presented.

Chapter 5: Discussion

This chapter is not meant to just revise what was presented in the earlier chapters. Rather it should be used to discuss how the findings are linked to one another and results from other sources related to the topic at hand. In this organized way, several similarities and differences can be discussed and why they may be important.

The discussion chapter is usually the most significant as it seeks to wrap up the study and present important conclusions. It must have strong concluding statements which seek to tie all the elements together into a clear conclusion.

Consider that these are a few general guidelines for writing a good literature thesis. The specific methods and organization of the information will vary, depending upon the school and department requirements or the type of thesis being done.