University dissertations

[Four Cofffee]

I have just been sent a copy of masters degree dissertation from a student who I sent some papers to months ago. What I found really odd was that it was written in the first person. I work in a discipline where the layout and style of such documents is fairly presecriptive and the cloest you ever see to any personalising is mention of 'the researcher'. I found it dd that her opening line was "I have been a Blah Blah for 40 years.."

Is this a new thing to write in the first person or do some disciplines accept this? The particular dissertation was in social sciences/sociology but I work in the social sciences and have never see anything like it.

Of course she may just fail.

[crofty1984]

Failed my dissertation.

[otolith]

Bizarre - and this is from a postgraduate student?

Standards my arse.

[Fittster]

Why would writing in the first person be a sign of dropping standards? The point is to communicate clearly, if that is best done in the first person so be it.

[davefowler1987]

I recently graduated and whilst it was enforced - if we had wanted to the dissertation could have been in 1st person. However it was recommended that you take all form of personalisation out, apart from in the evaluations. Found it much easier to express opinions by just stating facts rather than "what dave thought"
Saying that though my degree was an Electronic Engineering degree - may be different for Social Studies

[Dupont666]

thought dissertations where to prove something using evidence and written in the form of a scientific experiment and unless it was a thesis about ones self, then I would expect this to be the case.

It sounds more professional to write in such a method rather than the:

'I did this..', 'I found this...', 'I concluded that understanding...'

changing to:

'It was found that...', 'In conclusion it can be understood...'

That sort of thing...

[MentalSarcasm]

What subject is it and what subject did she do before? In both my dissertations (BA and MA ancient history) I was allowed to write in the 1st person because part of it included using the primary evidence to argue for my own theories, I couldn't simply take a piece of evidence and say "this is what this scholar says, this is what the other says" and then leave it there, there also had to be "I agree/disagree/think both of them are wrong because...", as long as my reason was good it was fine.

[SoapyShowerBoy]

Mine was a research paper based on legal argument. It would have been impossible to write it in the first person.


Film and TV however... I like buffey the vampire slayer. I watched it every day for 3 years. Wonderful, here's a 1st class degree

[Ultuous]

Fittster said:

The point is to communicate clearly, if that is best done in the first person so be it.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, although it strikes me academia's yet to accept this concept!

When I started my degree (Mech Eng, 14 years ago! ) we had it drummed into us in one of our business/ management modules that writing the third person was out of date and reports should be written in the first person for clarity...

However, for every written report we were (or should I say one was ) asked to write for the next four years had to be written in the third person... It wouldn't suprise me if the same mixed message is still being sent out on the same course!

[cs02rm0]

I'm only a few years out of university and I'd have the same attitude to a dissertation written in the first person. I went to a good university and yet I don't think they could have cared less about it, to the point that if you didn't write in the first person then the people who mark the work would probably think it didn't sound right if it wasn't written in the first person.

My university marks seemed to all be either firsts or 'tolerated fails' without rhyme or reason as far as I could see though, so I'm not exactly suited to detail what provides the top marks consistently.

[otolith]

Fittster said:

Why would writing in the first person be a sign of dropping standards?

Because the student has (presumably) managed to graduate without being required to learn the standard form in which a scientific paper is written.

[KaraK]

it really depends on the subject I think - on both my BSc (Computer Science) and my MSc (Distributed Interactive Systems) we had very strict rules on how we were to write reports and we would be marked down if it wasnt followed. Friends doing courses in non-scientific diciplines however were either left to their own devices or even instructed to write very differently - a friend doing a degree in working with young people for example will get marked down if the essays arent written in a first person way. Something to do with it being used to evaluate the personal results of the work.

[turbobloke]

otolith said:

Fittster said:

Why would writing in the first person be a sign of dropping standards?

Because the student has (presumably) managed to graduate without being required to learn the standard form in which a scientific paper is written.

Quite possibly so and not just science. Certainly some masters assessment criteria specify 'academic' in terms of the writing style of the finished product. There should be guidelines and these should be followed, in the absence of any it's safer to revert to standard forms of academic writing anyway.

[otolith]

I'm not familiar with how things are done in the humanities, so didn't like to presume. At least as far as science is concerned, we were taught the standard form for writing up an experiment at secondary school - is that not done now?

[donkeypunt]

Usually the only reason you have to write anything in the first person these days is when writing a reflective statement on yourself. In management this is becoming increasingly common.

However, conducting a dissertation in the 1st person is a fail in my book.

[Daz4m]

I think its ok to write some of the introduction, i.e. rationale for the study etc but the main body of the report should be written properly.

However, it's not something I would encourage.

[physprof]

standards in sciences not that great either...spend most of my time when marking lab reports of undergrads at correcting / assisting them get rudimentary and unambigious communication and writing - correcting actual substance is less onerous once I've figured out what they are on about.

for a postgrad degree - sorry hammer them....

I always ask them rhetorical questions, like so you expect to graduate and get at least 25K pa. straight away - suppose you apply the same standards to preparing docs for your employer - would you pay for it if you were the boss and you'd just lost another order or a client refuses to pay for some work you'd done and this was the standard or report?

gets them thinking a bit

[Four Cofffee]

MentalSarcasm said:

What subject is it and what subject did she do before? In both my dissertations (BA and MA ancient history) I was allowed to write in the 1st person because part of it included using the primary evidence to argue for my own theories, I couldn't simply take a piece of evidence and say "this is what this scholar says, this is what the other says" and then leave it there, there also had to be "I agree/disagree/think both of them are wrong because...", as long as my reason was good it was fine.

It is an evaluation of a training programme. She describes receiving calls and emails from person X or Y, directing her to paper A or B. It felt more like I was reading a management report, come advertising brief, come resaerch report. She said things like; "I produced a groundbreaking training course and have been using it successfully for the past 15 years".

It was too late for me to say anything as she had already submitted and i assumed she knew what her discipline demanded. Having said that it was a masters without a requirement for a first degree so perhaps I shouldn't assume she had written dissertations before.

She was describing a process; gap in the knowledge. what she did, the results and imoplications, but as I said all in the first person.

Edited by Four Cofffee on Friday 7th August 16:20

[Tony427]

Four Cofffee said:

MentalSarcasm said:

What subject is it and what subject did she do before? In both my dissertations (BA and MA ancient history) I was allowed to write in the 1st person because part of it included using the primary evidence to argue for my own theories, I couldn't simply take a piece of evidence and say "this is what this scholar says, this is what the other says" and then leave it there, there also had to be "I agree/disagree/think both of them are wrong because...", as long as my reason was good it was fine.

It is an evaluation of a training programme. She describes receiving calls and emails from person X or Y, directing her to paper A or B. It felt more like I was reading a management report, come advertising brief, come resaerch report. She said things like; "I produced a groundbreaking training course and have been using it successfully for the past 15 years".

It was too late for me to say anything as she had already submitted and i assumed she knew what her discipline demanded. Having said that it was a masters without a requirement for a first degree so perhaps I shouldn't assume she had written dissertations before.

She was describing a process; gap in the knowledge. what she did, the results and imoplications, but as I said all in the first person.

Edited by Four Cofffee on Friday 7th August 16:20

Where was her tutor in all this?

Looks like her tutor has fallen down on one of his main tasks i.e. prepare a non-academic for academic examination.

Cheers,
Tony

[blank]

Mine (engineering) had to be in the third person. As did all reports etc.