Thesis and Dissertation Writing in a Second Language: a handbook for Supervisors

Billfish tagging report Tag No: E03406
Use of visual
reproduction
to illustrate
material used
Figure 2.1 Billfish tagging data card (not to scale)
Source: Hoolihan 2005: 17–18

---

Box 8.9 Account of how data were processed from a PhD thesis in marine biology
2.2.3 Modeling analyses
Detailed account 
The  “Brownie  et al. Recoveries” model class in 
of how data 
program MARK (White and Burnham 1999) was 
were processed. 
used to estimate probabilities of sailfish survival 
Note that 
(S) and tag-recovery rates ( f ) from the harvest of 
Brownie et al.
previously tagged fish. Survival rates are useful in 
model class is not
that they often have the greatest impact on 
described in detail population growth rates; although in terrestrial 
but simply 
species recruitment is the bigger force. The 
referred to
required input file for program MARK was 
constructed from individual encounter histories 
Justification of 
using a binary code of 1 or 0 to designate whether 
type of analysis
or not an animal was encountered on a particular 
used
occasion (Fig. 2–2).
Source: Hoolihan 2005: 20–21
Encounter 
history
Survives
10
Tagged
Killed – 
11
and recovered 
and
released
reported
Killed – not 
10
recovered or 
reported 
Figure 2–2. History coding for dead recoveries (redrawn from White and
Burnham 1999).
1-S-f
f
S

---

128
Writing the Methodology chapter
predictable formats typical of quantitative research articles in the sciences and
engineering, in which the language used is ‘quite simple and straightfor-
ward’. Qualitative research papers, as commonly found in arts and
humanities, were seen as requiring more sophisticated language skills as well
as lacking set formats. As noted by Miles and Huberman:
The reporting of qualitative data may be one of the most fertile fields
going: there are no fixed formats, and the ways data are being analysed
and interpreted are getting more and more various. As qualitative data
analysts, we have few shared canons of how our studies should be
reported. Should we have normative agreement on this? Probably not
now – or, some would say, ever.
(Miles and Huberman 1994: 299)
Thesis writers who opt for the relative ‘safety’ of quantitative research will in
all probability become writers of quantitative research papers, thus diminish-
ing perhaps the likelihood of the unique cross-cultural perspective they
might otherwise have brought to the world of international research
(Flowerdew 1999). Those second-language researchers who choose the chal-
lenging formats of qualitative research may need to be particularly persuasive
Box 8.10 Use of impersonal language in data analysis section of a PhD thesis in
marine biology
Tagging data were placed on a SQL server and 
Description of 
accessed through a proprietary software program 
how data  
that included forms for issuing, deployment
processed.
and recapture of tags. In addition to basic search 
Note use of 
facilities, specific report writing functions were 
passive voice
available to monitor levels of angler/captain 
and impersonal