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

Application: the structure of Conclusions
Ask your student to look at the Conclusions section of a thesis and dis-
sertation written in their area of study and to identify the
organizational structure of this part of the text. Ask them to make a
list of typical content that is covered in each of the sections that they
identify.
The language of Conclusions
Hewings (1993) discusses typical language features of Conclusions. In par-
ticular, he describes how writers report, comment and speculate on their
findings. He found, in his research, that writers typically refer to one of three
things when they do this: the world, other research, and either the method-
ology or findings of the thesis or dissertation itself. Table 10.3 gives
examples of this.

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Table 10.3 Reporting, commenting and suggesting in the Conclusions section
The world
Previous 
Procedures
Findings of 
research
used in
the study
the study
Reporting
The Malaysian 
Recent studies
The congestion Hire purchase was
government has 
suggest that 
costs were
found to be the 
set up a number
the greatest
then measured
most popular and 
of institutions.
scope for 
for Britain…
important method
increasing 
of financing fixed 
country exports
assets.
of the products
under study 
may lie in trade 
between
developing 
countries.
Commenting Previous rounds
There are no 
The scarcity 
The information 
of trade liberal-
examples in the
of published 
collected from the
ization and the 
data, but they 
research which survey seems to 
GSP scheme left 
might exist as,
is based on
suggest that small
the tariff 
for example,
empirical bases concerns rely
escalation 
evaluative
about British
more on …
pattern virtually 
comments on 
marketing in
intact.
other work.
PRC has forced
the author to 
use a lot of 
publications 
from 
Hong Kong
and America.
Suggesting
... there is a great
Further 
There are
There are no 
need for an
research in this 
no examples
examples in the 
export insurance
field would
in the data.
data. It is not in 
credit system to 
be of great 
Suggestions
fact clear how this
be implemented
help in the 
might, however, category would be 
in Turkey.
future planning 
be made on,
distinct from 
of British 
for example,
Suggest-Literature.
strategies.
the procedures 
that should have 
been followed 
in hindsight,
given the
results
obtained.
Source: based on Hewings 1993

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Conclusion
The Discussion and Conclusions sections of a thesis or dissertation are, as
Swales and Feak (1994) point out, not always easy to provide students with
guidelines for. There is a lot of disciplinary variation in these sections. It is,
thus, especially important for students to look at examples of previous theses
and dissertations to see what writers typically do in their area of study. One
thing writers do, however, in this part of the text, no matter what the con-
ventions, is step back and take a broad look at their findings, and their study
as a whole (Weissberg and Buker 1990), saying not just what the study has
done, but also ‘what does it mean’. This ‘what does it mean?’, we feel, is the
key point that a good Discussion, and in turn Conclusions, section needs to
address. A good thesis or dissertation should tell the reader not just ‘what I
have done’, but ‘why what I have done matters’.
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Writing Discussions and Conclusions