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

Application: tables of contents (ii)
Ask your student to prepare a sample table of contents for their thesis,
using the thesis they examined as a starting point and list of chapter
contents shown above. Ask them to bring it to you and explain why
they organized it in the way they did.
Linking sections
A typical feature of thesis and dissertation writing is the way in which sec-
tions of the text are connected by the use of linking sections. This is often
done through the use of what Mauranen (1993) calls metatext, or text that
‘talks about the text’. The following example, from the Introduction to a PhD

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The overall shape of theses and dissertations
thesis in applied linguistics, is typical of the kind of metatext found in theses
and dissertations. The thesis is an analysis of scientific writing. Every sen-
tence in this extract is text that is ‘talking about the text’.
This chapter has presented the background to the study which will be
described in the chapters which follow. It has examined the concepts of
genre and English for Specific Purposes as well as described and provided
examples of a number of approaches to genre analysis. It has also pro-
vided arguments in support of the concept of genre as an organizing
principle for language programme development. It has outlined the pur-
pose and design of the study, including a brief discussion of the process of
selection and analysis of the texts used. The chapter which follows will
present the theoretical framework for the study.