Summarizing techniques are very powerful tools in academic or dissertation writing. Summary, on one hand, facilitates readers in understanding the crux of research/dissertation in the shortest possible time. On the other hand, it helps researchers in clearing their stance on a topic by remembering only highly-relevant information. Summarization can be done in about half a dozen ways. This article will provide a brief note on dissertation summarizing techniques, top ways to select the right methodology for a dissertation and important techniques to summarize the research articles as well.
How do you summarize a dissertation?
The dissertation must start with a well-structured summary and abstract. The summary or the abstract is a concise synopsis of your research. It aims to facilitate the reader to decide whether to read or leave the upcoming text. Apart from all, the summary of the dissertation allows the reader to know about all key components of your dissertation. Thus, knowing the dissertation summarizing techniques may help you best achieving the characteristics of a good abstract. The following are some dissertation summarizing techniques;
Write en eye-catching introductory line/s to hook your reader
The first two lines of the summary or abstract of a dissertation must be eye-catching. To make the introductory lines eye-catching, you must use subject-specific or problem-specific terms. In order words, the introductory lines must be well-written or must insight into the exact nature of the study to hook the right reader. If you face any issue in writing introduction, you can buy dissertation online to get your entire dissertation done by experts.
Restate the problem statement to tell readers what actually the dissertation accounts for
Right after the introduction is the right place for placing the problem statement. The problem statement is the central theme of a dissertation. Thus, it must be concise and appropriate to the nature of the study.
Move on to the methods and techniques you used to get closer to your research aims
The third most important component that you must write in the summary of the dissertation is the methods and techniques you used to solve a specific problem. However, you should use summarizing techniques to only write highly important steps and methods used in research. The writer must avoid providing all unnecessary and irrelevant details in summary.
Summarize the conclusion
In just a few lines, you must give a possible solution to the problem statement in light of your research. What were the objectives of your research? Did you achieve them by using well-defined methods and protocols? What are some unique points regarding your research? These are a few things that a summary of your dissertation demands.
Additional points of consideration
An introduction, problem statement, selection of methods, and restating results are some vital components of the summary of the dissertation. Still, while writing a summary, other summarizing techniques are also important. For example, the summary or abstract must be somewhere between 100-300 words. Thus, only vital components, points and methods should be written in this session of research.
What methodology should I use for my dissertation?
The methodology is the key part of your thesis and dissertation. That is why, while writing a thesis, we must wisely select the methodology. There are several types of methods we can use to solve the diversified nature of scientific problems. For example, surveys, observation, interviews, experiments, case studies, and even systematic literature reviews are some common methods used in research. Every single type of research methodology has its own pros and cons. They all have special purposes and are meant for conducting a special type of research. Thus, the researcher should keep some points in mind while selecting methodology for his/her research. The following are some suggestions that can help you select the right methodology for your research:
- First, formulate the research questions or hypothesis, then search for the most suitable methods to get the most practical answers to these questions or hypotheses.
- Formation of the research questions and hypothesis helps you in compiling the most relevant information about your study. Thus, the most important way to know which method will be most appropriate to a study is to conduct the literature review. For this, you must read and review the most relevant scholarly articles and note the methods they used to solve similar research queries.
- Make a list of all important methods that may help you in your research. Read the list over and over again and examine which method you can apply to your study. The selection must not be biased; rather, it must be on the basis of available resources, time- available to conduct research and other practical approaches.
- Once you have selected a methodology for your research, the next steps must be to explore its strengths and weaknesses. The comparative approach can help you in the selection of methods based on strengths and weaknesses.
In the last, you can call for help from the librarian, the advisor and even the seniors from your own department to get feedback on your selected methodology.
Which technique is used to summarize a research article?
The academic writing requires us to remain short, concise and even decontextualized throughout the dissertation. In this regard, the summarizing techniques are very important to meet the high-quality dissertation writing standards. The summarizing techniques help writers in extracting the most useful point or idea from research articles to provide evidence of their own work. Thus, the research article summarizing techniques include the notes taking techniques, highlighting technique and critical evaluation.
Notes taking are important techniques that help you in establishing your own views about a topic. When we read something, we often neglect some important points and note-taking helps in noting even minor points. Thus, your notes are important tools to summarize the whole research paper in the most appropriate manner.
Highlighting summarising technique makes notes on the pre-written text. In this technique, you can select any three colours of your choice to highlight the most important, relatively less important and least important facts and pieces of information in a research paper. After colouring the information, the next step is the proper arrangement of highlighted points. Furthermore, these properly arranged highlighted points will be the summary of the given research article understudy.
Critical evaluation is the use of critical thinking, reading and writing techniques to understand an idea in research. This helps you summarize and understand a research article while preserving the originality of your own research. It allows researchers to develop their own views while reading a research paper. Thus, developing deep understanding by using critical thinking skills is an important summarizing technique, and is extremely important in dissertation writing.
Final thoughts
Summarizing techniques help students in determining key ideas and using them to support their own arguments. It can be done in a variety of ways. The dissertation summarising techniques include providing a persuasive introduction, defining the problem statement, stating the methods used, and summing up the findings. At the same time, critical evaluation, notes taking and highlighting are some other important summarization techniques. You can choose any technique to better understand and state the information in the form of a summary.
