Read this article to learn how to craft a compelling preliminary thesis with our step-by-step guide, complete with examples to help you get started. Dive into the details and elevate your writing now!
One of the most important steps in the thesis writing journey is to develop a working or preliminary thesis, which is the backbone of your research. It sets the stages of your work and helps you easily navigate complex ideas and arguments. Whether you are exploring a new topic or working on an old research project, developing a thesis provides a clear focus and purpose to your work.
Before starting thesis writing, you need to craft a solid preliminary thesis statement that is typically 1 to 2 sentences long and provides a clear direction for completing your thesis. While making such statements, make sure that they cover all the essential aspects of your topic, offering a focused and comprehensive guide for your work.
Here, the experts at The Academic Papers UK will walk you through a basic step-by-step guide to writing compelling thesis preliminaries. Let’s start with the basics, like what this thesis is all about.
Table of Contents
What is a Preliminary Thesis?
A preliminary thesis is an initial analysis statement that can indicate your main discussion topic or goal. Its main benefit is to assist you throughout the development of your research. It has many key functions, such as:
- Guides Research: It guides you during research and keeps you focused while working on the collection of evidence for research.
- Clarifies Intent: A well-written preliminary thesis statement clarifies the main idea so that readers can understand your research goals.
- Evolves with Your Work: It helps you evolve your research as you go deeper, revealing new insights and findings.
How Do You Write a Preliminary Thesis?
Master’s and doctoral students must go through a challenging phase of thesis writing to show their research work and earn a degree. This journey begins with the development of a thesis’s preliminaries, which serve as a compass to guide them through the complexities of their work.
Not sure how to write an effective preliminary thesis? Follow these simple steps to get started!
Step 1: Choose Your Topic
Whenever you think about writing a thesis, the first thing that comes to your mind is the topic. So, the first step is to choose a topic that interests you and fulfils the demands of your academics. It should be clear, concise, specific, and relevant to your coursework. While choosing your thesis topic, you should do a thorough exploration and seek support from your supervisor.
Here are some tips that you must follow during your preliminary thesis topic selection:
- Always go for a topic that seems interesting and you have a passion for it.
- Make sure that your topic is up-to-date and relevant to the current situation in your field of study.
- Instead of going for a broader one, narrow down your research for topic selection.
- Check if there is enough scholarly data available to support your research.
- Ensure that your topic is practically feasible in your institution.
For example,
- Excessive use of mobile phones and their impact on a child’s health.
- Isolation of phytochemicals from tephrosia purpura
Step 2: Conduct Preliminary Research
Once you finalise your thesis topic, start your preliminary thesis research. Here, you should find out previous work that has been done on your topic. By going through the existing literature, you will get all the relevant data on your chosen subject, along with their references. While going through these existing papers, find out the research gap that your study can fill.
During this step, you can use various credible resources to get valuable information, including:
- Books from the library and published scholarly journals offer scholarly viewpoints and fundamental knowledge.
- Online databases like Google Scholar, ResearchGate, JSTOR, etc, where you can find useful articles on sites.
- Exploring current events like reports and news stories to get up-to-date information for preliminary thesis writing.
Step 3: Narrow Down Your Focus
If you select a broader topic, it will become more and more difficult to cover it from all essential aspects. So, instead of expanding your work, you should narrow down your focus after completing the initial research. It will help you to deeply dive into specific aspects of your topic. Think about the following strategies to follow here:
- Determine Particular Questions: Which specific problem or query would you like to discuss in your thesis? For example, rather than examining social media’s overall effects, you could concentrate on how it impacts youngsters’ self-esteem.
- Restrict the Scope: A more thorough study may result from a more focused preliminary thesis. So, you should concentrate on a certain group of people, era, or region.
Step 4: Formulate Your Argument and Thesis Statement
Now that you have a focused research topic, it’s time to develop your initial thesis statement. It should cover your topic’s purpose and outline your study perspectives clearly. You can define it in the following way:
A preliminary thesis statement is the initial working idea of your research, primarily used in the early stages of your work. It’s a temporary statement that leads you during your research and writing process, providing a clear and concise overview of your opinion. It mostly consists of basic three elements: reason, claim, and scope.
For example, if you are a chemistry student and going to naturally synthesise something, you should discuss a practical approach to achieve it.
Step 5: Ensure Clarity and Specificity
Although it’s the most important academic document that you want to write perfectly, don’t make use of complex words and phrases to make it more complex. Instead, you should avoid using ambiguous language and make your point clear and specific.
The following are some tips that will help you become clearer while writing your preliminary thesis:
- Use Straightforward Wording: Select precise nouns, clear words, and powerful verbs. To make your point more clearly, you can use “diminishes” or “enhances” rather than “affects.”
- Be Brief: You should try to keep it specific and concise, like one or two sentences that succinctly convey your core point.
- Steer Clear of Jargon: Keep your wording simple unless your audience is conversant with technical words.
- Read Helpful Guides: To easily navigate through these complex tasks using thesis writing tips, you should go through credible guidebooks and articles.
Step 6: Craft the Rest of Your Paper
After the completion of your preliminary thesis with a piece of strong evidence, it’s your time to organise the rest of the paper. During these next stages of your paper development, a preliminary thesis will serve as a guide to organise the main context of the paper. Here is an outline for your further work:
- Introduction: Here, you should describe your topic of study, add some background information, and introduce your preliminary thesis work.
- Literature Review: It contains all the existing data that you found relevant to your research with their references at the end.
- Methodology: This section covers the main materials and methods of your thesis, including explanations of all the practical work.
- Results and Discussions: Here, you will put the end results of the whole research and discuss them in detail.
- Conclusion: It consists of the key points, a preliminary thesis statement, and suggestions for future research.
What are Preliminaries in a Thesis?
In every research paper or thesis, there are introductory sections that come before the main content of the thesis, known as preliminaries. These sections provide important outlines to align your work.
It provides an essential overview of your thesis to the readers and what to expect from your thesis. These introductory sections are also known as preliminary pages.
These preliminary pages consist of the following:
- Title Page
- Approval Page
- Copyright Page
- Abstract
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Preface
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
These preliminary pages set the stage for your thesis, providing essential information and background for the reader.
How Long is a Preliminary Thesis Statement?
Generally, an initial thesis statement consists of one or two sentences long. It should be concise and simple to show the purpose of your research. Paperpile stated some basic rules for the length of a preliminary thesis statement as follows:
- If the scholarly article is 5 pages, your statement should be 1 sentence long.
- If the paper is 5-8 pages, the statement should be 1 or 2 sentences long.
- If the article is 8-13 pages, your statement should be 2 or 3 sentences long.
- If the paper is 13-23 pages, the thesis statement should consist of 3 or 4 sentences long.
- Over 23 pages, the length should be long of a few sentences or a paragraph.
Preliminary Thesis Example
When you start working on your thesis, you often look for guidebooks, existing samples and experts to assist you in making your work outstanding. Reviewing others’ work can give you insights into crafting a clear and effective thesis with no room for mistakes.
While exploring the literature, we got the following preliminary thesis sample from Southern University with complete guidelines of its initial pages:
Another example is from National Defence University to explain the development of a preliminary thesis:
Conclusion
Before diving into the actual writing, creating a preliminary thesis is also an essential task to lay the foundation of your research. It includes initial pages as well as developing a thesis statement for your thesis writing. You can achieve it by carefully selecting a topic, doing thorough research, and creating a strong argument with proof.
For added support, you might consider consulting leading thesis writing services in the UK, which guide students through this process. By following the steps mentioned above, along with tips and examples, you will get to know how to write a compelling preliminary thesis for insightful analysis and meaningful discussions. So, begin your journey to uncover new heights in your field.