Abstract
· Far too long
· Acting as an introduction
Introduction
· Lack of hypothesis!
· Lack of aims and objectives
· Often written in the first person
Literature review
· Lack of references
· Not written as a narrative
Research Methodology
· No mention of primary and secondary sources
· No mention of qualitative or quantitative data
· No explanation of reasons behind using a particular research instrument
· No explanation of the questions posed – open or closed.
· No references to evidence the reason you are using a particular research instrument
Main text
· Not referenced sufficiently
· Complete reference cited in the text
· Explaining the whole reference in the text i.e.: In 1999 Professor of Economics at Bath University Sheila Smith says…. This should read: Smith 1999 states:
· Copying chunks of the reference instead of paraphrasing
Evaluation
· Most students couldn’t evaluate as they did not provide an hypothesis
· The evaluation and the conclusion were written together
· Students did not compare their data with that of the literature review.
· There was no evaluation
Conclusion
· The conclusion included new information
· The conclusion was the evaluation
Reference page
· Lack of mixed references – mostly Internet
· Not written in alphabetical order by surname
· Just providing the URL for Internet sources
Bibliography
· No bibliography
· Mistaking the bibliography for the reference page
Appendix
· Items placed in the appendix not mentioned in the text – (Appendix A)
· Those people who undertook questionnaires should place their original questionnaire in the appendix
· A sample of the respondents questionnaires should be included
Miscellaneous
Not referencing images, or including whole URL beside the image
Miss-use of capital letters
Spelling mistakes
