Tuesday, 24 November 2009

Common mistakes made when writing your paper

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

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