The Student Room Group

Scroll to see replies

Original post by UWS
I'm in the process of writing a dissertation for Computer Science.

One big question I have is proofreading. Is it worth investing money by using a professional service to proofread my work? Also, does this count as cheating?


I have so far found it easier to proofread after I've written a page, much easier than trying to do 20+ pages at once.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by TimmonaPortella
People should be careful not to take that too literally. You have to produce one, cohesive essay at the end of it, however you think about it.


You're right.

Mine was broken down in to sections which did make things easier. But they do need to be cohesive.
Original post by JackJssn
A professional edits around 2.000 words an hour. So it will take a proofreading service about one and a half day.

If someone (a non professional) will proofread it in only an afternoon, the quality will be bad.

It is not as easy as you think ;-)


It's every bit as easy as I think. I've done it with mine and there were no mistakes. If you take care with it as you put it together, and check everything as you go along, it shouldn't take you all that long to go back through and double check for errors. You're not coming at it from cold.
I'm currently doing the literature review for mine but I'm struggling on how to write it :frown: I've found papers/journals to reference but I'm not sure if I'm writing about them correctly.
Original post by tinkerbell_xxx
I'm currently doing the literature review for mine but I'm struggling on how to write it :frown: I've found papers/journals to reference but I'm not sure if I'm writing about them correctly.


Is there anything you're struggling with in particular? :smile:

A literature review as I understand it is kind of like a broad survey of the current understanding about the subject. You'll need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the research and identify gaps in knowledge that your dissertation hopes to answer/contribute to. :h:
Original post by Puddles the Monkey
Is there anything you're struggling with in particular? :smile:

A literature review as I understand it is kind of like a broad survey of the current understanding about the subject. You'll need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the research and identify gaps in knowledge that your dissertation hopes to answer/contribute to. :h:


Just writing and how to structure it to be honest. My whole dissertation is based on writing a security policy for a small business and then adding that security to a model network.

The types of papers I have found are based on a few key topics but all saying similar things so I feel like I don't have enough to talk about.. but there aren't too many papers/journals specifically on my topic :frown:
Original post by tinkerbell_xxx
Just writing and how to structure it to be honest. My whole dissertation is based on writing a security policy for a small business and then adding that security to a model network.

The types of papers I have found are based on a few key topics but all saying similar things so I feel like I don't have enough to talk about.. but there aren't too many papers/journals specifically on my topic :frown:


So you can point out in your literature review how most of the papers are taking a similar approach, then broadly assess the strengths and weaknesses of each of the papers, then finally you can say but none of them discuss this point, which is what you're going to research in your dissertation? :holmes:

You're basically trying to show an awareness of the current research/knowledge of the field that you're writing about. :beard:
Original post by oliviarheya
I think it's mainly because I'm struggling to shorten down my broad topics but I have planned a meeting with my advisor this week to discuss my ideas


Good luck. Hopefully you and your adviser can come up with something :smile:
Writing a dissertation on whether there's a correlation between age and motivation (as age increases, does motivation decrease?) when it comes to the effectiveness of learning a foreign language. Studying linguistics and teaching. Have learnt nothing about how to create a questionnaire and ethics, but want to hand out questionnaires on student's attainment and motivation levels to a number of age groups.
Any tips?
Is your adviser helpful. I found our staff to be cold and unhelpful. They seemed to want something in their own specialised area and not anything to do with the core subject, ie Environmental Science
Original post by SlowlorisIncognito
Good luck. Hopefully you and your adviser can come up with something :smile:
Original post by beatsurrender
Writing a dissertation on whether there's a correlation between age and motivation (as age increases, does motivation decrease?) when it comes to the effectiveness of learning a foreign language. Studying linguistics and teaching. Have learnt nothing about how to create a questionnaire and ethics, but want to hand out questionnaires on student's attainment and motivation levels to a number of age groups.
Any tips?


What age range are you thinking of looking at? :h: Is there an established link already between motivation and effectiveness of learning? :h:
I'm thinking about doing mine on honey bees or some other type of bee as my family have two colonies. I spoke to one of my lecturers and she said that there are 3 staff members who have done some work on pollinators. Need to narrow the topic down though!
Been struggling with this dissertation stuff a lot. Thanks for all the useful replies ITT, will start to browse it more regularly. Hopefully offer some of my own advice once I get to grips with it - Thank you.
I have our dissertation proposal presentation on Tuesday and hardly anything to go in it....

I study English language and teach English as a foreign language. Mine's looking at how teachers adapt their methodology to teach English for academic purposes (training for IELTS basically) from teaching general English. There's a lot of debate about whether the two are really that different even though though they do have a lot of opposing characteristics. Just ent out the questionnaire to some people for piloting. I know nothing about this statistics and sciency sounding malarkey and it's stressing me out.

Was sat in a meeting last week and one of the supervisors said 'so how are you going to operationalise this' and I just made some sort of noise. Not a clue. A part of me is wishing I'd taken the easy road and chosen a module instead of writing a diss.
Reply 34
Original post by beatsurrender
Writing a dissertation on whether there's a correlation between age and motivation (as age increases, does motivation decrease?) when it comes to the effectiveness of learning a foreign language. Studying linguistics and teaching. Have learnt nothing about how to create a questionnaire and ethics, but want to hand out questionnaires on student's attainment and motivation levels to a number of age groups.
Any tips?


Oooh, oooh! I'd love to do that as my dissertation - sounds fascinating! =D
There are loads of free online services that allow you to create questionnaires from something as simple as Google Forms, but we get to use Qualtrics as part of degree, so I've just stuck with that (despite that it misbehaves occasionally).
For ethics, you'd have participants to sign an ethics sheet that explains what the study is about and they have to tick a bunch of boxes saying that they are over 18, that they have a chance to ask questions and withdraw at any time and yadayada, I'm sure your supervisor or whoever will have a standard ethics sheet. Also you might need to get actual ethical approval, if your research is not covered by the ethical approval of your supervisor (which is what I had to do), but it's quite a lengthy process and it might actually vary for you, so I won't bother explaining it here =P
As to the actual subject matter, only reading the research papers in the area will really tell you what's best to use, but I've come across various cool motivation scales towards learning a language that ask things like Studying a foreign language will help me.... "better understand and appreciate foreign art and literature", "meet and converse with more and different people" etc etc on 7-point Likert Scales of strongly agree/disagree

Hope it helps =)
Original post by Natashka
Oooh, oooh! I'd love to do that as my dissertation - sounds fascinating! =D
There are loads of free online services that allow you to create questionnaires from something as simple as Google Forms, but we get to use Qualtrics as part of degree, so I've just stuck with that (despite that it misbehaves occasionally).
For ethics, you'd have participants to sign an ethics sheet that explains what the study is about and they have to tick a bunch of boxes saying that they are over 18, that they have a chance to ask questions and withdraw at any time and yadayada, I'm sure your supervisor or whoever will have a standard ethics sheet. Also you might need to get actual ethical approval, if your research is not covered by the ethical approval of your supervisor (which is what I had to do), but it's quite a lengthy process and it might actually vary for you, so I won't bother explaining it here =P
As to the actual subject matter, only reading the research papers in the area will really tell you what's best to use, but I've come across various cool motivation scales towards learning a language that ask things like Studying a foreign language will help me.... "better understand and appreciate foreign art and literature", "meet and converse with more and different people" etc etc on 7-point Likert Scales of strongly agree/disagree

Hope it helps =)


Thanks so much for your help! Done some reading and found some motivational theories and how others have conducted their questionnaires, so like you say, I'll probably do something on the lines of that. I think my issue is that I wanna take a sample of kids studying GCSE as well as adults, so then they would be under the age of 18. Don't know how that'd affect the ethical side of things.
Original post by Puddles the Monkey
What age range are you thinking of looking at? :h: Is there an established link already between motivation and effectiveness of learning? :h:


Hey! :smile: umm I was planning to take a sample of GCSE yr 10/11 students, then students at uni studying language as an optional module (will be looking for students specifically aged 18-21), then some mature students studying in free English classes at my university (so probably looking at part time students aged 25+).
Yes there is - more motivation to learn a language does equal better attainment levels. There's also research saying motivation declines with age.. but I'm yet to find a study that tests motivation and age levels as factors both leading to attainment.
Original post by beatsurrender
Hey! :smile: umm I was planning to take a sample of GCSE yr 10/11 students, then students at uni studying language as an optional module (will be looking for students specifically aged 18-21), then some mature students studying in free English classes at my university (so probably looking at part time students aged 25+).
Yes there is - more motivation to learn a language does equal better attainment levels. There's also research saying motivation declines with age.. but I'm yet to find a study that tests motivation and age levels as factors both leading to attainment.


That sounds really interesting. :smile:

Once you've got all your questionnaires and everything set up, it might be worth posting the research/surveys forum? You should be able to get responses there. :h:
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by Puddles the Monkey
That sounds really interesting. :smile:

Once you've got all your questionnaires and everything set up, it might be wroth posting the research/surveys forum? You should be able to get responses there. :h:


Awesome, thanks for the advice!
Original post by indebt27k
Is your adviser helpful. I found our staff to be cold and unhelpful. They seemed to want something in their own specialised area and not anything to do with the core subject, ie Environmental Science


When I did my dissertation, I chose a topic based on the staff member offering a really exciting research trip to gather data- so it was a very specialist topic. I do think most staff members would rather supervise something closely related to their own area of expertise- if nothing else, they probably feel more able to make suggestions and mark these dissertations.

Have you proposed a topic to your supervisor that they didn't like? Did they give you any feedback as to why it wasn't suitable?

Latest