Leeds Supervision

Introduction to Dissertation

Anja Stumpf 2025

introduction

Your Dissertation

• the most extensive writing within your MA
• final piece of work
• 12000 words (+/- 10%)
• an opportunity to research a topic that is of interest to you personally
• may be connected to a previous course/ assignment

be aware of self- plagiarism

Supervisor responsibilities

what to expect

• arrange meetings
• be in touch with administration

• find approprate methods
• suggest readings

• to read work that you send
• provide feedback

• mark dissertations

Your responsibilities

• keep supervisor/ admin informed about about any issues or problems that might affect your work

• suggest and schedule meetings

• maintain contact
• send documents in time (about 2-3 days before a meeting)

Meeting report form

Important Documents

• Dissertation Proposal Form
• Ethical Clearance
• Dissertation Handbook
• Research Ethics Guidelines

Upload proposal form on to Minervasubmit dissertation by: 2nd September All students must apply and be granted ethical clearance before collecting data It needs to be signed by your supervisor and an additional member of staff

Supervision Meetings

file names need your name , date and capter Jane_12.3._LiteratureV2

stay organized

allow for reading time

• You are all entitled to six hours of supervision, which includes the time it takes to read and comment on your draft work.

• We will have around six meetings of half an hour each, where we will discuss your draft work sent in advance and my comments on it. We will agree in advance what you are going to send me.

• Typically we will arrange the next appointment at the end of each supervision, and agree on the work to be submitted before the meeting.

• The final month of study is a Dissertation writing-up period when supervision will not be available. You must seek any final supervision at least one month before submission.

• You are responsible for taking notes of the meeting and completing a meeting report form within 24 hours after the meeting

send in good time

all documents with feedback will be there

upload on Padlet

Proposal

Things to include:

• Topic
• Motivation- why did you choose this topic?
• Theoretical Framework- what theory are you going to employ?

• Research questions- must be specific & based on your theoretical framework

• Research design
• Ethical considerations

Topic

Be specific

L2 Motivation in the ELT classroom

• Whoes motivation?
• In which context?
• What approach?

In-service teachers’ ideal L2 selves and professional development choices: A Chinese perspective

Self-efficacy beliefs and achievement in L2 reading in Chinese secondary schools

Research Design

From Topic to Execution

• Overview – qualitative, quantitative or mixed-method
• Quality – how are you going to ensure validity & reliability, trustworthiness (this is different for qual & quant)

• Data generation – participants, data collection tools, data collection process

• Data analysis – how the data will be analysed (e.g. SPSS, thematic analysis etc.)

• Timeframe

You need to descide

What theory you are going to use (theoretical context)

What method you are going to employ

What exactly you are going to focus on and why (rationale)

Research Questions (typically 3)

For the next Meeting

Read around your topic (take notes) Pay attention to the research methodology while reading

Work on part 1 and 2 of your proposal – make sure they are detailed and specific.

Send me the modified version of your proposal at least 2 days before our meeting.

Resource suggestions

Bitchener (2009)

Nunan (1992)

OASISOASIS is a publicly available database (oasis-database.org) of accessible summaries of research articles in the fields of language learning, language teaching, and multilingualism.

Woodrow (2019)

IRISIt is a collection of instruments, materials, stimuli, data, and data coding and analysis tools used for research into languages