Online Writing Lab

Rewriting & Revising

Contents and structure Macrostructure. The macrostructure of a text refers to its division into chapters, subchapters, sections and paragraphs. Ask yourself the following questions to improve the macrostructure of your academic text: Are the research question, results, and objective of the work clear and comprehensible throughout the entire text? Is the topic sufficiently narrowed down? …

The Narrowing Table

Developing a research question After you have chosen a topic you want to work on in your academic paper, you still need to develop a specific research question – in other words, narrow down your topic to a clear focus. A research question is the guiding question you answer in your academic work. A good …

Setting SMART Goals

Every person has goals. Often we set something for ourselves but then do not manage to follow through with the goal until the end. This is not because the goal is unattainable, but because of the way we formulate it. The criteria of the SMART method help to define goals clearly. What is the SMART …

Printing, Binding, and Submitting Your Thesis

Look for a print shop or copy shop in good time. Pay attention to possible bindings. Clarify the required format and in what form you can bring the file (e.g. USB stick). Find out how long the printing will take and when the print shop is open. Check whether, and if so, how a title …

The Writing Process

Phases of writing a scientific paper Writing a scientific paper consists of several phases. However, these steps rarely follow this seemingly ideal order – they often take place parallel and sometimes more than once. Keep asking for feedback whenever possible and plan for several content revision phases. Planning Find a topic Read up on the …

Creating a Map of a Text

Why create a map of a text? This method is helpful when the academic language of a text is difficult to understand and its structure is hard to recognize. Especially with such texts, many people find it challenging to take a step back and express the content in their own words – that is, to …

Planing Writing Time

Tips for time management in writing projects Determine your submission deadline and plan backwards from there. Create a list of tasks that need to be completed for the entire thesis. From this list, select upcoming tasks and break them down into smaller steps. Plan when each individual step is next and how long it will …

Writing a Good Paper in Social Science

In a term paper or final thesis, you deal with a topic and answer one or more research questions related to it. In doing so, you process knowledge from relevant literature, restructure it in relation to your research question, and develop a well-founded position with reference to the literature. In some papers, you present the …

How To Summarize Foreign Texts

What can I use this exercise for? Two essential steps in academic work are reading academic literature and excerpting. This method makes it easier for you to grasp the key points of a text, approach a text that is difficult to understand, or move away from the exact wording of the original text when paraphrasing. …

Excerpting a Text

What is excerpting? This happens often under a specific question: The goal is to use your own wording to become aware of contradictions, ambiguities, or difficulties in the text. By excerpting, the content is better integrated into your own words. Excerpting means writing down the key statements of a text. In addition, excerpts serve to …

Preparing for the First Meeting with Your Supervisors

Deadlines for your thesis There are deadlines you need to meet for your final thesis. Clarify the following points: Date of registration at the student office Latest possible submission date If applicable, date for your own presentation in the seminar on the final thesis Possible or necessary preliminary work before the official start Possibly formalities …

Finding and Narrowing Down a Topic in Engineering

Finding a topic Use techniques such as freewriting or clustering if you are still at the very beginning of finding a topic for your academic paper. Once topics begin to emerge that you are genuinely interested in, you should proceed more systematically so that you can choose one. You can use the following questions for …

Planning Your Thesis

How much time should I plan for? A typical bachelor’s thesis has a maximum processing time of six months, with the actual workload expected to correspond to about three to four months (after all, you still have to do a few other things in parallel). The processing time does not have to be fully used. …