Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for supervision

Excellent

Great book for novice writer.

Good book.

Honestly, this book is everything to a mid-way phd student who is so far away from any semblance of a professional or normal life, and smack in the middle of the phd tunnel. There are so many analogies, approaches, and perspectives here that it is absolutely impossible to stay stuck. Of course, because I am overwhelmed and inundated with things to do on my project, I have not read this cover to cover. I leave it on my desk, and use it more as a reference, especially when I am stuck, I find that it is more helpful that way. When I tried to read it from the beginning, I kept thinking I should actually be working.Just to give one example, I was writing a literature review, and I just completely began to lose the plot at some point. I turned to this book and found the "dinner party" analogy. My advisors have often told me that I am to be in conversation with the authors that I am using...but the dinner party analogy completely helped me bring that "conversation" alive. The author brings together Howard Becker's idea of constructing a table and the being-in-conversation-with-the-authors ideas together so beautifully, as in what would be the main ideas that would form the scope for this dinner party and who would be invited, and where would each of them sit, and where would I sit. This is just one priceless mnemonic that helped me get back on track.If you are a phd student, a master's student, or a researcher of any kind, or if you are in academia, you need this book.

An excellent book for someone who is in search of a book that goes beyond the basic concepts/principles.

My supervisors told me that my thesis lacks my voice and reads like an encyclopaedia and I agreed because they were right. The issue was, I do not know how to add my voice. Understandably, I googled and somehow landed in the author's website and from there came to the book. Borrowed the book from school library and after reading almost every word of the book, I will suggest every struggling PhD students to read this.One of the most important advice is the dinner table exercise. Asking us to imagine inviting researchers to our dinner table and asking them to engage in the conversation helped me put myself in the same level and taking control of what I am trying to say. At the same time it also limits focus on few researchers since we cant invite everyone to sit in our dinner table. And by thinking it in terms of our home dinner table compared to Hogwarts, we scope it down to something manageable. I think all doctoral student should do this.On top of that, the book is full of advice and clear guideline. By analysing paragraph by paragraph it tells us what might be missing from our text and how we can fix it. Anyone who wrote the "sh***ty first draft" will need this to fix the mistakes and take the thesis out of the "s***".For example, in page 58 (chapter 4) it suggests sentences on how to inform the reader that this thesis is different. Suggested sentences are1) The thesis differs from other ....2) It owes a factual and interpretative debt to ..(author 1, 2, 3), (author 4, 5, 6).. and ..(author 7, 8, 9).3) In other respect it has benefited from ...and the page before,1) The study builds on and contributes to work in ....2) Although studies in ... have examines.... there has not been an ...Examples and guidelines such as this helped me to modify my messy texts to something that looks like a thesis with authority. Of course as of now I am yet to complete my thesis and submit for examination and therefore should not be too vocal about it; however what this book gave me was a clear guideline on how to go about completing my thesis with my "voice". I highly recommend this to any struggling PhD student who is in his or her writing phase or in revising phase or in demoralised phase after the last supervisory meeting.