Master's Degree Dissertation
Code: 45350 ECTS Credits: 15| Degree | Type | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 3500084 English Studies: Linguistic, Literary and Sociocultural Perspectives | OB | 1 |
Contact
- Name:
- Julio Miguel Cebrian Puyuelo
- Email:
- juli.cebrian@uab.cat
Teaching groups languages
You can view this information at the end of this document.
Prerequisites
Students must have passed all other subjects enrolled in the master's programme before they can defend their master's paper.
Objectives and Contextualisation
The TFM (Master's paper) is an original research projecte carried out individually. The objectives of the master's thesis module are:
(a) To help students decide on a research topic and select a supervisor according to their academic strengths and preferences.
(b) To provide students with the guidance needed to undertake graduate-level research on English literature, linguistics, language acquisition and language use, with a special focus on multilingual contexts and sociocultural perspectives.
(c) To train students to work autonomously following their supervisor's guidance.
Learning Outcomes
- CA11 (Competence) Use inclusive and non-discriminatory language in academic productions.
- CA32 (Competence) Formulate proposals for research applied to the resolution of social problems related to the acquisition, learning and use of English, as well as the cultural and literary representations of the body, environmental considerations, and contemporary conflicts.
- CA33 (Competence) Demonstrate autonomy and proactiveness in the preparation of a Master's Degree Final Project (TFM) that represents an original personal research contribution to the field of English studies.
- KA32 (Knowledge) Indicate the relevant literature on the topic of study of the Master's Degree Final Project (TFM) in the field of English linguistic, literary, and cultural studies.
- KA33 (Knowledge) Contextualise research for your Master's Degree Final Project (TFM) in relation to learning about the linguistic or literary use of certain standard and nonstandard varieties of English.
- KA34 (Knowledge) Report on the epistemological, methodological, and analytical principles used for the preparation of the Master's Degree Final Project (TFM).
- SA42 (Skill) Apply the formal and ethical principles of academic writing to the creation of a discourse that is personal, coherent, and critically informed.
- SA43 (Skill) Interpret the results of the research under study in the field of linguistic, literary, and cultural studies of the English language in a critical and cross-disciplinary way.
- SA44 (Skill) Draft a research report at an advanced level following the structural and stylistic conventions of the genre.
- SA45 (Skill) Present the project undertaken for your Master's Degree Final Project (TFM) in verbal form, fluently, correctly and in an organised way, while convincingly arguing in favour of the results obtained.
Content
Students will have to submit a 45-60 page original research dissertation citing a minimum of 20 secondary sources. The dissertation can be on a topic that relates to any of the subjects included in the master's programme and/or within the area of expertise of professors in the programme.
Students in the area of Language and Linguistics can choose to carry out an empirically-oriented dissertation (an experimental or ethnographic study with a final written report) or a theoretically-oriented dissertation (for instance, a critical essay on the state-of-the-art that could include descriptive data and linguistic argumentation). Students in the area of Literature and Culture will carry out a dissertation on a topic within that area (for example, on environmental ethics, gender and the body, or conflict, war and trauma in narrative discourse and other topics related to English-language literature and critical and literary studies).
A list of possible master's thesis titles for students to choose from will be provided at the beginning of the academic year. There will be guidance for the selection of master's thesis topics and supervisors.
Activities and Methodology
| Title | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type: Supervised | |||
| Master's Thesis preparation, writing and defence | 325 | 13 | CA11, CA32, CA33, KA32, KA33, KA34, SA42, SA43, SA44, SA45 |
| Meetings and exchanges with supervisor, information sessions | 50 | 2 |
The Master's Thesis will follow the format and structure of a research project. It must include objectives, state of the art or theoretical framework, methodology, results or analysis, discussion and conclusions.
The final version of the TFM will have a maximum length of about 60 pages (2,100 characters/page), excluding acknowledgements, bibliography and complementary information (images, figures, appendices, etc.).
The Master's Thesis must follow the Department's style and writing guidelines. Both the writing of the MA paper and the oral presentation on the day of the defense must be in English.
CALENDAR
October: General meeting with the Coordinator of the Master's Thesis and presentation of the possible topics or research areas to be supervised by the Master's teaching staff. Students will examine the suggested topics in order to make a decision. If students need assistance, the coordination of the master's degree will be responsible for guiding and promoting the first meeting with the tutor.
November-December: Supervisor Assignment. The assignment will follow the following procedure: the student will choose three possible topics or areas among the possibilities presented by the master's teaching staff and the coordinator will assign one of these three topics (and the corresponding supervisor) to each student, depending on the teacher's teaching skills and the subject area.
January-February: Proposal.
March-April: 5-page slice (Literature and Culture) and Workplan (Language and Linguistics).
May-June: submission of the preliminary version of the TFM (to the tutor).
End of June: submission of the final version (in digital version: a PDF document and a Word document (or alternative word processor)).
July: oral defense. The oral defense will last one hour. The student will make a presentation of about 20 minutes, followed by the questions and comments of the committee and the student's answers.
Students will have regular and frequent meetings with their supervisor to discuss and evaluate the progress of the TFM. In principle one meeting per month. This involves active preparation for the monitoring sessions and individual work in data collection, analysis, and writing.
Annotation: Within the schedule set by the centre or degree programme, 15 minutes of one class will be reserved for students to evaluate their lecturers and their courses or modules through questionnaires.
Assessment
Continous Assessment Activities
| Title | Weighting | Hours | ECTS | Learning Outcomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Master's Thesis | 100% | 0 | 0 | CA11, CA32, CA33, KA32, KA33, KA34, SA42, SA43, SA44, SA45 |
Assessment
The Master's Thesis (TFM) must be defended orally before a committee of two members who will evaluate the written work and the oral defense. Once the defense is finished, and before completing the evaluation, the committee will receive an evaluation report written by the supervisor describing the students’ progress and performance in the development of the TFM. Students will be evaluated based on their written work and oral presentation. The assessment will be carried out by means of an area-specific assessment rubric (Language and Linguistics / Literature and Culture). This rubric will be available on the virtual campus (moodle). The evaluation of the written work will constitute 80% of the TFM mark, the remaining 20% will correspond to the oral presentation. When evaluating the TFM and its defense, the examiners will use the rubric, which will be given to the student with the grade of the TFM once the defense and deliberation by the committee have concluded.
Students will obtain a "Not assessed/Not submitted" course grade unless they have submitted more than 30% of the assessment items.
TFM submissions are on a single-call basis, and TFMs cannot be reassessed.
In the event of a student committing any irregularity that may lead to a significant variation in the grade awarded to an assessment activity, the student will be given a zero for this activity, regardless of any disciplinary process that may take place. In the event of several irregularities in assessment activities of the same subject, the student will be given a zero as the final grade for this subject. Irregularities refer, for instance, to copying in an exam, copying from sources without indiacting authorship, or a misuse of AI such as presenting work as original that has been generated by an AI tool or programme. These evaluation activities will not be re-assessed.
Total or partial plagiarism of any of the exercises will automatically be considered "fail" (0) for the plagiarized item. Plagiarism is copying one or more sentences from unidentified sources, presenting itas original work (THIS INCLUDES COPYING PHRASES OR FRAGMENTS FROM THE INTERNET AND ADDING THEM WITHOUT MODIFICATION TO A TEXT WHICH IS PRESENTED AS ORIGINAL). Plagiarism is a serious offense. Students must learn to respect the intellectual property of others, identifying any source they may use, and take responsibility for the originality and authenticity of the texts they produce.
For archival purposes, and for the sake of a responsible use of resources and respect towards the environment, TFMs will be submitted in digital form (PDF file), unless any reader or examiner asks explicitly to receive also a printed version of the TFM. The submission of both the digital and -if requested- the printed versions would have to be on the same day, the date specified for the TFM submission.
This subject/module does not incorporate single assessment.
All TFMs with a grade equal to or higher than 9 are eligible to be published in the UAB's Digital Document Repository (DDD). To do this, the student must sign and submit to the TFM coordinator the authorization document prepared by the Humanities Library and the "metadates" document.
The grade of Distinction (MH) will be awarded to the TFM that obtains the highest grade or to more than one if the number of students enrolled in the TFM allows that. If there is more than one TFM with the highest grade, the evaluation obtained in the rest of the subjects of the master's degree will be taken into account. If a decision cannot be made on the basis of the academic transcript, the Master's Thesis will be evaluated by the Master's Committee, which will decide which Master's Thesis deserves the MH.
The Master's Thesis is subject to the same ordinary and extraordinary review processes as any other subject of the Master's Degree. Specifically, if a student requests the review of TFM evaluation, a review session will take place in a meeting with the TFM coordinator and the president of the evaluation committee.
Bibliography
Bailey, Stephen. 2021. Academic Writing for University Students. London: Routledge.
Bell, Judith. 2010. Doing your research project. A guide for first-time researchers in education, health and social science. London: Open University Press (5th Edition).
Galvan, Jose L. and Galvan, Melisa C. 2017. Writing Literature Reviews. A guide for Students of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. London: Routledge (7th Edition).
Hayot, Eric. 2014. The Elements of Academic Style. New York: Columbia University Press.
Hyland, Ken. 2008. English for Academic Purposes. An advanced resource book. New York: Routledge.
Swales, John and Christine Feak. 2000. English in Today's Research World. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
The Writing Center: Academic Writing Resources. Amherst College <https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/support/writingcenter/resourcesforwriters>
Van Geyte, Els. 2013. Writing: Learn to write better academic essays. Academic Skills Series. London: Collins EAP.
Williams, Anneli. 2013. Research: Improve your reading and referencing skills. Academic Skills Series. London: Collins EAP.
Wray, Alison and Aileen Bloomer. 2006. Projects in Linguistics. A practical guide to researching Language. London: Hodder Education (2nd Edition).
Software
The TFM module does not require specific computer equipment.
Language list
Information on the teaching languages can be checked on the CONTENTS section of the guide.