Category Archives: meta-commentary

your MC for this paper is…

Academic writing often needs an MC. Yes MC, a Mistress/Master of Ceremonies. The MC, or emcee, is an official host. A compere. At a public event, say a festival, their job is to introduce the acts – speakers or singers … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, meta-commentary, meta-text, sentence skeleton | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

some more thoughts on structuring the thesis

A little while ago I was asked a tricky question about thesis chapter: How much should each thesis chapter stand-alone? On pursuing this a little, it turned out that there was more to the question. The questioner also wanted to … Continue reading

Posted in ILMRaD, IMRAD, meta-commentary, structure, thesis | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

using metacommentary to specify your contribution: christmas present three

A metacommentary is the term used to describe a narrative which directs the reader’s attention to the text’s purpose and positioning. According to Graf and Birkenstein (2010), the function of a metacommentary is akin to that of a Greek Chorus … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, introduction, meta-commentary | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

doing the literature review – thinking about patterns and groups

If you’ve ever watched small children playing then you’ll know that one of the things that they do is to sort things into groups. A bunch of coloured pens, pencils and markers can be sorted by type, colour, size, shape, … Continue reading

Posted in academic writing, grouping and patterning, literature review, meta-commentary, signposts, thematisation | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments