If you’re almost done with your paper but are stuck with the conclusion, this article is for you. Like the introduction, your conclusion bears much importance to your paper as it wraps up the key takeaways of your dissertation.
However, a dissertation contains multiple chapters making it hard to narrow down to a key argument. This article will guide you in writing your dissertation conclusion, helping you overcome the rut many students usually find themselves stuck in.
How to conclude a dissertation
Writing a conclusion for a dissertation requires that you be well versed with your key arguments. As such, you may consult your outline to determine the findings of your research and the key answers to your research objectives.
Also, your conclusion should highlight your contribution to the topic and your key recommendations. To do this, you require to be concise in your wording as the ideas are expounded upon within the body. The key things to bear in mind when writing a thesis conclusion include:
- Answer your research questions
The first chapter of your thesis usually identifies a problem and highlights the key objectives of your paper. For the sake of the reader scanning through your work, the conclusion ought to show how the paper has addressed these objectives.
Here, condense your key findings and formulate a concise takeaway for your reader. If your paper was addressing multiple objectives, limit this section to the key research objectives.
- Reflect on your research
The conclusion also serves as a gap to justify the relevance of your approach to investigating your research problem. Here, consider the strengths of your approach and acknowledge the limitations of the approach.
- Reiterate your key recommendations
Your conclusion chapter should also highlight the implications of your study and the changes you recommend based on your findings. Like the former, avoid dwelling on the nitty gritty portions of your recommendations and instead highlight the suggestions for future research.
Be keen not to discredit your work in this section and instead indicate how further research can clarify or explore an idea within your paper more. Avoid a scenario where further research is essential to complete your paper.
- Share the impact of your work within your field of study
How has your paper impacted the field of study? Your conclusion should show the gap that your work has covered and the various counterarguments you have managed to disprove.
Dissertation conclusion example
Here, we have highlighted some concluding sentences to give you a gist of what you could write in your thesis conclusion:
By analyzing various teaching-learning approaches in a classroom setting, this thesis has shown the impact of technology integration in teaching-learning. Although the limited duration of experimentation limits a generalization, this paper proves that incorporating various cues during learning has a positive impact on a learner’s capacity to store and recall learned concepts. Based on these findings, institutions should consider adding various audio-visual elements in class to allow a teacher to incorporate the visual aids where relevant. This study has also established that success in academia does not rely on mindlessly sitting for revision papers or cramming, but rather on the mode in which the information is received and stored.
It is key that you avoid introducing new arguments in this section as this could leave a reader feeling that your paper is incomplete.
How long should a conclusion be?
A conclusion sentence should range between 5 to 7 percent of your paper’s total word count. Due to this, the section should comprise precise sentences without diving deep into the content that has been tackled in the body section.
Final take
Writing down your concluding sentences should not be more stressful than researching and writing other chapters. We hope that this guide has pointed you in the right direction to completing your dissertation. Feel free to engage our team for guidance and custom assignment help.
