Bachelor's thesis

Form

Your Bachelor's thesis (EN3V14001, 7.5 EC) must be between 4,000 and 6,000 words, excluding quotations, any appendices and the Work Cited / References. The supervisor and the second reader must approve the project proposal before work on the thesis proper begins. It may take varying forms, including:

• Linguistics or ICC: a paper based upon experimental or corpus research, an ethnography based upon empirical research, a theoretical thesis;
• Literature & Culture: a research paper based around either a thesis statement or a research question;
• An annotated translation, website or other resource.

Contents

Your thesis is linked to a level 3 course and written in the context of one of the four specialisations, usually but not necessarily a specialisation you have completed.

Your topic may in principle address issues in the English-speaking world pertaining to literature, culture, language, linguistics, translation, intercultural communication or education. However, practical limitations dictate that the range of fields our staff are able to support is much narrower. In choosing your subject you must therefore orient yourself towards the research expertise available. Consult the University Library webpage to see the topics of previous theses. In addition, you may consult the web pages of individual professors, senior lecturers and lecturers for the areas in which they offer supervision. They will also upload an advertisement for the research areas they offer in the Blackboard environments of Thesis Lab and the BA Thesis.

Passing Thesis Lab is a prerequisite for entry to the English Language & Culture BA Thesis. You may take Thesis Lab in either period 1 or 3 of your third year, before writing your thesis in a later period.

Are you a Harting scholar? In that case, you will be retrospectively exempt from this requirement if you pass at least 45 EC of courses during your year abroad.

Supervision

During Thesis Lab you will apply for supervision:

1. Write an email to your intended supervisor, describing the topic that you have in mind and asking them, politely, whether they are interested in supervising your thesis.
2. The supervisor then decides to accept or reject the proposed project based on its merits or applicability to their research fields.

Once your intended supervisor has accepted your request, you can enrol for the thesis in Osiris.

Please note: You may enrol with only one supervisor at the time. Once a supervisor has fulfilled their quota of supervisions for the academic year, they will cease to be available.

Supervisors outside the English Language & Culture programme

In some cases your supervisor may work outside the English Language & Culture BA programme. Examples are supervisors from Literary Studies, Linguistics and Celtic Studies, or the university department within which you study during your foreign exchange period. In these cases, you will have to seek a second reader from among the permanent staff within the English Language & Culture BA programme. The content of your thesis must at any event pertain to English Language & Culture.

Co-authorship

Given the prior approval of the supervisor and second reader, students may collaborate on a thesis if each of them demonstrates they have contributed 210 hours of work. The input of each individual student must be apparent to the supervisor, who will indicate the extent to which the thesis’ length may be extended. Each student’s work will be marked individually.

• Your supervisor monitors the progress of your thesis and evaluates the final result. A second reader is always involved in the assessment.
• In the fourth week of the block, you must submit a research proposal. Note: this proposal must be approved by both assessors; only after approval by both assessors can you proceed with your plan. If your proposal is assessed as insufficient, you can revise it once, in consultation with the supervisors. If the revision is also assessed as unsatisfactory, your right to further supervision during the block expires. In your research proposal, you must at least cover the following points: (a) a motivated question or objective, (b) a plan of approach (operationalisation, methods), (c) intended final result, (d) time planning, (e) literature list.
• The final version of the thesis must be handed in to both assessors no later than the last working day of the block in which you are registered for the thesis, or earlier as determined by your supervisor.
• The assessment of the thesis is done using assessment forms. These can be found under the heading ‘Assessment’.

All Bachelor's theses are assessed by two lecturers. If your supervisor is one of the lecturers teaching in the Bachelor's programme, then this person will also be the first assessor (or the 'examiner'). Theses are assessed using an assessment form. If there is a large difference of opinion between the first and second assessors, a third assessor may be engaged, who will always work with a separate assessment form.

We take all forms of academic deception very seriously and expect all students to observe the ethical standards of proper academic conduct. When you start writing your thesis, you must submit the Plagiarism awareness declaration form as an acknowledgement that you have read the University's regulations regarding fraud and plagiarism. Lecturers or supervisors will report any suspected cases of fraud or plagiarism to the Board of Examiners. 

In case you are doing research that involves interviewing people, submitting questionnaires or involving people in any other way, you are probably doing human-subject related research. If so, please review the checklist and discuss it with your supervisor. The checklist contains information on privacy, ethics and data management.