THE FRENCH DISSERTATION (FRE319) AND
PROJECT (FRE318)
Deadlines
The deadline for deciding the final topic of your Dissertation or Project is Friday 5th October 2001. You should have emailed and received approval from either Eliane Meyer (eliane.meyer@sunderland.ac.uk), who is module leader for both FRE318 and FRE319 or Tony McNeill (tony.mcneill@sunderland.ac.uk) before this date.
The deadline for submission of your finished Dissertation or Project is Monday 29th April 2002.
Introduction
In your final year you can choose to do either a dissertation or a project as one of your six modules. If you are a Joint Honours student, you must do either a dissertation or a project on a topic relating to French studies of French is your Major route. If you are doing French on a Dual route, then you may choose to do it on either a French topic or on a topic from the other subject you are studying.
A Dissertation (FRE319) is a researched 'long essay' or study of 8-10,000 words written in English. The subject should be something on which research (from book, journals, press/media etc.) is possible (with or without interviews and/or sondages etc.).
A Project (FRE318) is an essay or study of 4-5,000 words, written in French. The subject may well be more limited (less weighty or more contemporary) and may be based on more limited research (from current press etc., again with or without interviews, sondages etc). 50% of your final mark is allocated for the quality of the French language used.
In your dissertation or project you will be expected to produce work that displays depth and fine focus as opposed to breadth and superficiality. Analysis, synthesis and evaluation as opposed to description or narrative is required. This includes a concern for appropriate methods of presentation of materials (graphs, diagrams, statistical tables, etc.) where these are necessary, and intelligent use of them.
Both the dissertation and the project provide an excellent opportunity to show personal initiative and originality. Hence an original topic, approach, argument and interesting field work, etc., will be rewarded.
You will find samples of projects and dissertations from past students in the Language Centre (Forster 6).
Preparation for the French Dissertation/Project
If you are interested in doing either a dissertation or a project it is advisable to start work on it as soon as possible. You could, for example, develop further an area that has particularly interested you on one of the French modules on a literary, cultural, political, social or historical issue. You might want to talk to one of the teaching staff about a possible topic you have in mind at the end of the second year. You could also spend the summer vacation before your year abroad considering potential topics and contact one of the teaching staff for advice before you leave. The French teaching staff are more than happy to discuss possible dissertation/project topics with you. However, it is up to you to contact us first.
Some students only discover a topic which particularly interests them once they are in France and which is related to their experience there. This topic may be of local interest (e.g new architecture in Paris or the teaching of occitan in Toulouse) or may be a contemporary or general issue seen on a local level (e.g. the foulard islamique debate in Lyon or the resistance movement in Grenoble). Again, it is important here to contact a member of the French staff to discuss how to develop the subject you are interested in.
Residence in France is obviously a major advantage if you wish to write a dissertation or project. Not only does it allow you the space and time to develop your interests further, but it is also the best place for you to consult or gather appropriate materials, e.g. books, articles, local and national newspapers, interviews, photographs and the like. You should have registered a dissertation/project topic with us by the end of May of your third year. It is not advisable to turn up at the beginning of your final year with a vague idea of a topic. Ideally, by this time you should have produced a general overview of the topic, identified the issue(s) you wish to explore, established a bibliography of some sort and have taken relevant notes.
Presentation of the Dissertation/Project
These notes are intended as useful suggestions which, it is hoped, will enable you to achieve one of the essential qualities of a good dissertation/project - clarity of presentation. Constant reference will be made to this priority throughout these notes
Layout
Your dissertation/project should be submitted on A4 size paper. It should be typewritten or word-processed and pages should be numbered clearly.
Illustrations, where necessary, in the form of drawings, photographs, maps, statistical tables, etc., should be presented on separate sheets of unruled A4 or other appropriate paper (e.g. graph paper). Where the number of diagrams, statistics, etc., is large enough to interrupt considerably the prose of the project, it is advisable to put these in a separate sections at the end of the project under 'Appendices'. (See below). But, it is of paramount importance that the purpose of maps and diagrams etc. is clear. These must not be inserted simply as 'padding', but must be relevant. You must say, in the main body of the text why the reader is to be referred to a particular set of figures. Hence clear references must be made from the text to each illustration used.
Form
The general form of a dissertation/project is as follows:
1. Title Page
2. Table of contents
3. Notes/List of Abbreviations (where appropriate)
4. Introduction or Preface (scope of work and acknowledgement)
5. Dissertation/Project (clearly structured into chapters or sections)
6. Conclusion
7. Appendices/Interviews
8. BibliographyAt the point one general hint is important. You cannot be over-generous with space. Each of the parts of your dissertation/project must be started on a separate right-hand page, leaving the opposite left-hand page blank. Half a page of cramped abbreviations squeezed in underneath a table of contents is unsightly.
Contents Page/Table
The table of contents should faithfully reflect the structure of the dissertation/project and should include chapter headings and the number of the initial page of each chapter. These numbers should correspond to the actual page numbers on which the chapter starts. Do check this before and after the typist has seen your work if you have sent you work off to be professionally typed.
List of Abbreviations
This may be necessary if your dissertation/project includes constant reference to official organisations which are commonly known by their initial letters. These should be recognised abbreviations and not ones you have invented!
e.g. C.G.T. Confédération Générale du Travail
The list of abbreviations used, if any, should be in alphabetical order.
Introduction to Dissertation/Project
A brief explanation of the nature and scope of your study and the way you have gone about organizing your findings are all that you need to include in your introduction.
If you wish to recognise and thank those who have been particularly helpful in your research, you may wish to include a separate acknowledgement before the introduction.
If you propose to introduce the subject by, for example, situating it in a historical context, this may well be quite lengthy and should form part, or whole, of chapter 1.
If you are writing a project, see your tutor for examples of introductions in the foreign language and the ways in which you can acknowledge the assistance you have been given.
You may also wish to comment on the approach you have used and give a brief evaluation of its appropriateness. This too should form part of the introduction.
Division into chapters
The dissertation/project should have a clear structure. To impress the examiner you must be able to make full use of the material you have discovered in your research. It is not sufficient simply to enumerate statistics or facts. You must show clearly what their relevance is, and what contribution they make to your general line of argument. Clarity of structure also implies that you are able to choose between relevant and irrelevant material.
Each section or chapter should be placed in logical sequence. If you intend to draw general conclusions or support some hypothesis at the end of your project, it is essential that your material is presented in such a way that the reader or examiner is left in no doubt as to the direction of your thoughts.
The dissertation/project is considered to be indicative of your intellectual capacity and organisational ability and is expected to be more than a descriptive account of the subject. It should, if possible, be discursive, and the structure of the work should clearly reflect the development of the main arguments.
This means effectively that any introductory, historical or descriptive aspects should be reduced to a minimum. Ideally, the initial chapters should develop the main points in a gradual but logical, way and the culmination of your argument should therefore appear in the final chapter, by which time the reader is convinced of your argument.
Style
It is difficult to comment on style as this is inevitably an individual matter and defies the formulation of general rules. However the following may be of use:
Whether in English or in French, this is a formal piece of writing. Consequently, as a general rule you should avoid colloquialisms, etc., and check both vocabulary and syntax for expressions and structures which are more appropriate to the High Street or the Union Bar than to critical, published prose. Gérard Vigner's Écrire et convaincre (Paris: Hachette, 1975) is a particularly useful source of appropriate French that should be purchased or consulted by all students doing a Project.
The source of all quotations should be acknowledged, in footnotes, neatly placed in numerical order at the bottom of each page, at the end of each chapter or at the end of the dissertation/project. This should include the number of the page from which the quotation is taken. You may wish to ask individual tutors about conventions which operate in different languages.
Appendices (if any)
Particularly long (but still essential) notes, which cannot easily be inserted into the text, e.g. statistical tables, graphs, diagrams etc. should be grouped after the main body of the dissertation/project, and numbered for easy reference. Their significance, origins and dates should be shown and clear reference made to them in the body of the text.
Interviews (if any)
It is essential that you include reference to the interviews you may have conducted with dates, names and positions of personalities involved.
Page Referencing
Try to familiarise yourself with the more commonly used abbreviations in books and periodicals when used to give page references, and used then where possible, e.g. for repeated reference to the same work:
ibid. (or ibidem) in same reference
op cit. (or opere citato) in the work previously cited.
Check academic works in English or French for use of such expressions.
Bibliography
This should come at the end and should list all the works you have used and which have contributed to your argument. It should contain the following information: initials and surname of author(s) or editor(s); title of work in full; place of publication; name of publisher; and date of publication. Here is an example of one possible format:
K. Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Basingstoke: MacMillian, 1988)
If you wish to include an article from a journal, you will need to provide the following information: the initials and surname of the author(s); the title of the article; the title of the journal; the volume of issue number; the year (in brackets) and the page numbers. Here is an example:
M. Riffaterre: 'Hermeneutic Models' in Poetics Today, 4 (1983) 7-16
Plagiarism
Plagiarism of both language and content is penalised. Plagiarism is the unacknowledged 'lifting' of the language and content of others. Whilst it is not anticipated that every word and idea contained in an undergraduate project will be original, there are important conventions to be observed. If you use ideas, statistics, arguments etc., arrived at by other writers in forming your own conclusion this perfectly in order, provided that you acknowledge them. This means both in footnotes and in the bibliography at the end of your dissertation/project (see details later). The same is true of the language: a passage of impeccable, flowing French, followed by a paragraph of halting, mistake-ridden French is clear evidence that you have 'lifted' passages form another source. This practice is only too obvious to your tutor and you will be penalised.
The correct way is to read and digest the source material and them resume or express their general trend, or even their detail, but in your own language or where appropriate present a short quotation in inverted commas with an appropriate reference to its source.
Closing Remarks
The dissertation/project is probably the largest single piece of work you'll complete as a student; it may at the moment seem the most daunting, but it is also one which, completed, you may keep with pride and even submit to potential employers as evidence of your ability. If you use these guidelines you will get off to a good start.
Now it's up to you ...
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Text & Concept: Tony McNeill
The University of Sunderland
Last Updated: 25.05.2001