Examples can help

“It is very difficult—even for us more established and experienced writers—when we need to write something new. We know it will be difficult. We don’t know where to start. If we just have a kind of example or a structure we can go through, we can understand and learn from that how to develop such a document, ourselves. Therefore, we can help our students to follow that process and try to adopt key characteristics of the writing.

I still remember, while I was doing my Master’s thesis at the University of Sydney, I handed in my draft, and my supervisor said: “This kind of methodology isn’t good enough, and the project is not going well—I was expecting more from you! Please read my paper.” So, he sent me a paper that was somewhat related to my research. When I went through his methodology section, I realized how much detail I needed to include in mine. I realized that I had missed out a lot of information—e.g. details about participants, details about instruments that I was using, information about how I constructed instruments—so many things. Then I realized the value of good guidelines. That’s how examples can reveal their value.”

(Madhu Neupane Bastola)