Academic Language and Learning Unit (ALLU)

• Study skills for success
• Faculty based learning support
• Campus based learning support
• Postgraduate student support
  • Postgraduate Study by Coursework
  • Writing your thesis
• Academic integrity
• Information for staff
• About the ALLU
• Contact us

Individual consultations

If you would like to talk with an ALLU staff member about challenges involved in writing your thesis, ask your supervisor to send a referral, and a staff member will contact you to arrange an appointment (time permitting).

Workshops and online resources

• Check your Faculty ALL Unit site, or regional Campus site, to see what is available this semester.
• See the  Writing your thesis section below and Postgraduate by Coursework. 

Writing Circles

Many postgraduate students find that they benefit from meeting informally, but purposefully and regularly, to seek and offer feedback on their work-in-progress. Such sessions, known as "Thesis Writing Circles", may be initiated with the support of teaching staff but maintained by their members for as long as they prove helpful. A common model is to meet fortnightly, with members taking turns to submit around 1000 words of their thesis draft, identifying what they would (and wouldn't) like comments on. Other members take turns to review the pieces constructively and general discussion follows. Here is a safe and sociable opportunity to gather responses to your work from more and different readers than your supervisor alone; and perhaps to focus on different aspects of the writing, in closer focus, than supervisory meetings can accommodate. To learn about how others have used writing circles, go to Thesis Writing Circles.

Contact your Faculty or Campus ALL Unit to ask whether it is running any writing circles, or is interested in convening a circle for students who are interested.

Elsewhere, the most important sources of advice for you, as Higher Degree Research (HDR) students, are:

• Your supervisor
• The Postgraduate Coordinator/Convenor in your area
• The library, where you cantalk with a research librarian who specialises in your field, and get training in search strategies, methods and software for organising your references, managing long documents, and other thesis-related skills.
• The various Research Services.