Writing a MA thesis: The challenges and the relationships among the research questions, the literature review and the methodology

"Writing a Master’s thesis is often seen by students as a challenging endeavor. This thesis presents a case study which investigates the challenges faced by a group of Mexican master’s students when formulating the research questions, and linking the introduction, the literature review, and the methodology chapters of their theses. The study traced the development of these chapters with the use of interviews, observations, and the LMCO (Linguistic, Methodological, Conceptual and Ontological) challenge framework which was used to classify the difficulties encountered by students. Additionally, the investigation drew on Move Analysis for this genre along with a Thematic Analysis to gain understanding on how students stated the interrelationship among these chapters. The study reveals that master’s students dealt with Linguistic, Methodological, Conceptual and Ontological challenges that affected the way they related their thesis chapters. It also shows the need to raise of awareness about Thesis genre and Metadiscourse to strengthen the academic writing and research skills"