Writing early, writing often
An old perception of research is that the field work/experimentation etc. and the writing up of the thesis are completely different activities. Most candidates have never written something as extensive as a thesis and leaving the writing to the end can make the job appear daunting. Most disciplines also have an academic discourse that is quite different from ordinary writing. Research communities represent their academy in quite different ways and students need to become fluent in that new language. Reading research papers, listening to conference presentations and writing early can help candidates become familiar with the conventions of academic writing in their discipline.
Candidate
The best way to ensure that the quality of your writing reflects the academic conventions in your discipline is to start writing early on. Look at journal and conference articles, research reports and on-line discussion sites to become familiar with the language and structure of academic argument. If writing in Academic English is new to you, you may want to seek help. Your supervisor’s main job is to assist you with the research and ways of representing your findings at a professional level. Writing early will assist you both as you determine the best ways to become fluent in your academic discourse.
Principal supervisor
Encourage your students to write frequently and often. Evaluations of supervision practice have indicated that writing, and feedback on writing, is important to students and frustrating to them if it doesn’t occur. When students first start writing, you may want to discuss with them the sort of feedback they want - do they want you to focus on ideas, or argument structure, citation conventions, analytic devices, or grammar? You may want to spend some time discussing the differences between the construction of a chapter of the thesis and writing an article for publication.