Theses or dissertations contain many chapters; the most vital and important one is the discussion chapter. Most other chapters were previously investigated for writing problems and the results revealed so many mistakes in the writing process. However, the discussion chapter still hasn't been studies in these theses or dissertations. Therefore, the context of discussion writing was studied and analysed in 124 theses and dissertations of Iraqi postgraduate students in the field of biology to assess the major problems and mistakes facing the discussion text writing. At the same time an interview was carried out with 114 students from the same field to obtain soild idea about the awarness of those students in the discussion writing style. The study involved many factors and criteria used internationally to analyse the situation of discussion writing. The results revealed that most students have little knowledge or no idea about discussion writing process. The writing process showed many mistakes contextually, structurally and scientifically. It was well realized that the students, before they wrote their theses or disserta-tions, hadn't previously possessed any information about the writing discussion text and they wrote them as previous student did regardless of they were correct or not. This study concluded that postgraduate students wrote their theses or dissertation in unsystamatic random style indepent of proper writing rules or criteria indicating their ignorance to the right style of writing proper discussion text. This invites the Universities to evaluate that and establish a plan to make the students in a level that they have sufficient awareness of scientific writing. E very research aims to obtain solutions for specific problem that has been targeted to be investigated. Obtaining the results is the an important task by the researchers, however these results have no real value unless the researchers intrepret them correctly through giving the meaning and importance of these findings. The intrepretation of the research results is called discussion. Usually every scientific article, thesis or dissertation must contain discussion section in their structure and usaually written as last section. Researcher puts the hypothesis, define the aim, select methodology , doing the experiments, collecting the data, doing startistical analysis, draw the tables, and showing figures or pictures, all these are consider as raw data. All those tasks are good but what do they mean to the readers. These results must be discussed by the way that the audience are able to understand meaning of these results, evaluate the outcome of the findings , appreciate the efforts of the researchers, realize the their relation with other disciplinaries , can draw many conclusions and making suggesions and open new doors for future studies (1,2). Moreover, readers often face difficulty to follow the result presentation (1,3) therefore discussion section can offer the best tool to faciltate the understanding of the findings through clarifying the meaning and importance of research work (2, 4, 5) although it is considered as most difficult chapter in the TDs. Therefore the discussion section must be written correctly, precisely, readable, motivating and coherently. Researchers during writing their articles usually face a challenge of presenting convincing discussion section. The purpose of writing the discussion is to convey the philosophy of project aim and resultant from the mind of the researcher to the readers and the researchers must remember that the discusion is written to the readers not to themselves (2, 6). The discussion is the message that reasearcher tends to send to other that must represent clear and robust opinion about the resultant of the project to give obvious impresion about the importance of the study. Organisation and writing the discussion are so important to be paid high attention. The main feature of successeful discussion is to summerised and Introduction:
tatements in that tense (19,22 ). The interpretation of the re-
referes to and what are their importance then the references can
However, this study revealed that about quarter of the students
other researchers in the discussion regrdless of the importance
the students either tried to persuade themselve that any refer-
ence can be used in the discussion as it is in the same speciality
of student’s project, or the students tended to make show to
themselves by writing more references to make the audiances
think that they had read a lot of references. Moreover, some
students add those unrelated references because they need to
satisfy themselves that they write well by using more references
or they thought wrongly that the readers will not check the com-
patibility between what is in reference and what is in their dis-
cussion statements. This will lead to confuse between the re-
The student must write in a way that the reader can separate
easily between the research facts obtained by the researcher’s
own thinking and what obtained from other references (23, 24).
Almost all TDs showed that the students wrote their discussion
is a barrier between them, the student jump from one statement
to other without any attention to the requirement to the continu-
ity , succession and linkage between the statements and this is
may lead to loose the construction and suspense of discussion
(5, 25) .The literatures review is considered as a reservoir to
supply the references to the students to use them in the discus-
sion as the literatures review must contain the information the
the project needs either directly or nearly related (22, 26). The
results exhibited that all students used to use many other refer-
ences that not been mentioned in their literatures review. The
students thought that there is no relation between what was
written in the literatures review and what ther are going to write
in the discussion chapter; it seems each chapter is written inde-
than three times may give an impression that the students rely
on and followed that reference and neglected the other, there-
fore the discussion will become weak and bias. More than half
of students used one reference three or more times in their dis-
cussion and some times reached to eight time as there is no ref-
bad impression about the education and orientation of the stu-
dent because this means that the discussion relies on one refer-
ence and on one idea. Any research work usually is performed
from different aspects by many researchers, therefore it must be
variable interpretations. Hence the discussion will be more deep
and give more meaning if the student uses data from different
-
ences are much required. Almost all students (91%) were using
different verb tenses in their discussion. They used past tense
and soon jumped to use present tense although the sentence
structure needs past tense. In addition they frequently made no
difference between the past tense and the the past pefect tense,
and this needs further more expanded studies to clarify this
problem. The consistency in using verb is needed for linguistic
reason and for increasing the understanding and following up
by the readers (18, 25, 27, 28). Changing from one verb tense to
another may mislead and make confuse to the readers that one
cannot know the time of performing of the presented facts that
mentioned in the discussion. Moreover, the verb tense variation
may make the reader to think wrongly to the authority of a spe-
that this fact may belong to the student or to the another refer-
ence. Half of students tended to disuss the results they desired
to show to the readers and tried to hide few results that may af-
-
ings of their results that the students possess good information
about them and possess references to support their ideas, and try
to ignore other results that they have no reference available to
use to iterpret them . On other hand they may try to hide results
that bear facts do not agree with their aim or theme. It is inter-
esting to notice that all students sometimes showed overstated
attention for research limitations by presenting many excuses
story did not need limitations explaining as they usually acom-
pany any research work, or sometimes the students used wrong
(27,28,29). Every research project must face limitations that af-
must reasonably identify these limitation, present them properly
and should give proper suggestions to overtake them or mini-
-
dents did not pay any attention to the hypothesis of the study,
this is because they basically did not discuss or even refer to
this issue. Previously (11) it was reported that most of those
students did not refer to the hypothesis in the introduction chap-
did not mention any statement about their study hypothesis al-
aims (4, 25). The paragraphing style was not arranged correctly
in all TDs as the students arranged the paragraph regardless of
the need for them. The students sometimes used separated para-
graph although it was directly related to the previous one as it
represents completion and continuity to last the statement in the
previous paragraph. Whereas in another cases it was noticed
that one solid paragraph in their discussion chapter seemed to
contain a lot of data needed to be separated in different para-
graphs. In some TDs one can concludes the paragraphing style
was arranged by the students just for decoration and beauty pur-
pose not according to the writing style rules. Writing new para-
graph means moving to another idea that must be related to the
same task but not directly linked with the previous paragraph in
order to let the reader to focus on another interpretation or to
follow further ideas (29, 30); the new paragraph must add new
idea to make advance in the main discussion for the subject.
Iraqi Journal of Cancer and Medical Genetics (IJCMG) Volume 10 - Number 1 - 2017
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About quarter of the postgraduate students had added new re-
sults in the discussion although these results were not formerly
results will construct further power to their results when they
discussed them. Moreover, the students sometimes tended to
add further results in their discussion because they imagined
that these additions will give good impression by the readers to
results which can be added to the original results to increase the
that they must not add any new results in their discussion and
The interview with students has added further not good im-
pression about the discussion chapter writing by Iraqi post-
graduate students. Most students were not able to give the real
meaning of discussion process during writing the research ar-
-
sary to give the meaning of the results and what they do aim to
(5, 29). They though it is just to explain the result in more words
obtained through explanation the conditions that surrounding
idea about the rules of writing the discussion text. All of them
announced they tried to follow the style of discussion writing
later had been passed the examination which means they wrote
their discussion correctly, the following students took them as a
model and felt that the previous students wrote their TDs prop-
erly. Therefore, from the experience of the author of this study
facing writing process in Iraqi TDs. It is so frustrating when
it was found that all students announced they hadn’t read any
article or a study concerning discussion writing process. The
student even did not spent few minutes to have some informa-
tion about writing style for discussion chapter although there
are free hundreds or thousands website about that. This fact
previous graduated students either by direct contact or through
the TDs writing style. Moreover none of those students had any
idea about the guidelines that issued by the University although
they might read them well and write the TDs according to them.
It seems the students intended to neglect the rules of writing
process and went to the easiest way for discussion writing by
following the style used by previous students even it was in-
correct. However, the University rules for writing process do
not explain writing process of the discussion text in details, the
rules just focus on the writing structure and arrangement. This
students’ ignorance phenomena has lead to more serious con-
clusion as some of students saw that the discussion chapter is
not necessary in the TDs and some thought that the discussion
is better to be optional while most of them felt that the discus-
sion might be just written in the end of the TDs regardless of
its importance. Therefore most students wrote their discussion
to mimic other students or it is an obligatory section that must
discussion chapter must be considered the most important part
of the TDs (4), however, the students in this study have inverted
this rule and most of them gave the discussion chapter third or
is very disappointed as the students showed no attention to the
importance of the discussion in their TDs. The result revealed
that most students do not pay attention to the importance and
philosophic aims of their discussion; they think that the results
were the most important and can express the meaning without
discussion. Discussion text writing problems was reported by
other studies in another country as well (7). The problem is not
in discussion chapter writing only but this problem was obvi-
ously detected in many TDs chapters (9,10,11,12,13,14). How-
ever, the problem of writing with other than mother language
must not be excluded as a reason for poor expression, poor pre-
sentation and poor translation of the TDs writing in non-English
speaking countries (8).
The results of this study revealed that the discussion main aim
was missed by most students and that leads to poor discussion
context. Consequently, TDs writing situation by postgradu-
aware of proper writing style. However the supervisors or pro-
fessors need themselves to refresh their knowledge about writ-
ing process as well, the available of websites for this purpose
may facilitate this task. Moreover, all Iraqi Universities must
-
In conclusion, the TDs writing process by Iraqi postgraduate
students must be well discussed by the authorities in the Univer-
sities to evaluate the quality of this process and to put successful