Make sure to contact potential supervisors well in advance, as many supervisors below the level of full professor have very limited supervision capacities and may not be able to take on another supervision at short notice. It is always best to contact someone you already know from a seminar and have maybe already written a term paper with, so you can use their feedback on your term paper to write a better thesis. Send them an email or go to their office hours to discuss a potential supervision at least a semester in advance of your projected writing time. Make sure to include potential topics that would fall into their area of expertise. 

You can find a list of potential supervisors and their areas of expertise on the website of the English department. 

There are several steps you need to take before you start writing: 

1. Make sure to check the module handbook and exam requirements (Prüfungsordnung) for your course of studies for the thesis requirements and discuss them with your potential supervisor.
2. Discuss a potential topic and timeline with your supervisor and start your preliminary research.
3. Make sure to check if (or when) all the credits you need are already in the system. If you're unsure, the Prüfungsamt can help you find out what is needed.
4. Once you've found a potential supervisor and all of your credits are in the system, download the form “Antrag auf Zulassung zur … Prüfung” from the website of the Prüfungsamt and hand it in to them. Don't worry, this does not yet start your official writing time. The Prüfungsamt will merely check if you have all the necessary credits and then they will send you or your supervisor an official thesis registration form.   
5. Discuss your topic and your projected starting date with your supervisor. Once you've agreed on both, the second form the Prüfungsamt sent you or your supervisor needs to be sent back to the Prüfungsamt. This will start the writing process. The Prüfungsamt will let you know when you need to submit your thesis. 

Yes! You can definitely start researching your topic before the start of the writing period. This is highly recommended to keep the actual writing period less stressful - especially for students in the BEd or MEd who get a shorter period of time to write their thesis. This may, for instance, include: 

• reading primary texts,
• taking notes and marking / collecting potential quotations to work with,
• thinking about what aspects of the texts you'd like to discuss,
• formulating your topic (and discussing it with your supervisor),
• finding secondary sources and compiling a preliminary bibliography,
• getting hold of secondary sources (especially ones that won't be easy to access),
• researching theoretical frameworks you could use to discuss your topic, and
• clearing up questions you have with your supervisor.

That depends a bit on what your topic is, but make sure you do a thorough search for sources on your topic. If you find very few sources (e.g. less than five usable peer reviewed academic articles or book chapters on your topic), here are some things you can do: 

1. Check the bibliographies of the sources you have found for their sources.
2. Broaden and vary your search parameters. Instead of searching for your exact topic in your exact text you could, for instance, search for just the topic, or the topic in other works by the author or similar works. Or you can try synonyms of your topic (someone else may have called it something else). Try different catalogues and databases (like Katalog+, MLA, JSTOR, Project Muse, Ebsco, Google Scholar….).
3. Check handbooks, companions, edited volumes on the author's work or the topic / literary period / cultural phenomenon you're working on. Some chapters may be useful but not show up in your search.
4. Talk to your supervisor and ask them for recommendations. 

In general, your secondary sources should fulfill the following criteria: 

• Peer reviewed (sometimes also called “refereed”)
• Published in an academic journal (online journals are fine, as long as they are peer reviewed and/or published by academic publishers)
• Books or articles in collected volumes published by academic publishers (list of academic publishers: https://publishersarchive.com/academic-book-publishers.html).

How to check if your sources are peer reviewed: 

Peer review means that other scholars from the same field have checked the text before publication – sometimes several times – to make sure it is correct and up to academic standards. Journals will publish information about their peer review process on the copyrights page (print) or on their website (online) – potentially under “information for authors”. Some predatory journals / AI journals will now also claim that their work is peer reviewed. If something seems dodgy, better ask your supervisor if the source is reliable. 

Where to find good sources: 

• Check library catalogues (Katalog+) or databases (MLA, Google Scholar) or online repositories (JSTOR, Ebsco, Project Muse) and set your search to “peer reviewed” where possible.
• Check the bibliography of the sources you have already found for further suggestions.
• Find handbooks, companions (often published by university presses like Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh or similar) on the author's work or topic you're working on.
• If you've taken a course on this topic, check if there are recommendations for further reading in the Moodle course or syllabus.
• Check the Wikipedia entry on your topic. There is often a “Further Reading” section at the bottom. DO NOT USE THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AS A SOURCE.
• Ask your supervisor for recommendations.  

The following do NOT count as reliable academic secondary sources:

• Wikipedia or other online encyclopedias
• Snopes, Gradesaver, Spark Notes…
• Handouts or Powerpoint slides (if there are sources ON the handout or slides, try to find the original).
• Online dictionaries (with the exception of the OED.com - but please note that the OED should only be used for GENERAL definitions, not for specialized literary terminology and it can NOT be your only source)
• Other people’s term papers / theses (even if they are accessible on uni websites)
• Newspaper articles or other journalistic texts
• Websites of organizations or companies
• Blogs, social media, personal websites, emails, other personal communications
• Text or entire text passages generated by Chat GPT or similar AI-based chatbots (see department policy).

The only context in which you can use any of these sources is to discuss them as PRIMARY texts, e.g. when writing about how a specific topic is being discussed on social media or how journalists write about an issue, or what an author explained to you in a personal email. If you think you need one of these sources in your thesis, check with your supervisor if your specific use is acceptable (please include information about the source and why you need it in your email).

This is generally up to the supervisor, but here are some general ideas (which will sound familiar, because a thesis isn't all that different from a term paper): 

• Use a standard font like Times New Roman or Arial in a reasonable font size (11 or 12 pt) and 1,5 line spacing with margins of 2-2,5 cm all around. Better not to use overly fancy fonts that are hard to read.
• Include a title page and a table of contents listing all of your chapters on a separate page.
• Include an Introduction and a Conclusion.
• Give your chapters titles and use a numbering system (e.g. 1.1, 1.2…)
• Choose one system for bibliographic references and stick with it (so, either footnotes or in-text references in brackets). The most commonly used referencing style in the English department is MLA, but if you are used to a different system (like Chicago), it will probably be fine, as long as you use it consistently. Advice on formatting specific references can be found on the website of the PurdueOWL.
• Make sure the entries in your bibliography are formatted consistently and sorted in alphabetical order by last name of author.
• If you'd like to include pictures, make sure they are relevant to your discussion and not simply decorative. 

Ask your supervisor if they have any specific formal requirements. 

That depends a bit on your topic, but it's a good idea to make a plan and set yourself deadlines by which you would like to complete each chapter. Leave enough time for editing and proofreading before the final deadline. Start anywhere you like (even if it's in the middle of chapter 2 - it's your thesis, so you can do whatever you want), but make sure to write the chapters first, then add introduction and conclusion at the end. Don't forget to build argumentative bridges between your chapters to create a red thread for your reader. 

If you don't know where to start for each individual chapter, go back to your primary texts and think about how you could present the quotations / ideas you found there. 

Troubleshooting: 

• If you've been staring at an empty screen for an hour, try changing tactics. Freewriting (literally writing down anything that comes into your head, preferably by hand) may help you get started. This is also a good technique to just get some ideas flowing. You can always switch back to typing afterwards.
• If you're getting easily distracted, think about changing your writing environment. Maybe you need to be in a different space (the library? a café? on a park bench?) to be able to focus on writing. Noise cancelling headphones are a good option if you don't have a quiet working space. Maybe body-doubling with someone else who is also trying to focus on writing (e.g. on a zoom call) can help.
• Talk to your supervisor. Run ideas by them and get their advice on how you could structure them.
• The university also has different offers, e.g. the writing center or the research and writing center at the English Department that might offer help. 

If you don't already have a system in place, consider the following: 

1. Use a citation program like Endnote, Zotero or Citavi (some of them can be downloaded via the zdv for free) to organize your secondary sources. They can produce automatic reference entries and a bibliography in the right format. The university library offers courses in how to use them.
2. Organize your notes and quotations in documents or folders that correspond to your chapters.
3. Make sure to mark all quotations as quotations and attach a source with page number to them in the note-taking process, so you don't end up accidentally plagiarizing someone else's work.
4. Sometimes it helps to make a mindmap or “murderboard” of your outline and use sticky notes to move ideas around from chapter to chapter.
5. If you have ideas that don't really fit into a specific chapter, but you really don't want to delete them, create an extra document for them. It'll be much easier to cut them, and you can go back to the document and retrieve them if you need them for something else. 

The university specifies that you may use AI, as long as the thesis you are submitting is still your own work and based on your own ideas and research. You will need to document any AI tools that you use in the declaration of academic integrity that you need to attach to your thesis when you submit it. Please see the official policy on AI use on the website of the English Department, where you can also download the declaration form. 

Please note that not all AI tools are equally useful for all purposes and that most tools are really bad at facts, which means that you need to verify information provided by AI tools and you can not quote AI tools. Discuss potential problems and pitfalls with your supervisor. 

You can only submit your thesis once, but your supervisor will usually want to see parts of it before you submit it officially. If you are writing your thesis with me, I would like to see the following things: 

1. your topic (before registering the thesis with the Prüfungsamt)
2. your thesis sentence or outline and preliminary bibliography (during the research process, but still before registering the thesis with the Prüfungsamt)
3. a few (3-5 pages, depending on the projected length of your thesis) from a chapter on which you will receive detailed feedback (early on in the writing process).

You may, of course, ask for further guidance on other chapters or passages or come to office hours or email me to discuss questions during the writing process. 

Here is a checklist of things to look for in editing / proofreading: 

• Do you have a clear thesis in your introduction?
• Do you present a conclusion in your conclusion?
• Do you have definitions of essential terminology (preferably from theoretical / critical sources, but at least from OED, Encyclopedias or pertinent academic secondary source)?
• Do you have a stringent argument with clear steps?
• Is there enough signposting / clear transition between parts or chapters?
• Do you have quotations from primary or secondary sources to back up your arguments?
• Have you looked into HOW the text does what it does (formally) sufficiently to support your argument?
• Do all of your quotations have proper references and are all of them listed in your bibliography?
• Is your bibliography ordered alphabetically by last name of author?
• Are the entries in your bibliography formatted consistently?
• Do all of your quotations have the proper quotation marks? ("…" and ‘…’ for quotations inside of quotations)?
• Have you indented longer paragraph quotations (more than three lines)?
• Have you checked the spelling of important terminology and proper names (e.g. author's names)?
• Have you set the titles of shorter texts (poems, articles, chapters…) in quotation marks and the titles of longer texts (novels, journals, films…) in italics?
• Have you done a general spellcheck? 

Ideally, give your thesis to someone else to proofread or leave it for a day and then go back to proofreading. Leave yourself enough time to proofread before you submit it.

Make sure you have included the signed Antiplagiatserklärung from the website of the Prüfungsamt and the declaration of academic integrity from the website of the English department listing AI use (if applicable). 

Make sure to check the most recent information on the website of the Prüfunsamt, but generally speaking you need to: 

1. Hand your thesis in by email to the special email address of the Prüfungsamt and to your supervisor by the deadline you will receive from the Prüfungsamt. Make sure you have included the signed Antiplagiatserklärung from the website of the Prüfungsamt and the declaration of academic integrity from the website of the English department in the pdf you are handing in.  
2. You may have to hand in a printed and bound copy or copies (depending on whether it is a BA or MA thesis) to the Prüfungsamt. Check their website for more information. 

Deadline extensions (e.g. for health reasons) need to be negotiated with the Prüfungsamt directly, but you should also inform your supervisor.