1. What is a Master’s Thesis?

The Master’s Thesis (TFM, Trabajo de Fin de Máster in Spanish; Treball de Fi de Màster, in Catalan) is an original research, project or report, about a specific topic of discourse studies, where the student, under the supervision of teachers in the field, integrates, applies or develops the achieved competences during the Master. The TFM has a value of 10 ECTS.


2. Who supervises the development of the TFM?

The TFM is carried out under the supervision of a director; he or she has the role of guiding the student in the development and achievement of their objectives and giving the final approval of the project once it has been completed. The director of the TFM must be member of the university Departments which participate in the Master of Discourse Studies.

The student chooses the director or directors of his/her TFM based on his or her research interests, advised by the coordinator of the Master and the student’s academic tutor. The coordinator and tutors facilitate the student's contact with appropriate members of the teaching staff and ensure that the student and the possible directors of the project have reached agreement. Then, the student submits his/her proposal to the Master’s coordinator, with the approval of both the TFM director and academic tutor, using the corresponding form in the terms fixed each academic year.

The student and his/her director should concrete the topic of the TFM, the methodological approach and agree a workplan, and his supervision, as soon as possible. If there are significant changes from the workplan, some difficulties that can complicate the adequate conclusion of the TFM and to finish it on time, or, for justified reasons, it is needed to make changes in the supervision of the TFM, it is necessary that the student or the supervisor of the TFM communicates these circumstances to the Master’s coordinator and to the academic tutor as soon as possible.


3. What is the student’s dedication to the TFM?

The student’s dedication to the TFM corresponds to 10 ECTC (a total of 250 hours = 25 hours per credit). These hours include the TFM related tasks: rationale and literature review, interaction with the director, data collection, analysis of the data, hypothesis testing and other activities, included, obviously, the writing of the final product.

The student can devote itself to the TFM as soon as it has been decided who will act as director. With some occasional exceptions, classroom teaching of the other subjects of the programme is concentrated in the first and second terms, so that the third term can be devoted preferentially to the completion of the TFM.

The number of hours that the student devote to the TFM are hours of autonomous study. The student is responsible of communicating to the TFM director and, if it is the case, to his/her academic tutor, any type of academic or personal troubles which can interfere in the compliance to the workplan and in the supervising process agreed. Two essential requirements must be fulfilled to defend the TFM: 1) have been supervised by the director, 2) have obtained his/her corresponding approval.
 

4. How must be the TFM?

The TFM must represent an original contribution of the student in the field of his/her specialized research. This project must follow a scientific approach and an appropriate methodology; and the writing final product must accomplish the formal characteristics related to the discipline. A useful guide to think about the content and about the form of the TFM is that it may be a paper suitable for publication in a journal of the corresponding research field. The quality of the contribution is valued above length, as the concrete characteristics of the TFM may vary because of the speciality; nevertheless, as general norm, it can be expected a final product about 25 or 40 double-spaced written pages (annexes apart).

The TFM will be submitted in PDF format. It is important that it includes the following elements in this order:

  • Title page: title, author, name of the Master’s Degree, director of the TFM and date of submission (e.g. pre-established Format on the website)

  • Abstract of a maximum of 150 words, written in the same language of the TFM (and in English)

  • Keywords (maxim length of 200 characters) in the same language of the TFM and in English, about the topic of the TFM

  • Body of the work (with the sections considered appropriate). A possible indicative outline of the structure of the TFM is as follows:

1. Introduction: rationale and interest of the topic/problem object of study

2. Objectives and research questions

3. Literature review 

4. Methodology

5. Analysis

6. Results

7. Conclusions

References

 

5. What is the procedure for submitting the TFM and preparing the defence?

The TFM is defended orally in a public academic event in front of an assessment commission made up of three PhD teachers. Each commission will be composed of a president of the commission, who will coordinate about 10-12 defences. These defences shall be group into time slots.

The task of the president will be to coordinate the holding of the assigned defences, as well as coordination with the secretary's Department and the members of the commission. He/she will collect the assessment sheets for each TFM from the Secretary's Office, as well as the acceptance form for the online publication of the work, which the student will have already signed and handed in. Finally, he/she will ensure uniformity in the assessment process and will propose a candidate for Honours if he/she considers that any of the TFMs defended is deserving.

Apart from the president, each TFM commission will be composed by the TFM director and by another internal or external PhD teacher of the Master’s Degree proposed by the TFM director or, failing this, by the commission’s president or by the coordinator of the Master.

The defence must not last more than 50 minutes, of which a maximum of 20 minutes is for the oral presentation by the student. Once the presentation is finished, the assessment commission may ask questions to the student and make observations on the TFM, which the student must answer in an appropriate manner. At the end of the debate, the commission deliberates and agrees on a grade, which is recorded in the corresponding minutes. The TFM grade, like that of any other subject, is made by means of a quantitative evaluation from 0 to 10 (to one decimal place) and the corresponding qualitative equivalent (fail, pass, notable, excellent).

The defences of the TFM will be held between the 2nd and the 13n July.

The student defends his/her TFM following the orientations detailed by his/her director. She/he is supported by a visual element (ppt, Prezi, etc.). The presentation is adjusted to the established time (20 minutes), and focuses mainly on the following sections: methodology, analysis, discussion of the results, and relevant conclusions.


6. Is there external dissemination of some TFM-research? What is the UPF Digital Repository?

The dissemination of research is an essential element in academic activity. To introduce students to the habit of publication, the Department of Translation and Language Sciences recommends including TFM-research that receive a grade of 9.0 or higher (excellent) in the UPF Digital Repository: the e-Repository. The UPF institutional repository collects, disseminates, and preserves the intellectual production in digital format resulting from UPF's academic and research activity, scientific journals, and institutional publications. Its purpose is to contribute to increasing the impact of the research carried out at UPF.

The Department publishes the TFM-research that are graded with an excellent in a collection called Student Papers, within the e-Repository. The dissemination of the TFM-research through the e-Repository is not mandatory, but it is a simple and efficient way to disseminate the student's research among the academic community in general. These TFM-research present in the e-Repository can also be consulted from this Master’s Degree website.