Hi. I'm in the process of submitting my proposal to the research committee, after 6 months into my PhD studies. One of my supervisors reckons that use of "I propose to investigate and practice..." is not PhD terminology. Do you agree? Can anybody explain the reasons to me please? Many thanks in advance, for your opinions....

Your supervisor may mean that you shouldn't be writing your proposal in the first person voice i.e. instead of writing "I will investigate...", you could write "The following investigation will be undertaken...etc" or "The proposed investigation will...etc" (third person voice) thus avoiding the use of 'I'. The use of the first vs. third person style varies between disciplines but I think the third person voice is certainly more common in biomedical fields. Of course, your supervisor may mean something else entirely so you should check with him/her! Good luck :o)

Thanks for your comments Ann. I am really confused about this now. I got different answers from couple of PhD Supervisors (not mine) and one of them thought it was alright, the other said something very similar to what you suggested. Hmmmm.... The other one said that the use of "investigate" and "practice" in the same sentence can sound wrong to academic researchers, if they aren't familiar with practice-based PhDs.

You're welcome Isil. It's very confusing when you getting widely differing opinions from each supervisor! Perhaps you could have a go at re-structuring the sentence and see if your supervisor (who originally objected) approves? Make sure you are also happy with the revised sentence or it will annoy you everytime you see it (or maybe that's just me!). All the best.

I think that's a very good idea. Instead of getting annoyed with the comments (which doesn't do any good), I can re-phrase the sentence. Thanks a lot.