Hi I am a PhD student who went back to writing up my PhD in Social Anthropology 25 years after I first started. As a mum of two it has taken me a long long time to catch up with theory etc and to get a complete draft done. In September my supervisor advised I would have to completely rewrite the introduction as I hadn't clearly laid out the thesis's contribution. I have tried to start this and have become completely blocked about how to structure it, what information to put in the very introductory bit, and how to bring in other texts. I have spent a month writing about 6 pages, which I keep going back over and changing. I have now got to the stage when I cannot see the wood for the trees. My supervisor is quite a train ride away and I cannot spare the time to go in to see him that often; he is also on sabbatical at the moment. Any advice please on how to get over this/ guides to structuring the intro/ comfort/sympathy. I am getting very stressed that I will not be able to complete in time or to a sufficient standard and all these years will have gone completely to waste

Hi,

I have just finished writing up my introduction and adopted the following structure:

Introduction of context of thesis
* In this section I laid the historical development and contextual background of my area

Research problem
* Discussed the problem and why it was important

Previous research
* A brief but thorough outline of the perspectives already used in my research area

Gaps in existent literature
* Identification of the gaps in the existent literature and/or deficiencies in approaches already adopted.

Introduction of thesis perspective (in my case theoretical approach)
* Summary of my theoretical perspective and model. Justification of approach in terms of how its satisfies the existent research gaps

Research objectives and methods of inquiry
* Summary of research questions (3 guiding research questions in my case).

Contribution to knowledge
*Explicitly state my contribution to existing knowledge in three areas:
1) Theoretical
2) Methodological
3) Practical/applied

Outline of thesis
* Provide an overview of the chapters of the thesis, before introducing your second chapter.

Obviously this is just my approach and could very possibly be totally wrong, but hope it gives you some ideas.

Best of luck!

First of all, I appreciate your efforts to pursue ph.d. I have had 6 years of break in total between my degrees. It has been very difficult path that I came across.
I am also writing my thesis right now. Writing introduction is not that easy! It took me more than 1.5 months to formulate the introduction chapter of my thesis which is only 5 pages. But I directly started to write chapter 3 of my thesis. My supervisor is supportive. If I do not know how to formulate a particular section of a chapter, I ask openly and get an useful suggestion from my supervisor. May be you could ask your supervisor about his/her expectation and how you need to structure the introduction.
You are very strong, do not give up because of this temporary problem.
I wish you good luck in writing. Cheer up.

Thanks both of you. Havntgotaclue that was very helpful and rubygem thanks for your encouragement. My supervisor is supportive but is very vague with his advice! He had already read the intro previously and not suggested amendments until the final read through, which is why it has come as a bit of a surprise this time round. I have always had a problem summarising and my issue is that because the data is old, the relevance of the subject matter has changed and it doesn't have any clear value any more!