The Viva and Oral Defense Workbook
Research Made Practical Series

The Viva & Oral Defense Workbook

53 Anticipated-Question Banks and Defense-Slide Templates for the Doctoral Oral Exam

You are the world expert on your thesis. The viva is where you show it. Yet almost no one is taught how to prepare for one of the highest-stakes events of an academic life: candidates trade rumours, imagine an interrogation, and walk in hoping rather than ready.

The Viva & Oral Defense Workbook turns the most mythologised milestone of the doctorate into a system you can work through, step by step. It contains 53 fill-in templates, each shown with a worked example, and a bank of the 50 most-likely viva questions with an answer-planning prompt for every one.

Who this workbook is for: PhD and doctoral candidates preparing for a viva voce or a final oral defense, professional-doctorate candidates (DNP, EdD, DBA) defending a capstone, and supervisors who want a structured kit for running mock vivas.

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What's Inside

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The 50-Question Bank

The most-likely questions grouped into nine genres, each with an answer-planning prompt. Plans you can think from, never scripts you have to recite.

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Your Contribution, Stated and Defended

Summaries at one sentence, one minute and five minutes, your original contribution in a single clear sentence, and every design decision owned as a deliberate trade-off.

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Mock Vivas & Readiness Scoring

Hard, realistic rehearsals you can score and track across rounds, plus a short, contribution-first defense presentation where your format requires one.

Core Checklists & Templates Included

  • 53 fill-in templates, each shown with a worked example from one fictional defense that runs through every chapter
  • Examination decoding: format, panel, possible outcomes, and research on the examiners who will question you
  • Limitations named first and framed with confidence, so no weakness is sprung on you
  • Composure under challenge, under disagreement, and when the honest answer is "I don't know"
  • Managing the day, interpreting your result, and completing corrections to your examiners' satisfaction

The system adapts to any format and field: a UK-style closed viva, a US-style public defense, an online examination, a qualitative thesis, a clinical study. One idea runs through every page — defend as a peer, not a student.

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Reach for it once the thesis is submitted and the examination date is set.

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