Writing Essays – basic tips
Addressing the
essay question and maintaining focus
Ø Unpack the essay question. What is the essay question asking you to address? Think about this carefully to make sure you have grasped what is expected of you from the essay. Think ‘between the lines’ of what the essay is expecting of you. Remember that TMAs are means of assessing your knowledge and understanding, try to work out exactly what knowledge and understanding is being assessed by the essay.
Ø Underline the key terms in the essay question and use these as areas that you can ‘brainstorm’ at the planning stage of your essay.
Ø When you plan your essay make sure that each section of your essay EXPLICITLY addresses the essay question. Frequently refer back to the essay question in your discussion.
Ø Make sure that your introduction and conclusion explicitly address the essay question.
Ø Note that TMAs consistently fail to earn good marks because they have failed to address the essay question and/or remain focused on it.
Ø It is well worth spending some considerable time on planning your essay before you start writing.
Ø After brainstorming the essay question and gathering your material together think carefully about how you are going to organise your content so that your discussion develops in a logical way as your essay progresses.
Ø Plan EACH section of your essay clearly before you start to write. Give each section a heading in terms of what you intend to discuss. Under the heading for each section make bullet points in terms of how the discussion in that section will develop.
Ø Make sure that each section EXPLICITLY addresses the essay question.
Ø Provide a clear introduction. The introduction should resemble the shape of a funnel, starting wide and narrowing down. It should start wide with a brief setting of the scene of your essay. Set your essay in a context. Then begin to narrow it down by defining any terms which are specific to your essay (or psychology). Next, set out the terrain of your essay for your reader. Try, at least (!) to make your essay sound exciting … entice your reader into wanting to engage with your piece of work. Give your reader an indication as to how you intend to develop your argument. Briefly tell your reader what conclusions your essay will be arriving at. Your introduction should be 10% of the total word count of your essay it therefore needs to be concise and to the point, it is not the environment for lengthy, rambling, irrelevant discussion.
Ø Provide a clear conclusion. It should mirror your introduction in that it should funnel out from a narrow to a wider perspective. Briefly summarise for your reader what your essay has addressed and how your discussion was developed, you may also like to identify specific key issues or themes that were identified. Widen out into how your discussion fits into the wider context of your essay question. Present your ultimate conclusions based on your discussion. The conclusion should never contain any new material or reference to authors or studies. Again, your conclusion should be typically 10% of your total word count, so keep it concise.
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Use a 12 point font
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Use 1.5 line spacing
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Provide a margin to the left hand side
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Include your name, PI number, course code and TMA no as a header
on each page. Number your pages.
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Include a reference list at the back of your essay
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Avoid the use of “I” or “we” in writing academic essays. This is a point of contention in essays – the reality is,
however, that at undergraduate level you are not yet entitled to your own
opinion (you will be by the time you get to PhD level!) therefore your work
should be the result of a fair and balanced exploration and assessment of the
theories, concepts and writings of the more ‘proven’ authors than yourself!
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Always remember that you are writing to the naïve reader so make
sure that you explain significant terms clearly.
Of course you are not writing to the naïve reader but the purpose of the
essay is to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding so you need to show
that you understand terms and that you are not just repeating them.
This will always be sure to earn you extra marks!
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Avoid using direct quotes for the same reason.
You need to write in your own words to show that you understand concepts
and arguments.
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Do not use subheadings in the body of your essay, this is more
appropriate for report writing such as you will produce for the projects.
In essay style writing it disrupts the flow.
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Do not use abbreviations in your essay, this seriously disrupts
the flow for your reader who often has to track down the source of your
abbreviation. Remember you own
experiences of reading material, think about how YOU might respond to
abbreviations being used in a course chapter for example.
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Most of your references are going to be to the CHAPTER author who
is discussing particular ideas, concepts or studies.
In the body of your essay you reference this by including the author’s
name and date of publication in brackets eg (Pheonix, 2002). If you are using a
direct quote you would also need to include a page number e.g (Pheonix, 2002,
p.36). Do not include a reference to the authors of studies as this is
suggesting to your reader that you have accessed the original source rather than
an INTERPRETATION of it by the chapter author in question … there is a world
of difference between the two! Instead,
manipulate your wording something like “Pheonix (2002) discusses a study
conducted by Tajfel et al which found that”