HLSC111 There is material on LEO outlining how to write essays - you should review it. Academic essays are about the course material – readings and lectures – use this material in your answers. DON’T use clichés, platitudes or “common sense” your personal opinion, beliefs or “feelings” are not relevant. When your essay asks, “what do you think?” or “what is your opinion?”, it is not an invitation for you to dump your thoughts on the page, expound your beliefs or feelings or say what comes into your head – it is an invitation or more correctly an instruction for you to identify the relevant literature, find opinions that agree with you and use them to illustrate and convey your position. Essays require 2 skills – 1 technical skills eg structure, layout, referencing, spelling and grammar 2 creative skills eg content and how to arrange and present it. You should master the technical skills ASAP and never loose any marks for poor skills. The creative skills come with knowledge and research, that is finding articles related to the topic and understanding them, and practice. A common problem is not answering the question – you need to spend some time understanding each word in the question and make sure what you write is answering the question and just something you would like to say. Focus of Assignment and Structure Introductions These require a lot of care – the function of an introduction is to tell the reader what you are going to do – a very short summary of your answer, points you consider important, maybe some definitions – but it must give the reader some idea of where you are going. It provides criteria that the reader uses to judge whether you have achieved your goal – that is answer the question. Some writers launch straight into answering the question – leaving readers wondering where this roller coaster was going. To fix this 1 read other peoples introductions (and Abstracts), 2 identify what the argument is going to follow then read and see if you are correct. 3 watch for the use of key words and concepts, note how concepts are defined and usually the definitions are drawn from the literature ands references provided. 4 after you are comfortable doing this try and rewrite the introduction for essays you have written in the past Body Without an appropriate introduction – you can’t get a good body Better marks are given to essays that: • Focus on the essay topic and did not go off track; • Write very clearly using an academic writing style rather than informal language; • Avoided making bold assumptions or assertions without accurate evidence and examples; • Used correct grammar and spelling – this lets the reader focus on your argument rather that trying to work out what you are saying; Conclusions Without an appropriate introduction – you can’t get a good conclusion Content Essays should follow an “argument” not just present a collection of facts or rely on assertion without evidence or put a number of arguments that collectively were incoherent. Some other areas of confusion included: Style and Clarity Never use absolute words like “never”, “always”, “profound”, “every”, “must”, “should” “vital” unless you are absolutely sure they are appropriate. They restrict your position and it is very easy to falsify and for a marker to say “that’s not true”. “Must “ can have particularly nasty effects for it carries and element of judgment, instruction and superiority – these do not have much of a place in an academic essay you need to be discussive, but definite (clear meaning), not preachy or closed off to argument. It is a word that conveys your conclusions but gives the reader no idea of how you reached them. These words are often linked to “spin doctoring” – to convince with out providing argument, or to create impressions by misusing or changing the meanings of words. Some references seem to originate form spin doctors rather than academic sources using considered argument. When using Professional association publications you need to remember their goal is their growth in power and influence, not the correct accurate presentation of things. As noted the 2 essay writing skills are: 1 technical eg structure, layout, referencing 2 creative eg content and how to arrange and present it. In writing the: • 1st step is to identify want you want to say, devise the argument, work out how to communicate with your audience, (use Concept maps or Mind mapping to assist here) • 2nd step is to take those creative ideas and make them technically sound and put them on paper in a competent format – this may take 3, 4, or 5 edits to reach an acceptable standard Many essays have the feel of an early draft – repetitious content, ill formed ideas, contradictory ideas and/or definitions, poor organisation and spelling and grammar mistakes. Early drafts do not endear readers (or markers). Spelling and Grammar To fix Spelling and Grammar problems 1 Use the Grammar checker on your computer 2 Check Blackboard for Academic skills Modules 3 Ask someone else to read/edit your essay before submission Most of your essays are written using Word – this program has a powerful (if not always correct) grammar checker YOU SHOULD use it. It is very hard to give the benefit of doubt if it is clear that the grammar checker has not been used. Referencing and Use of Sources A Reference list is a list of the books articles etc that were used in the essay, a bibliography is a list of the books articles etc that you read (but may not have referred to directly in the essay) DO NOT USE Wikipedia – it is not an academic source of information (“academic” implies that the information presented has been vetted by other academics). Unvetted sources - Women’s Weekly, and Wikipedia do not supply any guarantees that they are accurate. Writing a reference list is a purely technical skill who you should never give away marks for poor referencing You need to acquire the necessary knowledge – see the ACU Study Guide There are 2 areas that you need to master 1 In text referencing 2 Bibliography or reference list (occurs at the end of the essay) In text referencing – if you use ideas from another author you use brackets and enclose the name(s) of the author, year of publication, and if relevant page numbers: (Smith and Jones, 1927, pp 33-35) If you use words from another author you enclose the quotation in inverted commas (quotation marks) then use brackets and enclose the name(s) of the author, year of publication, and if relevant page numbers: (Smith and Jones, 1927, pp 33-35) Endnote is a software program to assist bibliography preparation and formatting. It is available to download at no charge from the Library website. To fix this 1 read the ACU Study Guide Formal writing is a skill you have to learn, like walking - it is easy once you have learnt it. From here on the standards expected of your writing increases. LEARN the techniques – now. Another issue arising from the use of sources, is the age of some references. There is no problem using old references, they allow you to introduce an historical perspective, refer to leading or seminal writings but there is a problem when old references refer to a problem or data and then talk you use it as if it is a current – it may well still be a problem but you need to establish this with contemporary references. The relevance of references varies with the discipline area – techniques or procedures based articles may be out of date with in a year or 2; philosophy still uses 2,000 year old references as does some areas of psychology.