Points to check your essays for
The importance of essays
Patrick Dunleavy
(1986) describes essay writing as "the central focus of degree
work in the
humanities and the non-technical social sciences". The four purposes he
says essay writing
has are (in order of importance):
When you listen to a clear lecture, or read a clear book, you may feel
you know the subject. Then, when someone asks you to explain it, you may
feel you do not. The knowledge has not been internalised. It has not become
your own. One of the best ways to take possession of knowledge for yourself
is to write an essay about it.
This will lead to intellectual development.
The essay may get feedback from friends or a tutor. This will result in
further intellectual development.
Finally, essays are good practise for
exams. So, all in all, there is probably nothing you do at University
(academically) that is more important than essay writing.
You will develop your own techniques for essay writing, so use the
following plan as advice, not as a straightjacket. The plan starts with
bullet points. Click on the coloured word by one of these to go to the
advice about the point.
Analyse the title
Use your analysis to start
drafting your introduction. Start your
bibliography.
Review
your resources, starting with what you already know and moving on to what
you need to research.
Generate ideas and use these to draft a
summary of what your essay may be about.
Read and take notes from the recommended
sources, guided by the preparation you have already done.
Develop your ideas
in the light of your reading. One way to do this is by revising your draft
summary.
Draft the body of the essay
without looking at your notes or books. Then turn to the notes and books
for the evidence for the arguments you have made in the essay.
Reference as
you go along.
Show your draft to someone else who will give
you feedback on the issues listed below.
Rewrite your essay in the light of their
feedback.
Check your essay
Write the final version
Save, File and Submit
Most courses give you essay titles that point you clearly in the
direction your essay should go. Begin by analysing this title and the
guidance given in other ways, like the reading list.
Every aspect of the essay title needs to be covered by your essay. So
analysing lets you see what your essay should contain.
It also helps you to focus your essay. You should not just write around a
subject in a general way. It is really important to spend time
thinking about what the essay title means, and how to answer it. Analysing
helps you see what is wanted.
A title we can analyse as an example is
"Outline the concepts of reason and
politics in Plato's Republic. Show how they relate".
This tells you
a source you must use (a book by Plato, called the Republic),
and two
concepts
(reason and politics) that you should investigate
in it.
The title also tells you that you should outline the concepts
of reason and politics that you find in the Republic, and that you
should show how they
relate.
Sources
are often suggested in a
reading list rather than in the title.
Your finished essay needs to put the parts
together.
This is called
synthesis.
Now that you know what you are doing, review your
resources:
What you already know
What you need to know
Where information can be obtained
The resources to start with are what you already know.
Once you have some ideas on paper, you will
see where you need to direct your reading
and thinking. You will know what kind of
information you need, and that is an
important part of deciding where to look for
it.
Use your
analysis
to start drafting your
introduction. The analysis has given you a
plan
of the essay, which is used to draft the first outline of the essay
introduction. Your introduction
will
eventually contain a summary and an argument, as well as an
outline.
Start your
draft bibliography.
Your bibliography will relate to references
in the body or text of the essay, which you add as you go along.
Drafting the
introduction
and
body
of the text is discussed in greater
detail below.
Use whatever technique you find
necessary to start your ideas flowing.
Once they have started to flow, you will
be able to tighten them up.
Click
here
for some techniques to start your ideas flowing
Read and take notes
Develop your ideas
Essay Drafting
|
Click
here
for advice on reading and taking notes
It is important to build the essay on ideas that you develop yourself,
and not to just follow the pattern of ideas that someone else has provided.
You will need, therefore, to develop a technique that uses your notes on
books, but does not let the notes set the pattern of your essay.
Click
here
for advice on avoiding copying and plagiarism
Your essay needs to be organised by you and to express your interpretation
and understanding of the subject. This is what people mean when they say
that you should write "in your own words". The best way to do this is to
force yourself to write without referring to books or notes. Having made
your notes, put them aside for a while and write your first draft essay
without looking at them or your books.
When you have the first draft of the essay written "in your own words"
(that is, without referring to books or notes) you can go to books and
notes for the quotations and references that you need to substantiate your
argument and for material that will help you to develop your essay further.
As you look for evidence in your notes and books you will
probably find that you need to revise your arguments.
Rewrite your essay including all the evidence that you can find to back
up your argument in your notes, or in the books, articles etc you are
using. Adjust your argument if the evidence does not fit it.
Try drafting your essay in four parts:
-
an introduction
-
a body (which includes references)
-
a conclusion
-
a bibliography
(which relates to the references in the body)
If you draft on paper, the draft of each part should be on separate sheets
to allow you to redraft more easily. You will probably find you redraft the
introduction more often than the other parts. The parts will be physically
put together in your final version.
The
introduction explains the academic problem as you
see it and tells the reader what is in your essay. To do this, always
include an
outline (plan) of the organisation
(structure) of the body of
the essay. You should also include a
summary of the essay. A good
introduction will also
include an
argument statement.
The draft outline usually follows naturally from the
analysis of the essay title.
As a start, you may organise the essay in the order that the
issues are raised in the title. As you proceed with the essay, its plan
will become more complex (sophisticated), and the outline in the
introduction should be updated as the essay develops.
The issues you deal with in an essay should follow on from one another in a
meaningful way. Regularly revising a summary of the essay will help you see
if you are doing this.
Your argument is the case that you are making. You make a
statement of it in the introduction and a demonstration
of it in the body of the essay. The body of the essay presents the evidence
for the statement.
Click here for more on the meaning of the term
argument
The body of an essay is also called its content or
text. It is the largest part of the essay and contains the points
you want to make in greater detail than the introduction (because they are
being explained) and with the evidence for them. It must show the reader
that you know your subject. You do this by explaining the subject to the
reader. It is a fatal mistake to think "the marker already knows this
subject. I will discuss it without explaining it." The marker is looking
for evidence that you know the subject.
Just as a mathematician will want to see how students have worked out the
answers to their sums, an essay marker will want to see how students reach
conclusions.
It should also present the evidence for the essay's argument.
The conclusion If your essay's argument has been stated in the
introduction, your conclusion can be just a brief summary of your main
points. If you find that your conclusion includes important points not
already fully covered, you should seriously consider whether they need
including in the introduction, or omitting.
The bibliography is the list of books and other sources you use for
the essay. The bibliography should relate to references in the
essay. See ABC
Referencing
for a list of what you
need to
reference.
Reference as you go along
Reference as you go along is not just much easier than trying to write all
the references when the essay is almost finished,
it is also one of the most powerful ways of improving your academic
writing.
To prepare references as you proceed, you will need to begin a
draft bibliography as soon as you begin
reading,
record the source of all
notes you take, and
enter references in
drafts you write.
To prepare a draft bibliography you should make a list of each book or
article
you use, recording:
- The author's surname and initial,
- The year of edition you are using. This
is at the front of most books. If several
dates are given, the one you want is the
copyright date. This is often shown by
the sign ©
- The Title,
- The place of publication,
- The Publisher.
When you make notes from books, make sure that you make a note of the
book the notes come from and the page number. Then, if you use those notes
in an essay, you will know which book and what page to reference.
Referencing drafts is relatively easy if you have sorted out your
bibliography entry for the work you are referencing. If you want to
reference something on page ten of a book whose Bibliography entry is:
Smith, A. 1997, Invented Book, Burke Publishers, London.
You just need to enter (Smith, A. p.10) in the text of your draft at the
point you want to reference the book.
|
|
Show your draft to someone else
and rewrite it in the light of the feedback
|
You could get good ideas about making your essay clearer by asking a
friend to look at the draft. Sometimes tutors will look at essay drafts and
make comments. Or you may get comments from English Support Tutors.
When you show someone a draft, include the draft bibliography. This
always helps a tutor understand an essay draft better, and may help a
friend.
Click
here
for an explanation of feedback
Why feedback is
important
and why friends and other students
may be good at giving it.
Points that other people could give you feedback on
The Title. An essay should have its correct title fully written out
at the top. If it is an "either/or" essay title that requires the writer to
chose which aspect to focus on, the title on the essay draft should be the
one the writer is using. A reader can think about the title before reading
the essay. An essay that explains all aspects of the title to the reader
suggests the author understands each aspect. However, there are likely to
be aspects that the reader remains puzzled about. These will suggest points
for the writer to think about more, and express more clearly.
The Bibliography and References. The reader can check that there is
a bibliography at the end of the essay and that the key word in each
bibliography entry matches the key word in the relevant references.
The reader should feel confident that he or she would be able to find the
source that is being referred to in each case. References to books should
give a page number. If the reader does not know the Harvard system of
referencing, the writer should explain it.
The Introduction. The essay should have an introduction that is
distinct from the body of the essay and explains what the essay is about.
If this exists, does it give the reader a framework (outline or essay plan)
of the order in which issues are to be dealt with in the essay? If so, the
reader should look at the body of the essay to see if it is clear to him or
her that the author is following the outline. The outline indicates the
organisation, or structure, of the essay. Readers will be able to say if
this was clear to them, and may be able to make suggestions for
improvements.
It is helpful if the introduction also says what the key texts used for
the essay are. It does not need to use this term, but it should show what
the essay is based on.
The outline of the essay is the essential part of an introduction. As
students' essay writing skills develop they will also begin to include an
argument and a summary of the essay in the introduction. Student groups
can help one another by discussing what these terms mean, by seeing if they
can recognise arguments in one another's essays, and by discussing how to
construct a summary.
Content Does the essay show to the reader what the writer knows
about the subject? Or are there issues that the reader is left in the dark
about? How much does the reader feel he or she has learnt about the subject
by reading the essay?
Readability Can the reader understand the essay? Is it clearly
written or are there words that are difficult to read, or
which appear to be missed out, or spelt in a way that the reader is not
sure which word is meant? Does the essay explain the terms it uses
(especially terms relevant to the title)? Is the meaning of every part of
the essay clear and unambiguous?
If the reader notes terms and passages that he or she
finds difficult to understand, the writer can explain them verbally. This
should help the writer to rewrite the passages and explain the terms in the
essay.
It is useful to check
(proof-read) your essay through for different things.
Check that you have written the title at the top of the essay. Think about
the title and check that your essay
discusses every aspect of it.
Check that the
introduction correctly describes the body of the
essay. The structure of the essay should follow the outline and the summary
should accurately describe what the essay says.
Check that you say what you mean. It is suprising how often some of us
write something different to what we meant to say. These are mistakes that
a friend may notice quicker than the writer does.
Check for
logical
argument: Have you got an argument? Have you stated it in
the
introduction? Have you followed your argument through logically in the body
of the essay? Have you recapped it in the conclusion?
Check for the use of
evidence to back up the argument. Evidence may be references to an
author you are interpreting. Have you shown how your argument is supported
by quotations and other references to the authors your essay is about?
Check for the accurate presentation of quotations and references.
Are quotations clearly identified?
Do the references use the Harvard
system? Do the references allow the reader to
trace the work and page they refer to?
Check for
grammatical
accuracy -
clear
English
and
correct spelling. Well constructed
sentences in
plain English are the most likely to convey the meaning you
want.
If you are using a
wordprocessor, take time to run the spellchecker. Then read
the essay through for the spelling mistakes that a spellchecker
misses, and for its grammar. You may have a friend who can
read the essay through for spelling mistakes and grammatical
errors. Someone else can often see errors that the writer misses. Some
people find computer grammar checkers useful.
Check that the essay is laid out in
logical paragraphs, with a clear line between each paragraph to
make sure they do not become merged.
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Write the final version of your
essay
|
When you have finished your essay, make a last check that the outline,
argument and summary in your introduction correctly describe the rest of
the essay. If they do not, rewrite the introduction.
Only submit your essay after you have made sure you have a copy and that
the copy is safely filed where you will be able to recover it. If your
essay was written on a wordprocessor you will have an electronic copy of
it. If not, make a photocopy. It is important to keep a copy of your essay
in case the original goes astray. Essays are also sources you will want to
refer to later. So file it in a way that is convenient for future
reference.
Essays are valuable records for future reference.
Click
here
for advice on record keeping.
On most courses you will find that word limits are not very precise. A
rule of thumb is that plus or minus 10% is allowed. Variations above and
below these limits will not, normally, have a major effect on your mark.
The content is what matters most.
There may be courses which are very strict about word limits, but usually
the following student will be throwing away marks by not writing an extra
hundred words:
"I have written as concisely as I can, but there is an essential point I
have not been able to explain properly because of the word limit. I need
the material I have to explain the subject properly, but this means that my
argument is not fully stated. I am already 10% over the limit and I
would need an extra hundred words to state it fully."
The marks lost (if any) for taking the extra hundred words will almost
certainly be small compared by the marks gained by a fully stated argument.
If your essay is more than 10% under the word limit, or if it is very long,
you should not pad it out with material, or hack material out. Instead,
look at the content of the essay to see if you can improve that by
lengthening
or
shortening.
What to do if your essay is too short
Do not make an essay longer by padding it with waffle or material that you
do not understand. You will make the essay worse by just filling up space
with lecture notes, or something that you hope will be relevant.
Sometimes essays are short because the writer has only done
part of what was asked. Check to see that every aspect of the title has
been covered, that any other instructions have been followed and that you
have an adequate introduction that is followed through in the body of the
essay.
An essay can be too short because it needs to be more explicit. Look at
whether you have fully explained everything. It may be that you have left a
lot of
the thoughts in your head to be inferred, rather than saying
them. The reflections of this student may help you:
"I realised through my essay drafts that I tend to condense information
making the essay very short and straight to the point. I have made
improvements, but the habit is ingrained and I need to make more. To do
this, I must expand on my thoughts, ideas and opinions, explain in more
depth the point I am trying to make, and write an essay imagining that the
person who may read it has no clue about the subject."
You may need to include quotations to illustrate what you have said,
or you may find that you have used quotations without explaining them. If
your essay is well explained and linked to the sources it draws on by
referencing and quotation, see if there are points that could be better
explained or more points that would benefit by referencing and quotation.
What to do if your essay is too long
You should not shorten an essay by hacking out pieces in a way that
destroys the meaning. Instead, see if you can improve the meaning by making
the essay less verbose and
more precise.
Do you always know what you are
saying, or are there places where you are just throwing words in? Replace
vague passages that do not say anything important, and passages that
ramble, with sentences that are to the point.
Try focusing your introduction more on the title, and then checking to see
that the body of the essay sticks to what you focused on and does not
wander all over the place. Remove material that is not relevant to what you
say you are doing.
Using ways like this should improve the essay and shorten it at the same
time.
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A summary of salient points is called a
Précis.
Précising and paraphrasing are good practice for any writer.
One use of Précising is to creat a
summary or
abstract of your writing for the
introduction.
Traditonal steps in précis writing
You could précis any piece of writing, including your own. In the
traditional précis students reduce a passage of writing to a third
or a quarter of its original length by taking these steps:
Read through the whole passage to get an overall view
Read it through again, underlining each important point. These will
all need to be included in the précis
Write a summary of the passage with all the underlined (above) points
in the appropriate order, omitting all unnecessary matter
Compare the summary with the original and add anything of
importance that had been left out
Check the approximate length to see how close you are to the length
aimed at
Re-read carefully to see if the summary flows smoothly and is
grammatically correct
Polish your précis
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Understand what you write
As a general rule, do not write anything you do not
understand. If you fully understand what you are writing, you should be
able to control your writing. This should include being able to expand on
it or make it more concise.
If you write things that you do not understand,
in the hope that they are the right thing to say, you will have lost
control of your writing.
Read about clear English
Some essays are difficult to understand because material has been copied
from books with no understanding of the meaning. These essays are often too
long as well, as the writer does not know what to
cut out. If this is what you do, read about:
avoiding copying and plagiarism
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