Writing Essays For Dummies, UK Edition

Mary Page, Carrie Winstanley

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781119996545
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Student Life

This straight-talking guide will help you develop your essay-writing skills and achieve higher marks

Do ever wish that you could write the perfect university essay? Are you left baffled about where to start? This easy-to-use guide walks you through the nuts and bolts of academic writing, helping you develop your essay-writing skills and achieve higher marks. From identifying the essay type and planning a structure, to honing your research skills, managing your time, finding an essay voice, and referencing correctly, Writing Essays For Dummies shows you how to stay on top of each stage of the essay-writing process, to help you produce a well-crafted and confident final document.

Writing Essays For Dummies covers:

Part I: Navigating a World of Information
Chapter 1: Mapping Your Way: Starting to Write Essays
Chapter 2: Identifying the essay type

Part II: Researching, Recording and Reformulating
Chapter 3: Eyes Down: Academic reading
Chapter 4: Researching Online
Chapter 5: Note-taking and Organising your Material
Chapter 6: Avoiding Plagiarism

Part III: Putting Pen to Paper
Chapter 7: Writing as a process
Chapter 8: Getting Going and Keeping Going

Part IV: Mastering Language and Style
Chapter 9: Writing with Confidence
Chapter 10: Penning the Perfect Paragraph
Chapter 11: Finding Your Voice

Part V: Tightening Your Structure and Organisation
Chapter 12: Preparing the Aperitif: The Introduction
Chapter 13: Serving the Main Course: The Essay's Body
Chapter 14: Dishing up Dessert: The Conclusion
Chapter 15: Acknowledging Sources of Information

Part VI: Finishing with a Flourish: The Final Touches
Chapter 16: It's all in the detail
Chapter 17: Perfecting Your Presentation
Chapter 18: The afterglow

Part VII: Part of Tens
Chapter 19: Ten Tips to Avoid Things Going Wrong
Chapter 20: Ten Ways to Make Your Essay Stand Out

Part I

Navigating a World of Information

In this part …

Getting a handle on what an essay title requires of you is often the toughest step of all, so we cover it thoroughly in this part. We also give you practical tips on how to get stuck in to your essay, and take an in-depth look at the different sorts of essay you might be asked to write. Essays often break down into one of several basic types, so we show you what you should be aiming towards and – above all – help you to get going and keep plugging away.

Chapter 1

Mapping Your Way: Starting to Write Essays

In This Chapter

Moving from school- to university-level writing

Getting a feel for writing academically

Breaking the writing process down into stages

Achieving success in your essay writing

You’ve probably picked up this book because you’re unsure exactly what’s expected of you when you write an essay at university. Did your teachers at secondary school explain to you what an academic essay is? Do you know how it differs from other things you’ve written? You may be someone who writes happily in many situations – for instance you send letters and emails with no hesitation, you have no difficulty keeping a diary or you can write a story from your own imagination. But an academic essay? That’s scary!

This first chapter should go a long way to settling any fears you may have about your writing. We make clear how an academic essay differs from the writing you did at school and from other types of writing you may be familiar with. We break the daunting task of writing your essay into manageable chunks and take you through each stage. And we give you some tips on how to gain confidence and write successfully.

Transitioning to University-level Writing

You write in many different ways when you’re at university. You take notes during lectures and seminars, make notes from books and web pages, take part in online discussions and course blogs, and draft essays and reports – as well as writing your shopping list and texting!

Of all your writing activities, the course assignment’s the most important. For your assignment, you’re set a writing task to do, normally over a period of a few weeks, and the marks count towards your final grade for that unit. Note-taking and blogging are important in that, done well and thoughtfully, they lay the foundations for success in essay writing both in coursework and in exams. But you’re assessed on the final product, so that’s what you have to give most attention to. You may throw away your notes, and blogs may disappear into the ether, but an essay you’re proud of may end up at the bottom of a drawer for you to discover years later and reread, we hope with pleasure.

So, given that essays at university count for so much, why do so many students feel ill-prepared for this type of writing? Basically, writing at each main stage of the education process – primary school, secondary school and university – has a different function. Realising this is the first step to helping you tune in to what’s required of you at university. By looking at the big picture, you see how what you write and how you write it changes from phase to phase.

Writing at school

Primary school teaches you the rudiments of writing. You develop basic literacy in letters of the alphabet and sentences so that you can read and start to write stories and short compositions.

Secondary school assumes that you can use writing to express your ideas and your imagination on paper. You write about the subjects you’re exploring in your lessons, and you show the teacher what you’ve discovered. You have opportunities at secondary school to develop creative writing skills and to begin to analyse topics from your courses in an extended way under the teacher’s guidance.

Writing at undergraduate level

As at secondary school, at university you also have to write essays to show what you know. But now you can’t regurgitate what your tutors have fed you. The depth you go into with a subject is reflected in the enormous, seemingly limitless, amount of reading you have to do.

Managing your reading list demands a skill that you may not have developed before university study: critical analysis. With a heightened sense of criticality, you apply frameworks and ideas that experts in the field have developed in order to deepen and extend your knowledge. Many universities give students in their first year support in critical thinking, because this, together with the reading list, is what makes the writing process lengthier and more complex than you’ve probably known before.

The result of the writing process and your background reading is an essay. As such, your essay relies on a solid bibliography. Your writing at university is based on the research that’s gone before. You stand on the shoulders of giants, as Sir Isaac Newton said. You have to acknowledge all quotations from authors and references to their work according to strict guidelines. See Chapter 14 for details on how to reference correctly.

Writing at postgraduate level

To get your head around why you write the way you do at university, thinking about what undergraduate study can lead to may help: postgraduate study such as a master’s or a PhD. At master’s level you research your subject to an even greater level of detail. Your tutors push you to analyse to the furthest points until you begin to identify gaps in the body of knowledge. This is the basis of the dissertation you write.

If you then go on to a PhD, you make a contribution to the body of knowledge by undertaking a piece of original research, filling in the gaps you identified at master’s degree level, if you like, and thus making yourself an expert in this field. People look to you for original thought and comment on your specialist subject. You become an authority. As such, you’re expected to have a thorough knowledge of practically everything written on your subject. You read just about every book or paper ever published on it.

From undergraduate level onwards, you can lay the foundation for a career in research. The undergraduate phase you’ve embarked on is the first step along the road. Most people go no further than a bachelor’s degree. A certain number go on to a master’s. Very few become doctors in their subject. But if you just think for a moment where the undergraduate degree leads, you can see why universities are keen for you to develop your essay-writing skills.

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Smoothing the transition from school to uni

The transition to university is a difficult one socially and emotionally, in all probability geographically, and for most people, academically as well. You’ve probably thought long and hard about leaving friends and family behind, and are counting down to freshers’ week. But you probably haven’t given a great deal of thought to how to manage the academic transition from secondary school to university.

From being top of your class in English, French or history, you’re now just ordinary in a cohort of students who seem much more confident and knowledgeable and just downright smarter than you are. And then, when your course starts, you realise you have to write essays and try to convince everyone that you know what you’re talking about. How long can it be before they find you out and realise you’re a fraud? Isn’t stacking shelves in the supermarket a better option?

Relax – everyone’s in the same boat and everyone doubts their own ability sometimes. Tell yourself that you’ve made it, you got the grades, you were accepted, and now you’re here to learn. One of the most important things to grasp is the rules of the game you play at university, and a big part of the game is writing essays.

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Getting the Genre Right

If you’re unfamiliar with the word genre, it’s just a way of describing the type of text you’re writing. Genres of writing encompass everything from a greeting on a birthday card to an academic essay; in other words, anything you write, by hand or on a keyboard, in any kind of social situation and to anybody under the sun.

The best way to understand the academic essay genre is to compare this type of writing against others you’re probably familiar with: creative writing, articles and reports.

The academic genre carries a particular writing style that sets it apart from other genres. Turn to Chapter 10 to find out more about how you can adopt this style in your writing.

Writing an essay, not creative prose

When you’re writing an academic essay, you don’t let your imagination run wild and compose stories (unless your course is actually called Creative Writing!). Control’s the name of the game. You write to a strict structure and don’t deviate. A kind of formula exists for the way you do the introduction, and similarly for the conclusion. What goes in between (the body of the essay) can follow several different overall patterns, and is composed of paragraphs that, once again, fit a particular shape. (Flick to Chapters 12, 13 and 14 for more on how to write each part of your essay.)

You should refer constantly to the work of experts rather than going off on a fantasy of your own. Creativity lies not in flights of imagination but in deep understanding of previous research, and interpreting this in your own way. Though you may not think so, you do have room to express your own opinions, but only in the context of what you’ve read.

You may think of this genre as being like a straitjacket, and in a way it is. But it’s actually a pretty easy genre to write within. Once you’ve got your head around the genre and know what you can and can’t do, a lot of decisions are already made for you and you just fit in with everything. You play by the rules.

Just as it doesn’t belong in the content of your essay, creativity isn’t welcome in how you present it either. An essay printed in a flowery font on petal-pink paper and held together with a daisy chain doesn’t impress your tutor. In Chapter 16 we take you through the correct way to present your essay.

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