Tag: essay writing
Leave out unnecessary information
My sister tells stories like this: I’ll ask her “Why is your leg in a cast? How did you break it?” and she’ll say “Well, I was in Asda and I needed some bread. But they didn’t have the bread I usually get, Hovis Tasty Wholemeal, so I got some Allinson’s granary bread instead. And then I remembered my husband doesn’t like granary bread because the bits get stuck in his fillings….”. The story goes on for hours and eventually I find out she was rear-ended by a bin wagon driving back home, and all the information about Asda and bread and my brother-in-law’s fillings was completely irrelevant to why her leg is in a cast. Drives me mad. I love her, though.
When you are writing essays, only include the information you need to answer the question. Just because the question was about attachment, that doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate to describe Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test protocol in great detail. Not every question about Piaget requires you to list all his developmental stages. Ask yourself “Would my essay make just as much sense if I left this part out? Would it still answer the question?”
Should you include your opinions in an essay?
In general, you are expected to answer essay questions using the information in the module material, explained in your own words. You are not expected to include your own thoughts and opinions about the topics. For example, this would be inappropriate in an essay:
“I think that criminals should be dealt with severely. What gives them the right to break the rules that everyone else has to follow? If I work hard and buy nice things with the money I’ve earned, I shouldn’t have to worry about some juvenile delinquent robbing my house and getting away with a slapped wrist, community service or something like that. If it was up to me, I’d bring back flogging….”
It would be just as inappropriate to express your opinion that criminals are victims of a broken society and should be treated with compassion. You’re not supposed to include your opinions in essays, regardless of whether you suspect your tutor shares those opinions. But that doesn’t mean that you have to just parrot what it says in the module. You are supposed to read the module materials critically. That means you don’t just believe anything you read, but always ask questions about it e.g. “Does that sound convincing to me? What is the evidence to support this? Are these arguments logically watertight? What biases and assumptions might be influencing these ideas”? So for example, this would be appropriate:
“In the textbook it says that people have a right to rise up when their leaders are behaving unjustly. In a democracy, power comes from the people, so what the people do must be democratic. But I don’t agree with that. I agree with Edmund Burke who thought that social order was precious and took ages to build, and it’s really dangerous if a criminal mob can just tear down thousands of years of progress“.
That’s based on the ideas in the book, but the student doesn’t just believe what they’re told: they’ve noticed that two opposing views of the same topic are presented in the book, they’ve thought about both of them, and they’ve decided which one they find more persuasive, and why. It could be made even better by being written in a more academic form, with just a few changes:
“The radical view of rioting argues that people have a right to rise up when their leaders are behaving unjustly (Andrews, 2022 p.331). In a democracy, power comes from the people, so what the people do must be democratic. This contrasts with the conservative view of rioting that social order is precious and takes many generations to build, and it’s dangerous if a criminal mob can just tear down thousands of years of progress (Burke 2003 cited in Andews 2022, p. 334)“.
The student hasn’t said which of these views they agree with, but there’s a hint that they might agree with the view they put second. The rest of the essay, especially the conclusion, should make it clear.
References
Andrews, G. (2022) ‘Riots and disorder on the street’, in Clarke, J., Doye, Z., Hassan, I. and Woodward, K. (eds) Understanding social lives, part 2. Milton Keynes: The Open University, pp. 313–354.
Circular definitions
You can’t use the word itself in your definition of a word. For example, you can’t write “A guitar is a musical instrument shaped like a guitar”. You need to find a way to define the word or term without using the word or term in its own definition.
Throat-clearing sentences
“Many researchers have investigated the topic of childhood resilience over the years”
This is what’s known as a throat-clearing sentence. It’s true, but it’s so vague and general to not be worth saying. Other examples would be:
“There are many factors that influence the development of childhood resilience”
“Childhood resilience is an important and interesting topic”
“For hundreds of years, people have wondered what influences the development of childhood resilience”
They’re called throat-clearing sentences because they’re like the noise of clearing your throat before you make a speech – they’re just meaningless sounds you make before your actual speech, or essay, gets underway. It’s OK to write them. Maybe that’s how you clear your brain before you can start writing meaningful things. But you should delete them during the editing stage, along with any other sentences that don’t say anything worth saying.
How to define a term
There are two approaches to defining terms in your essays:
- give someone else’s definition, e.g. “Erving Goffman defined stigma as an ‘attribute that is deeply discrediting’ (1963, p. 3).”
- give your own definition.
You are allowed to give your own definitions because you are using the word in your essay and presumably you are using it to mean something. So you can explain (define) what you are using the word to mean. E.g. “In the image, the children are finger painting in a playful way. I am using the word playful to mean they seem to be finger painting voluntarily and are finding it fun. Playful activities are different from work activities, by which I mean activities children do because they are required to do it, and they would not do if they had a choice. Both playful and work activities can result in learning. Jean Piaget said that ‘play is the work of childhood’ (Piaget, 1951)”
Option 2 is especially useful if your module doesn’t seem to have a definition of a particular term you want to use. I well remember being very frustrated as an undergraduate that my lecturers insisted I define every term I used, but the learning materials they gave me often didn’t do that. I wish someone had told me I was allowed to define the terms myself. That doesn’t mean you can be silly – don’t write “In this essay I will use the term ‘habitus’ to mean a small lizard of the genus Lygodactylus capensis”. Read option 2 again – when you use a word, you are using it to mean something. So simply explain how you are using the word in your essay.
If your module does define the term you should refer to that definition, even if you are going to use a different definition in your essay e.g. you might write “The E219 Glossary (The Open University, 2022) defines conditioning as ‘A model of learning concerned with the formation of associations’. In this essay I will use the term to mean learning processes that happen without the conscious will of the learner, through the unconscious formation of associations between stimuli and behaviours”. That is a slightly more specific definition than the one given in the module glossary, and defining it in this way shows you have a a good understanding of the concept. Demonstrating your understanding in this way will probably earn you a higher grade (as long as it’s relevant to the essay question).
References
Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Piaget, J. (1951) Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. Translated by C. Gattegno and F. M. Hodgson. New York: Norton and Co (this edition 1962).
The Open University (2022) E219 Glossary. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/glossary/view.php?id=1972028 Accessed 28/1/2023
How to succinctly describe a study in your own words
You need to tell the reader 3 things, with 2 other optional things:
- (Optional) Why did the researchers do the study?
- What did they do?
- What did they find?
- What does it mean?
- (Optional) How does it relate to the essay question?
Examples:
“DeNora and Belcher (2020) were interested in the effect of music in clothes shops [why they did the study]. They recruited people to wear concealed recording devices when they went clothes shopping, and talk out loud about what they were doing and how they felt [what they did]. They found that different shops played different music that appealed to different categories of consumers, and that the music did have an effect on how the shoppers felt [what they found].”
“The Department for Education collected data about 18 year old school leaver in England and what happened to them next [what they did]. Children who had been entitled to free school meals because their family’s income was low were less likely to go on to higher education (46% compared to 51%) and more likely to go into further education (10% compared to 7%) [what they found]. This suggests that income inequality in childhood has long term effects on a young person’s life chances by influencing their educational opportunities [what it means and how it relates to the essay question].”
“Carraher et al. (1985) asked young people in Brazil to do maths problems on the streets where they made their living by selling things, and they also asked them to do maths problems in a school-like setting [what they did]. The young people got almost all of the maths problems right in the streets, but got most of them wrong in the school setting [what they found]. Carraher et al. suggested that the difference was that the children used different symbolic systems in the two different settings, and that the symbolic system used makes a big difference to getting the right answers [what it means].”
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References
Carraher, T.N., Carraher, D.W. and Schliemann, A.D., 1985. Mathematics in the streets and in schools. British journal of developmental psychology, 3(1), pp.21-29.
DeNora, T. and Belcher, S., 2000. ‘When you’re trying something on you picture yourself in a place where they are playing this kind of music’–musically sponsored agency in the British clothing retail sector. The Sociological Review, 48(1), pp.80-101.
Department for Education (DfE) (2018) Destinations of Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 Students, England, 2016-2017. Department for Education [online]. Available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/748199/Destinations_Main_Text_2017.pdf
Where to put the brackets in citations
Should it be
- “The main finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment Mischel et al. (1972) was ……”, or
- “The main finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., 1972) was ……”
Read your sentence aloud, but don’t read the part in brackets. Ask yourself, does this make sense? I think 1 doesn’t make sense but 2 does. Do you agree?
How about
- “Mischel et al. (1972) found that….”, or
- “(Mischel et al., 1972) found that ….”
When you read both options aloud, leaving out the part in brackets, I think 1 makes sense but 2 doesn’t. What do you think?
Finally, how about these
- “Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., (1972) was ….”, or
- “Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., (1972)) was ….”
Neither of those are correct. 1 is wrong because there are two left brackets but only one right bracket. 2 has equal numbers of left and right brackets, but has a nested bracket “(Mischel et al., (1972))”. It’s not algebra, so we don’t nest brackets. It should be
“Another finding of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (Mischel et al., 1972) was ….”
Quick answers: what order should I present my points in an “evaluate” essay?
When you are writing an essay that compares two different ideas/points of views, and then concludes which one is more persuasive (as you would in an “evaluate” essay), you usually put the idea you disagree with first. Give it a fair hearing and make sure you do mention everything that is good and persuasive about this idea.
After that, give the idea you agree with and explain why it is right and the other idea is wrong. It’s just because you can’t explain why an idea is wrong if you haven’t said what the idea is yet, so it works much better that way round.
Reusing key words and phrases from the essay title
Reusing key words and phrases from the question helps keep your answer on the topic. Good places to do this include the first and last sentences of each paragraph. E.g. if the question was “Evaluate Piaget’s claim that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective”, the first sentences of some of your paragraphs might be:
- “One study which supports Piaget’s claim is….”
- “Another piece of evidence in support of the claim is….”
- “On the other hand, Hughes’ (1985) study calls into doubt Piaget’s claim….”
- “Another study which seems to show that children in the pre-operational stage of development can decentre from their own perspective is …..”
And they might have last sentences such as:
- “This study seems to show that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective, which supports Piaget’s claim”
- “This shows that, in contrast to Piaget’s claim, some children in the pre-operational stage of development are able to decentre from their own perspective”
Don’t worry about sounding repetitive. There are no marks for style in these essays, but there are marks for sticking to the question and answering it.
Two other places where you absolutely should include the wording of the question are in the introduction and conclusion paragraphs. In the introduction, you can always go with the slightly clunky but perfectly serviceable:
- “In this essay, I will evaluate Piaget’s claim that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective”
If your tutor doesn’t like first-person language, use “This essay will evaluate Piaget’s claim….”. But it’s often possible to do it more elegantly, e.g:
- “Piaget claimed that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective (insert citation). This essay will evaluate that claim”
Or even more boldly
- “This essay will show that Piaget was wrong to claim that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective”
You’ll also have to define the key terms in your introduction paragraph.
The first sentence of your conclusion paragraph should always be your answer to the question e.g.:
- “In conclusion, Piaget’s claim that children in the pre-operational stage of development are unable to decentre from their own perspective is not supported by more recent evidence”.
And then summarise the evidence you’ve presented that contradicts the claim.
Melanie Rimmer 