Essay Writing Masterclass 2 0f 2

Welcome back to this second part of the essay writing masterclass,

where I will first be talking to you about the process of writing an essay followed by

talking to you about some bits and pieces

about your style and your approach and formatting.

So

let's talk about the love process. Step five step. How do you write an essay?

Well,

the first thing is to read your feedback from previous assignments.

The guidance that you will be given will always wrap up

with telling you about how you can improve for future assignments,

and you're very welcome to ask your to to follow up questions about this.

Um, once encountered, um, someone who was finished their degree,

and they cheerfully informed me that the only time that they had

ever read feedback on any of their assignments was on their dissertation.

Um,

all of those years that we've been telling this person how they

might make their assignments better and common mistakes they were making,

and they hadn't read any of them.

And, you know, she told me that thing cheerfully.

But I often think how she might have improved through

the course of her degree if she'd taken the advantage

she was given by looking at that feedback

and really kind of understanding how to improve.

So that's the first thing before you write any essay.

Whatever feedback you've been given for past assignments, have a look at it.

Take it on board and think about how things can be better for your next assignment.

So thoroughly read the brief and any assignment,

guidance and look at the learning outcome to the module.

If you're unclear on anything, whether it's the brief, the guidance,

the learning outcomes, talk to your to to get some clarity on it.

Um,

you know, again,

I I very often see situations where there's some quite

clear guidance on how to go about writing your assignment.

But people haven't read it, so they've missed bits out of not included,

stuff that they should do, if not quite structured,

things in the way that is expected of them.

And unfortunately,

if we've given nuclear instructions on how to

do something and you've not followed them,

then it's kind of necessary for us to take that into account in the market.

Part of this, as well,

is also make sure that you attend assignment briefings assignment, workshops,

tutorials take all of the opportunities that we're giving you.

Two.

Make sure you fully understand what you're doing, but, um,

taking support that you need and receiving the

guidance that we're making available to you.

So number three is to choose your topic or area of focus.

Um, and there's two things here, really.

One choose areas that you're interested in because

this is going to kind of maintain,

um, your passion for what you're writing about and your engagement.

I have seen students who, you know,

maybe consistently got seeds for their assignments,

that when they wrote assignments on something they

were interested in and they were passionate about,

their grades went up because they were motivated to read about

it and find out about it and think about it.

You do also need to take into account the fact that you have to write about something,

that there are relevant resources to support it.

So if you've got a couple of ideas, you're not sure you might do this.

You might do that on the assignment.

Have a look at what resources are already out

there written about that thing and choose the option

that is going to be easiest to write about

because lots of people have already written about it.

So you know that you're going to be able to support your

discussion with loads of academic references and pop culture references as well.

So number four, where it's necessary, check with your tutor and do this in good time.

So for a lot of the essays, the I set, um,

I asked people to decide the topic for themselves,

but I say they have to finalise the essay question and the topic area with me first,

um, so make sure that if you're asked to that, you do run that by your tutor.

And don't do it at the very last minute. Because if you've come up with a title

and then you take it to your tutor half an hour before the

last moment when they're going on leave or something and they say,

Oh, no,

you can't write about that topic because it doesn't fit

with the module or it's not appropriate for this reason.

You need to change it this way. Um, then you're gonna be in a bit of a fix.

So do try and check that in good time.

So the next step Step number five Research read. Watch.

Listen, probably read some more.

And as you go,

make lots and lots of notes and always log your references with your notes.

Whatever you write down, make sure that you know where it came from.

Because if you're writing your essay and you think Oh, yes,

I'm going to include that bit that's really useful.

And then you say, Oh, hang on. Where did I get that information from?

You can't use it because you can't reference it.

And if you can't reference something that you've got from somewhere,

then it's plagiarism.

Okay, So make sure you're logging things as you go along all the time and really do

research as much as you possibly can.

I have no doubt that as part of this module, you've been given some,

um, support on how to do research.

But remember,

we always have the academic liaison librarians who can

support you with finding stuff about what you need.

Yeah,

So Number six is to review your notes and figure out the shape of the essay.

This is the point. You've done all your research.

You've done all your note making you step back and you go, OK,

what is the overall shape?

What is the that that that narrative that is going to run through this piece,

what journey are we going on?

Where is it gonna end us up and where is it starting out from?

So that's kind of just taking a step

back and looking at your notes and really understanding

what the essay is going to be about as a consequence of the research that you've done

from there. It's then about making that into kind of something coherent.

It can be really useful to mind map this because then you

can kind of see how things might be linked and connected.

And you kind of see how theories might overlap that sort of thing.

But my mapping is not for everyone. I do recognise that.

So you know kind of plan, however you see fit,

Um, you need to work out your key thing, key themes,

because those are probably going to be a key paragraphs and also think about how

things connect because that's how it's going to link and flow as an assignment,

and that will take you to your essay plan.

Um, and then you'll understand paragraph, paragraph by paragraph,

including your references,

how you will write this piece and the story that is

going to tell on the structure is going to have,

um

there is an essay planning document you can use, which I have shared with Katie,

and she can make available to you.

It's not mandatory,

but it's a useful one because it does make clear how you should structure and

how you should support each of your points

with a reference and everything like that.

But however it works for you, you need to have a plan.

Before you start writing,

need to have an understanding of what each paragraph will cover.

So that brings you to writing up your first graft again,

I would remind you two references you go another a very common habit of students.

I'm sure I've done it myself in the past.

Is this idea that you write the essay and then at the end,

you go back and do all the references again.

That really puts you at risk of plagiarism, because if you miss something,

if you've got a quote in there and you've forgotten

to reference it um and we pick it up,

we're gonna say, Well, you haven't reference this, and that's plagiarism.

Okay, so if you references, you go as you right.

Make sure you get those citations in there.

That's really good.

Another top tip is to write from your notes rather than

direct from the text you've read as much as possible.

It can be really difficult to paraphrase to get things in your own

words when you've got that original text right in front of you,

and you just kind of want to almost copy it down.

And that can lead people sort of over quoting.

So if you work from your notes,

then you're less likely to do that because you've already kind of power.

Phrased it a little bit in your notes.

Yeah,

so step number 10.

Check your first graphed against the assignment brief and the learning outcomes.

So you need to think or is it doing what it's supposed to do?

Um uh, it's over. Word count.

At this point,

you're starting to edit it down by identifying any kind of repetition,

any unnecessary detail.

If you've gone off on a tangent where you might

be being rambling or your sentences might be excessively worthy.

And I'm very guilty of that.

Um,

And if you're still over by more than 10% of the word count,

look at what's least relevant to the brief for the learning outcomes.

And think about removing those things

so that when you kind of completed that process,

that brings you to your second graft.

Okay.

And the second graft is where you prove free to check spelling, grammar, clarity,

citations and your reference list.

There's certainly no point in, um, proof reading your first graph,

because then you might edit things out that you proofread it just wasted time.

So make sure you've got what the content of the essay should be as something fixed.

And that's your second graft. And that's what your proof reading?

Um, obviously proof. Read yourself.

I do think it makes a lot of difference

to have someone else proof reading your work because,

um,

uh, they can spot things. I think when we type stuff, then we read it back.

We see what we think we've written,

rather than necessarily what we've always written.

So if you've got a second person who can have a look at it.

But just be careful that if that's fellow students,

you need to make sure there's no risk

of you kind of accidentally plagiarising one another.

And finally, you're at the point where you can submit.

Make sure you do this in good time.

Um,

you know that tech can be unreliable if your

laptop crashes half an hour before the deadline,

you can't get mitigating circumstances, okay, and your hard work will be wasted.

So don't submit right before its do.

Try and get it done earlier,

so that if you have any problems with

submission or you have any technological problems,

you can address them.

You can contact us as lecturers and let us know that you're having those issues.

So it's very clear that you have attempted to submit.

So finally, that brings us to talking about writing style. So,

first of all, we ask you to write the third person.

Um, this is because it's not a piece of artwork about your own perspective.

Therefore, you're not using I or me.

This is a representation of the application of relevant academic tax to a topic.

Therefore,

we say Smith and Jones have suggested

or taking into account Charlie's perspective.

The text can be viewed in this way. Um, it's not you saying what you think.

It's showing what Smith and Jones or Ali have have said and how that might be applied.

So you're tense.

On the whole, your introduction will be written in the future, tense,

as in this essay will.

But sometimes it's written in the present tense.

Uh, and the main body of your assignment should be written in past or present tense.

So Smith and Jones have suggested, or taking into crown alleys perspective.

Text can be viewed in x way so you can see how that's like

present or past tense.

Yeah,

uh, so paraphrasing and quoting I would say that were possible.

It is better to paraphrase,

while still still citing your source

than to quote directly quoting directly mostly

only proves to us that you can copy words onto a page.

Okay, obviously, if you engage well with that quote,

then we can see that you've understood it.

But when you put something into your own words,

that really shows us that you've understood it because you

can reiterate it back to us in your own language.

Okay,

obviously, sometimes it's necessary to direct directly.

Quote um, So if you do do that,

make sure you're engaging with the quote to show that your understanding it

try to keep your tone formal.

So informality, slang, colloquialisms should be avoided or, at the very least,

minimised.

Although I would say it's okay for there to be a bit of you,

a bit of your personality and your writing.

So let's talk about the format.

Um,

I would add in this that subheadings are not what we would expect an academic essays.

I know that we have seen quite a lot of essays with subheadings in, um,

but the structure should be a flow,

and therefore the subheadings shouldn't be necessary.

Keep your fun choice nice and simple and make it a decent size. 12 is good.

Do put your student number, but not your name on your assignments.

And actually, it's extra helpful for those of us who have to mark the assignments.

If you also put your student number in the file

name because then before you looked at the assignment,

we can link it to your student number, which means that we a much easier.

It's much easier for us to kind of enter marks and things. So it's helpful for us.

And finally,

I just want to tell you a little bit about the help

and support that is available to you In terms of writing essays.

You can speak to your lecturer about feedback from past assignments,

the specifics of assignment briefs and learning outcomes.

You can ask them about essay plans, and you can have 1 to 1 tutorials.

You can speak to your personal academic

tutor about general study skills assignment,

feedback, difficulties with studying or recurring problems in assignments.

You have the academic liaison librarian for help with research,

finding resources and tracking down texts.

You can book a session with the academic writers

and residents to express your ideas more clearly.

Increase your understanding of grammar and punctuation,

improve your writing and editing skills and

benefit from more efficient time management.

And you can use the study skills guys on the

university website to improve your study skills across the board,

including citing and referencing.

And if you need help with your English, the line

Essay Writing Masterclass 2 0f 2

Chapters

Audio TranscriptAuto-generated