Hi,
Anyone studying will know that university degrees involve a lot of academic essays. I still find this challenging and sometimes it can take me a week to write one 2,500 word essay!
Essay whizzes or not, please share your tips for success :).
THANKS
I really dont think thats the way to go about this. Explains alot though from what my partner says about Uni
that's for him to decide. im letting him know one of the options available.
what does your partner say about uni
This is about writing essays not about cheating
I am not brave enough to explore this option. My conscience will get the better of me.
u don't need to be brave. no-one will know?
a week of writing seems like a shit time to me.
anyway everyone no need to get upset at me. I'm just offering options, im not saying it's the best option.
Until you hire someone who turns out to be the lecturers daughter who is having an affair with the Dean and … wait I've seen 2 many movies
Its a shit option thb. How would you like to be operated on by a surgeon who has passed UNI by having all their essays ghost written?
so much negativity. trying to help a brother out
I'm a girl ;).
trying to help a sista out
What kind of topics do your essays need to be on?
Hi pjetson,
This essay is about ICT in education.
Thanks.
I just did a similar topic, with a focus on video games and the learning principles involved within them being introduced into education. A good place to start is finding good references (if required) and reading and rereading them, making notes and key points.
I've never really had issues writing essays. Start with what message/thesis you want to get across, treat the reader like they know nothing & make no assumptions.
Then break that into sub categories that cover everything you want to talk about.
Write an intro that briefly explains your thesis and outline the sub categories that you are going to cover to backup your thesis.
Then I look at the categories and do a brain dump under each heading, anything that comes to mind, even if you probably wont use it keep it there.
This is an ongoing processes as you will constantly think of new things you want to include, write them down or you may forget and lose gold.
Once you have enough to start, expand on those ideas. Key to remember is flow, join things that are related together, always introduce new information as a new paragraph, never take leaps of faith that the reader has pre-assumed knowledge & make sure you flush out a topic before moving onto the next one, never go back and forth.
Always re-read everything you write out loud, its good to check the grammar and also helps provoke new ideas.
If you are short on your word count dont fall into the trap of writing something for the sake of it, if its not important or doesnt belong there you will lose my marks for writing crap than falling short of the word count. Obviously you dont want to fall short either but just make sure the information is relevant.
If you do this correctly 2500 words should be a push over, its really not that many words, this post alone is around 300 and it took me like 5-10 minutes.
Generally I brain storm before I start writing essays.
I decide on what I want to say - what I'm actually trying to get across from my argument / findings.
I summarise a few key topics / arguments that supports what I am trying to say.
These form my paragraphs later on.
I take a look at counter arguments to what I have said and pick one or two for me to rebut on before my conclusion.
I then start to write.
Introduction - assume the reader knows nothing and summarise your key topics.
Key topics ensuring to link them together to form an argument.
Rebuttal - why your argument is stronger than the opposition.
Conclusion - summarise and remind the reader about your key topics. and finish strongly with a statement that gets your full argument / findings across.
See what the marking criteria is, then make sure your finished product allows them to tick each one off at a high level.
Pretty much what dasher86 and cyber said, I've always used the-
tell them what you are going to say (intro) 300 words
intro to the topic
some background
the points you will examine
tell them what you are saying and why/how (body) 1800 words
cover each of the points and the supporting arguments for and any against.
link each of the point (don't jump from one to the other)
tell them what you just said (conclusion) 400 words
re-examine the points you covered and what evidence you provided in support of your arguement.
what do u define as success dolphin?
getting enough marks on the essay to pass the course? (that would be my definition of success if I was a uni student)
Getting a distinction for the overall unit =)
Although my economics essays in uni might use a different register and tone than what you might use, there are still some things which my highschool Advanced English teacher with 40+ years of experience has taught me that still follow me three years on. This is going to be a wall of text but I think its best to be thorough..
Intro________________
First off, I've found it helpful to have a quick glance over similar academic papers in your subject just to get the right technical terms, the reasoning etc. There's no doubt you're going to have to reference these so in a sense, you're going to have to read them anyway so you may as well mimic their style to get high marks (at least in the marking criteria relating to structure and the presentation of the essay). For example, I used the Reserve Bank's monthly reports as a rough guide.
In the intro, you're going to want to set the context to the question and from one of the things my teacher has taught me is to never outright repeat the question because a good essay does so with subtlety. You also don't want to use the first and second person (I, you, me). I recently completed an international economics essay which asked us to identify the effects of the recent declines in iron ore prices on various areas within the economy so in the intro you wouldn't say "…and I'll be examining the effects of such and such….".
The best way in my opinion is to have some background information relating to this event to 'set the scene' not only to make the writing flow better, but to demonstrate to the marker that you have done/ are knowledgeable in the background which is why I started with "In a report published by XX in YY, products of such and such accounted for roughly 500% of Australia's total exports. It comes to no surprise then that with the recent changes to so on and so on that such and such has occured. This paper will (state what you're going to do [here I outright said I will talk about its effects, the policy responses so far and (as per marking requirements) policy recommendations]).
You also don't want to go in detail about the effects, policy responses and recommendations here because these things go into the body. These three topics are sort of like subheadings.
Body____________________
Those three subheadings I talked about go into here and its your chance here to expand on them, to demonstrate your understanding of what you've researched and to critically analyse the links, causes and effects.
Don't actually type 'Effects:' as a subheading and go from there, just talk about the effects in the first paragraph.
Referencing findings is important, so you're going to have to find out what referencing methods are accepted and to be honest, its something I've had to relearn every essay because I doubt your average person will remember these things anyway:
Toilet paper breaks away easily when dampened as discussed by XX and YY (2014) or 'XX and YY (2014) found that such and such' also works and you'll need to expand on other people's findings.
Each of the three subheadings should be linked so you're going to have to reiterate the actual link if it isn't obvious.
To avoid the "I believe/think" and "My suggestion is to.." dilemma, I've found "It is this author's suggestion" or "this paper recommends" to be useful
Conclusion________________
Here you need to summarise what you said without saying "In conclusion/summary/summation/overall and so on" because subtlety is key here. You want to tell the marker what you talked about in the body (not too in-depth) and report the links.
Start off with a broad statement (or just outright repeat something from the intro because you want to bring the essay to full circle) "The effects of the decline in iron ore prices have been extensive, such a change has seen [this], [this] and [this]. This paper has also recommended [this] and [this] due to [this].
Reference/Appendix/Addendums and shit______________
You can't half-arse this section because Turnitin will pick you out on it.
Research the correct style of referencing and make sure you meet the formatting requirements (12 size font, half line spacing, etc.)
I know a lot of these things are subjective, but I tend to get around higher D - HD marks in the presentation, language and the structure of the essay and the reasoning/critical thinking part is something I'm still working on
Awesome advice, thank you :).
Out of curiosity, what year of uni studies are you in?
Second year :). Why do you ask?
i write fairly well. not on ozbargain, of course, but i've worked as an editor for a news publication and have written (and continue to write) some kick ass pieces in everything from tech through to foreign politics. while i did a STEM degree and mostly wrote reports, i did a few humanities and sociology subjects so i wrote a few essays as well (and usually topped the class). i'm convinced that a lot of this comes from repetition and practice, but it's not that hard to pick up.
my two cents are to
have a clear objective or message that you want to get across in the essay. if you have any supporting ideas, make sure they're relevant and that they keep supporting the central premise of the essay. if something seems like it's much of an outlier, then scrap it.
if you're having trouble coming up with content, list out your ideas in bullet points of what you want to cover. you can then produce sub-ideas and so on and end up with a nice list of areas to cover. eventually if you come up with, say, 10 bullet points then that's only 250 words per idea/point which makes things easier.
make sure it flows. so going on the above point, if you were going to cover the state of ICT in education, you'd start with history and how research was performed before computers were common, then move onto the impact it had when it became common, and then compare both to the current state of ICT in education. from that point you'd continue to give various supporting arguments (or even commenting on the future of ICT in education, depending on your essay's goal). you might also compare it to places that have less ICT in education and how that works out, whatever. you can even go in directions of ICT in education for people with disabilities (young and old) or ICT in pre-education (computing content that teaches people to read, write, spell, do simple math etc). maybe you can comment on things like wikipedia and how it encourages open source learning and education through both consumption and contribution. idk, i'm sure there'd be a lot depending on which way you want to take the essay.
look for one liners that emphasize your point.
have a strong conclusion which summarizes everything and reinforces your main point. this is where you bring everything together, so be cautious to bring in new information unless it's a one liner.
i typically avoid turning the introduction into an executive summary. the introduction should just emphasize the direction in which you want to take the essay. it should give some small indirect background on the subject matter, and should prep you for entering the first piece of information you'd like to cover in your essay's body.
check out this list of cognitive biases to see how to analyze other authors works, and check out this list of fallacies to better understand errors in reasoning. by avoiding committing many of these fallacies (like appealing to law, tradition, emotion, etc) you generally end up with a better argument. having a fallacious argument doesn't make it wrong, but it usually makes it easier for the marker to poke a stick at, so it's better to avoid fallacious arguments where possible.
good luck.
Fantastic advice. Thanks heaps :).
Wait until you get screwed with a task that mandates only journal articles within the last 10 years may be used and you have to pull 2500 words out of your ass for a pre-service teacher guide that assumes the target audience is a bunch of monkeys.
I am a preservice teacher.
As am I. Wait until fourth year courses for a dose of BOSTES and AITSL douchebaggery never seen before. I regret not switching out to law when I had the chance to
What's BOSTES all about? I have a friend who graduated in 2012 and she quit the profession last year. She wished she did psychology instead.
Thanks. Everything we are doing now is based on ACARA. I'm hoping it's the same or similar. Will read more about this later.
Didn't they teach you how to wite? USQ was really particular. It had to rewrite my first assignment because I missed the bit where it had to be in 3rd person.
(It was like 20 years ago, so sorry, I can't remember enough to be helpful.)
But I found, every time, that it wasn't hard to get the quantity, the effort was in culling it to the right number of words, following all the grammar rules - especially for citations etc.
It took me a long time too, but that's just coz I'm anal. If it isn't due till Monday, that gives me a whole weekend to check over it again! :(
Obviously my education and common units have covered this. Even so, I find essays challenging which is why I asked for advice so that I can do a better job.
A picture is worth a thousand words. You just need 2.5 pictures to finish your essay.
a 3D picture is worth 5,000 words
Most useful advice I can give is to read the question carefully and make sure you understand what they want you to write about and why. I was always surprised when I came out of an exam and talked to others who clearly hadn't understood the question and had spent time and errors writing things irrelevant to the question.
Usually the examiner will also want you to demonstrate an understanding of certain concepts. The only way to figure out what these are is to know what you have studied and to read the question carefully. This technique has almost always got me HDs.
What worked for me was to read and read and read. Formulate topics to be dealt with and conclusion. Only start writing a few days before due. And then start typing, and bash it out on the basis that it's only a first draft. As much as you can in the first few hours. Just to get something down. Then your confidence is up as you at least have something . Then keep going or rewrite what you've already done. then tweak it. And hand it in. The trick for me is to just start, but I usually don't do that till a few days before due. You must know exactly what you want to say before you start if you want an easy experience.
I've always just left the intro to last - more so the refining part anyway. I'd brainstorm all the body content first eg. headers (topic of discussion) and then the main points in dot form (so that way you can expand on those ideas more easily when you're building your sentences), and how to space out content through paragraphs.
Once you're done with your body paragraphs, work on a strong introduction paragraph (and a good corresponding conclusion). Because you already know what your discussions are going to be IMO it'd be much easier to write a really concise intro to lead into the discussion. Most people skimp on the intro or just waffle on without touching base with the main point of the essay and this usually gives off a bad first impression to the marker.
DealzEddy123 on 21/08/2015 - 13:14 Comment score below threshold.
