Department of Linguistics

HOME | NEWS | ABOUT US | CENTRES & GROUPS | UNDERGRADUATE | POSTGRADUATE | STUDENT SUPPORT | RESEARCH

You are here: Division of Linguistics >> Student Support >> Student Resources >> Writing Skills Program

Local Navigation

These overheads should be used with the Orientation Essay Writing Workshop iLecture Audio.

Please click here for iLecture audio for essay writing session.

• Why do we ask you to write essays
• resources
• choosing and analysing the topic
• purpose
• proposition
• reading and note taking
• planning
• first draft
• editing
• style, level of formality, opinion
• referencing
• presentation

ANALYSIS OF ESSAY TOPICS

Topic 1:
"The uneven distribution of scarce resources underlies the whole development problem." (Brickfield, 1975, p.206)
Critically discuss this assertion with reference to land, agriculture and food resources. Refer to specific examples from rich and poor countries.

Topic 2:
Explain with examples, why you agree or disagree with the statement that " the problems of poor countries stem mainly from the rate of population growth outstripping the growth of food production."

Topic 3:
What is self-control and its opposite, impulsiveness? Describe an experimental study of self-control or its lack. How does reward discounting figure in explaining self-control and impulsiveness? What are some evolutionary reasons for impulsiveness?

PROPOSITIONS

Topic: "The late 1980s recession in Australia was caused by poor fiscal policy on the part of a succession of governments, coinciding with unchecked corporate misbehaviour; it owed very little to outside factors." Do you agree?

• The Australian economic recession of the late 1980s was caused by years of financial mismanagement by a succession of Federal Governments from Whitlam through Fraser to Hawke and Keating, combined with a failure of these governments to curb the aggressive corporate behaviour of a few key entrepreneurs and their bankers.
  
  
• The Australian economy is so closely tied to the fortunes of our major trading partners and competitors that it makes very little difference what Australian governments do; when North America sneezes, Australia catches the flu.
  
  
• There are many influences on the Australian economy, including both internal and external pressures; the mixture is so complex that it would be simplistic to blame just one or two for the financial problems of the late 1980s.

RESEARCH SKILLS USE OF SOURCE LITERATURE

Learn discriminate between various kinds of source literature:

• need to distinguish between primary and secondary sources - your marker will probably prefer primary sources where possible.
  
  
• remember that books and journal articles are generally considered more 'academic' than articles in the popular press or magazines,
  
  
• journal articles tend to be more up to date than books because of the longer lead time in getting a book ready for publication.
  
  
• be wary of the internet. Anyone can put anything on the net, whereas most journals have a team of editors who 'referee' the material submitted for publication.

CRITICAL THINKING AND ANALYTICAL WRITING

While you are searching for and reading the available literature for your topic, you should be thinking about:

• how to link what you are reading to your own ideas about the topic
  
  
• how to explore and analyse the literature rather than merely report it in passive manner

1. Both these strategies will need you to be able to think critically about what you are reading. Critical thinking is an essential part of analytical writing, the two together being strong elements of Western academic traditions:

• Never assume that just because someone wrote something and published it they must be right.
  
  
• Constantly question both the methodology and the findings in other people's work. Do you agree, disagree or sit in the middle?
  
  
• Evaluate the literature to work out what you agree with and what you don't; what is important/significant and what is 'lightweight'.
  
  
• Constantly test your own ideas against the arguments and findings of the literature in your field.
  
  
• Learn to recognise when there is a debate going on in the source literature and work out where you stand in that debate.

CRITICAL THINKING AND ANALYTICAL WRITING

• Types of Analysis
  In academic writing, the notion of analysis can cover several different tasks or strategies. These will both arise from and reflect the critical thinking that the academic writer has applied in their understanding of the topic, and towards the primary data (if any) and towards the source literature or both. Different aspects of the analytical craft may be needed in the process of researching for and writing up an assignment. They may will include:
  
  
• observing and identifying data to be analysed
  
  
• describing the characteristic features of the data to be analysed
  
  
• Interpreting the data; this will include the writer’s ability to use clear English expression to interpret data for a potentially less knowledgeable audience
  
  
• Theorising about and explaining the data: how/why things are as they are; or how/why things are as you interpret them to be
  
  
• classifying the data into relevant categories, and being able to justify your classification
  
  
• distinguishing between and comparing similar classes/categories within the data, by demonstrating the characteristics that allow you to distinguish them
  
  
• evaluating the value of the observations, descriptions, definitions, explanations, interpretations and theories in our own work and in the work of other

 

EFFECTIVE READING AND NOTETAKING

Effective reading

effective reading	means	active reading
effective reading	is	work not leisure

Active reading is hard work because you need to constantly:

• concentrate on and engage with the content
  
• check that you have understood the content

Strategies for active reading:

• read the whole article or chapter through from beginning to end without taking any notes
  
  
• close the journal or book
  
  
• write a short summary of the content of what you have just read. (HINT: imagine a friend has asked you to tell them what the article is all about - tell it in you own words)
  
  
• go back to the reading and read it slowly this time taking notes as you go (NOTE: to do this effectively you obviously need to understand what you have read and have a good idea why you are reading it, or how it relates to your own research)

ACTIVE READING OTHER POINTS TO CONSIDER

• keep your eyes (and your mind) open for likely cross-references.

Some will be suggested by the writer of the article, with references to other commentators, researchers, data sources etc.
Some may occur to you naturally as you read because the material presented in the current reading has obvious links to other readings you have already done, or to other research/ case studies etc. you know about from your general subject knowledge.

• watch out for unexpected links between the current reading and other sections of your research design.

You should always be alert to the possibility of links between what you are reading and parts of your research project that were not originally in your mind when you decided to read the particular article in front of you.

• as well as reading for content, try to train part of your active mind to be looking at how the writer has written the article.

How it is written will include things like structure (or overall design - what bits go where); language use (level of formality, vocabulary, use of jargon or technical language etc.); how the references are handled (both paraphrase and direct quote).

NOTETAKING

One possible strategy:
(but you need to find the best strategy for you)
Full bibliographical details page x
(on first page of notes; shorter version at top of each subsequent page)

COMMENTS:	NOTES:
Your response to what you are reading	mostly paraphrase rather than direct quote (using your own words will help you begin to 'internalise' the issues and arguments - help induct you into the ways of thinking and writing in your chosen subject)
Cross reference to other parts of your reading	"use quotation marks for direct quotes"
Check list of things to look for in subsequent readings	keep track of pages from the book or article

INTRODUCTIONS

Topic:
"The English spelling system is chaotic and illogical and must be reformed." Do you agree?

Introduction: draft 1.
 The question of reforming the English spelling system is a very interesting one which has caused much debate over the years. This essay will discuss the various implications of reforming the spelling system and will try to assess the advantages and disadvantages of such reform in answering the question "should the English spelling system be reformed?" It will look at educational, economic, political and historical aspects of the problem and will then examine the secondary question of whether reform should be major (totally phonetic) or simply the kind of minor reform that is already happening in Australia and other places, partly because of the influence of the major international (read USA!) publishing houses.

Introduction: draft 2
Supporters of radical reform of the English spelling system want to turn it into a closely phonetic one - phonetic in the way that the Japanese and Spanish systems are for instance. They argue that a spelling system which represents the pronunciation of English in south-east England four hundred years ago makes the task of learning to read and write English unnecessarily difficult for L1 and L2 speakers alike. While this is no doubt true, there would be economic problems in rewriting millions of publications, and considerable political problems in deciding which variety of English to choose as the standard pronunciation on which to base the phonetic reform. Would Whitehall or the White House prevail? And where would that leave regional dialects and post-colonial varieties of English? It is also worth noting that phonetic reform would mask the relationship of some words with their roots and so destroy a valuable historic and semantic resource. On the other hand, minor reforms, justifiable on economic as well as linguistic grounds, are already happening.

Introduction: draft 3
The English Spelling system represents pronunciation patterns that are over four hundred years old, which is one of the main reasons why it is harder to learn to read and write English than it is for many other languages. This educational disadvantage has led to calls for radical reform of the system, but such a solution to the seeming chaos of English spelling is unlikely and unwise. The political problems involved in deciding which modern variety of English to take as the new phonetic base, together with the economic problems involved in the rewriting of millions of publications, surely mean that radical change will not and should not happen. However, minor reforms are already happening and can be justified both economically and linguistically.

DESCRIPTION VERSUS ANALYSIS:

Example 1 — from the social sciences
TEXT 1: a descriptive approach to using the sources: little sign
of student's own ideas

Smith (1989) claims that children from lower socio-economic families are less able to distinguish fact from fantasy in their television viewing and so have a higher tolerance of violence in the real world. Jones (1982) and Marks (1979) each carried out research that showed children living in public housing communities were more violent in the playground than their middle-class counterparts, even when both groups watched a similar amount of violent television.

Sidhu (1992) also conducted surveys of children in the same sorts of communities and found that factors such as gender and age of the child, methods of discipline in the family, whether the family was a one or two parent family, and whether a parent was usually present during the television viewing hours led to some interesting findings. These findings are summarised in Table 3 below.

TEXT 2: same sources, student's own ideas coming through -
more analytical
Conventional wisdom has dictated that children from lower socio-economic families are more violent in the playground than their middle-class peers, and that this violence stems from watching violent television, even when it can be demonstrated that there is very little difference in the television viewing habits of children from different socio-economic groups. Smith (1989), one of many making this claim, bases his arguments on research conducted by Jones (1980) and Marks (1979). However Jones and Marks overlooked several important factors, as later research by Sidhu (1992) has shown.

Sidhu replicated the Jones and Marks research models, but her research shows that significant changes in the results will occur if variables other than socio-economic status are taken into account. She warns of the importance to researchers of questions such as: gender and age of the child; methods of discipline in the family; whether the family was a one or two parent family; whether a parent was present during the television viewing. According to Sidhu, investigation of these variables showed much less clear correlations between socio-economic status and level of playground violence than the earlier research would suggest. (1992).

Sidhu's work demonstrates that researchers in this highly contentious area need to consider their methodology very carefully before leaping into print with policy statements for parents or government agencies. Preliminary results of a more recent and far more ambitious study than Sidhu's (Moncrief, Slater and Takashawi, 1994) suggest that Sidhu herself overlooked some important factors: factor 1; factor 2; factor 3.
PS This is an artificial demonstration exercise. I made up both versions, so don't go quoting me or looking for these references!!!

DESCRIPTION VERSUS ANALYSIS:

Example 2: from a history essay

Text 1.
In pre-revolutionary France it was the government rather than the country as a whole which was poor. Manufacturing, agriculture, building and foreign trade were all showing great improvement at a time when the government could not find sufficient money to pay its expenses. Uncultivated land was reduced by a third in Melun; Rouen doubled its production of cloth; and foreign trade increased by about almost 100,000,000 livres between 1774 and 1787. However the wealth generated by this expansion was not evenly distributed through all classes of society (Brinton 1965: 29-31).

Text 2.
In dismissing the claim by Labrousse that the French Revolution was born of economic hardship, Brinton (1965: 29-31) argues that it was not France as a whole but merely the government which was poor. He defends this thesis by pointing to the considerable growth in manufacturing, agriculture, building and foreign trade which occurred in the period before the revolution. But the examples he gives of such growth - the reduction in unproductive land in Melun, the doubling of cloth production in Rouen, and the expansion of foreign trade by 100,000,000 livres between 1774 and 1787 - can be misleading. While Brinton concedes that the benefits of this economic growth were unevenly shared between the classes of society, the question he neglects is whether this growth was uniformly spread throughout the various regions of the country.

 (The above two texts are taken from Gordon Taylor, The Student’s Writing Guide for the Arts and Social Sciences, CUP 1989 (reprinted 1992), pp 187-8.)

REFERENCING

• You must acknowledge your sources when you write academic assignments.
  
  
• There are two different systems for referencing, with variations within each system. It is your responsibility to check what system each subject requires.
  
  
• There are many reference books and brochures that will give you guidance here; and some of your subjects will have specific guidance inside their course guides.
  
  
• The running reference system is also known as the Harvard system or the Author/Date system.
  
  
• The footnote/endnote system is still required in History, Law and some other subject areas.

• CORRECT REFERENCING IS VITAL - ASK FOR HELP

EDITING CHECK LIST

1. proof reading:
   
   a. spelling you can't rely purely on your computer!
   
   b. grammar ditto!

2. editing the whole draft

• Edit on a hard copy, not on computer screen
• Check for relevance of your material/argument
• Check for balance within your material/argument
• Check the coherence and logic of each paragraph
• Check the coherence and logic of the essay as a whole:are there any unnecessary repetitions? Are there any contradictions?
• Does your essay make specific responses to the question? Or could it be criticised for being too superficial/ general/ vague?
• ABOVE ALL: DOES IT ANSWER THE QUESTION???

ESSAY PRESENTATION

• double spaced typing or neat handwriting (check with your tutors if handwritten assignments are acceptable)
• Write on one side of page only
• Leave a 4-5cm left hand margin for adequate feedback from your tutor
• Separate title page with your name, student number, full essay topic, and any other details required by your tutor
• Number the pages
• Your name on every page
• Reference list at end of essay, just before any appendices
• Keep to the word limit
• Keep a copy for yourself in case of flood, fire or tutor error! 

Academic Writing “help” books
Finally, there are many self-help books published each year for undergraduate academic writers. Some of them are generic and some are more specifically targeted at certain subjects or subject groupings. Our advice is to check the reference section of the Macquarie University COOP bookshop, and/or the relevant shelves in the library, to find one that will suit your needs.

 

[Back to top]