Tutorial – Appendix 5: A practical guide to writing essays – Level 2

Appendix 5: A practical guide to writing essays

 

Writing an essay is a big task that will be easier to manage if you break it down into five main tasks as shown below:

An essay-writing Model in 5 steps

1. Analyse the question

What is the topic?

What are the key verbs?

2. Research

Question the question—brainstorm and probe

What information do you need?

How are you going to find information?

Find the information

Make notes and/or mind maps.

3. Plan and sort

Arrange information in a logical structure

Plan sections and paragraphs

4. Draft

Main body

Introduction and conclusion

References

5. Edit (and proofread)

For sense and logical flow

For grammar and spelling.

For length.

My Learning Essentials offers a number of online resources and workshops that will help you to understand the importance of referencing your sources, use appropriate language and style in your writing, write and proofread your essays. For more information visit the writing skills My Learning Essentials pages: http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/services-and-support/students/support-for-your-studies/my-learning-essentials/

1. Analyse the question

Many students write great essays — but not on the topic they were asked about. First, look at the main idea or topic in the question. What are you going to be writing about? Next, look at the verb in the question — the action word. This verb, or action word, is asking you to do something with the topic.

Here are some common verbs or action words and explanations:

Analyse	Take to pieces and determine what makes up the various parts. This involves examining something minutely and critically.
Compare	Liken one thing to another, and discuss the degree of likeness or unlikeness.
Contrast	Set things in opposition so as to show the difference between them.
Criticise	Weigh up all aspects by careful examination, and deliver an opinion upon them.
Define	Give the exact meaning.
Describe	Set out the features, qualities or properties of what is asked, in detail.
Discuss	Consider or examine by argument, investigate for and against.
Enumerate	Specify the items by numbering the points.
Evaluate	Interpret, analyse (take apart the whole), then synthesise (put together) the significant points and make a judgement upon them.
Examine	Inquire into, investigate by considering critically, thereby weighing and sifting information/opinions.
Explain	Make plain, clear; unfold and illustrate the meaning of.
Illustrate	Make clear, explain by means of description, examples, diagrams and figures.
Interpret	Explain the meaning of – which generally involves translating information from one form to another (for example, putting a graph into words), thereby showing a complete understanding of it.
Justify	Prove or show to be just or right; to show grounds for.
List	Number the items or ideas down the page.
Outline	Give the main general features, facts or principles.
Prove	Demonstrate by argument or reasoning, test.
Relate	Tell, recount; establish relation between.
Resolve	Separate into its component parts (analyse) and explain.
Review	Go back over and look carefully and critically.
State	Set out the facts with explicitness and formality.
Summarise	Give a concise account of the main points.

2. Research

Once you have analysed the question, start thinking about what you need to find out. It’s better and more efficient to have a clear focus for your research than to go straight to the library and look through lots of books that may not be relevant.

Start by asking yourself, ‘What do I need to find out?’ Put your ideas down on paper. A mind map is a good way to do this. Useful questions to start focusing your research are: What? Why? When? How? Where? Who?

• Refer to the advice given in Writing and Referencing Skills for methods to search for information.

3. Plan and sort

Reading

First, scan through your source. Find out if there’s any relevant information in what you are reading. If you’re reading a book, look at the contents page, any headings, and the index. Stick a Post-It note on useful pages.

Next, read for detail. Read the text to get the information you want. Start by skimming your eyes over the page to pick our relevant headings, summaries, words. If it’s useful, make notes.

 Making notes

There are two rules when you are making notes:

• Note your source so that you can find it again and write your references at the end of the essay if you use that information. Use Endnote (see the section on Referencing), or note down the following:
• author(s)
• title
• page reference
• date of publication
• publisher’s name (book)
• place where it was published (book or journal)
• the journal number, volume and date (journal)
• Make brief notes rather than copy text, but if you feel an extract is very valuable put it in quotation marks so that when you write your essay, you’ll know that you have to put it in your own words. Failing to rewrite the text in your own words would be plagiarism.

• For more information on plagiarism, refer to the Second Level Handbook and the My Learning Essentials Plagiarism Resource http://libassets.manchester.ac.uk/mle/avoiding-plagiarism/.

Everyone will make notes differently as it suits them. However, the aim of making notes when you are researching an essay is to use them when you write the essay. It is therefore important that you can:

• Read your notes
• Find their source
• Determine what the topics and main points are on each note (highlight the main ideas, key points or headings).
• Compose your notes so you can move bits of information around later when you have to sort your notes into an essay.

For example:

• Write/type in chunks (one topic for one chunk) with a space between them so you can cut your notes up later, or
• write the main topics or questions you want to answer on separate pieces of paper before you start making notes. As you find relevant information, write it on the appropriate page. (This takes longer as you have to write the source down a number of times, but it does mean you have ordered your notes into headings.)

Sort information into essay plans

You’ve got lots of information now: how do you put it all together to make an essay that makes sense? As there are many ways to sort out a huge heap of clothes (type of clothes, colour, size, fabric…), there are many ways of sorting information. Whichever method you use, you are looking for ways to arrange the information into groups and to order the groups into a logical sequence. You need to play around with your notes until you find a pattern that seems right and will answer the question.

• Find the main points in your notes, put them on a separate page – a mind map is a good way to do this – and see if your main points form any patterns or groups.
• Is there a logical order? Does one thing have to come after another? Do points relate to one another somehow? Think about how you could link the points.
• Using the information above, draw your essay plan. You could draw a picture, a mind map, a flow chart or whatever you want. Or you could build a structure by using bits of card that you can move around.
• Select and put the relevant notes into the appropriate group so you are ready to start writing your first draft.

4. Draft

The essay has four main parts:

• introduction
• main body
• conclusion
• references.

People usually write the introduction and conclusion after they have written the main body of the essay, so we have put them in that order.

For more information on essay writing visit the My Learning Essentials web pages:

https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/learning-objects/mle/packages/writing/

 Main Body

Structure. The main body should have a clear structure. Depending on the length of the essay, you may have just a series of paragraphs, or sections with headings, or possibly even subsections. In the latter case, make sure that the hierarchy of headings is obvious so that the reader doesn’t get lost.

Flow. The main body of the essay answers the question and flows logically from one key point to another (each point needs to be backed up by evidence [experiments, research, texts, interviews, etc …] that must be referenced). You should normally write one main idea per paragraph and the main ideas in your essay should be linked or ‘signposted’. Signposts show readers where they are going, so they don’t get lost. This lets the reader know how you are going to tackle the idea, or how one idea is linked with the one before it or after it.

Some signpost words and phrases are:

• ‘These changes . . . “
• ‘Such developments
• ‘This
• ‘In the first few paragraphs . . . “
• ‘I will look in turn at. . . ‘
• ‘However, . . . “
• ‘Similarly’
• ‘But’.

Figures: purpose. You should try to include tables, diagrams, and perhaps photographs in your essay. Tables are valuable for summarising information, and are most likely to impress if they show the results of relevant experimental data. Diagrams enable the reader to visualise things, replacing the need for lengthy descriptions. Photographs must be selected with care, to show something meaningful. Nobody will be impressed by a picture of a giraffe – we all know what one looks like, so the picture would be mere decoration. But a detailed picture of a giraffe’s markings might be useful if it illustrates a key point.

Figures: labelling, legends and acknowledgment. Whenever you use a table, diagram or image in your essay you must:

• cite the source
• make sure that the legend and explanation are adapted to your purpose.

For example: Figure 1. The pathway of synthesis of the amino acid alanine, showing… From Bloggs (1989). [Never use the original legend, because it is likely to have a different Figure number and to have information that is not relevant for your purposes. Also, make sure that you explain any abbreviations or other symbols that your reader needs to know about the Figure]

Checklist for the main body of text

• Does your text have a clear structure?
• Does the text follow a logical sequence so that the argument flows?
• Does your text have both breadth and depth – i.e. general coverage of the major issues with in-depth treatment of particularly important points?
• Does your text include some illustrative experimental results?
• Have you chosen the diagrams or photographs carefully to provide information and understanding, or are the illustrations merely decorative?
• Are your figures acknowledged properly? Did you label them and include legend and explanation?

  Introduction

The introduction comes at the start of the essay and sets the scene for the reader. It usually defines clearly the subject you will address (e.g. the adaptations of organisms to cold environments), how you will address this subject (e.g. by using examples drawn principally from the Arctic zone) and what you will show or argue (e.g. that all types of organism, from microbes through to mammals, have specific adaptations that fit them for life in cold environments). The length of an introduction depends on the length of your essay, but is usually between 50 to 200 words

Remember that reading the introduction constitutes the first impression on your reader (i.e. your assessor!). Therefore, it should be the last section that you revise at the editing stage, making sure that it leads the reader clearly into the details of the subject you have covered and that it is completely free of typos and spelling mistakes.

 Check-list for the Introduction

• Does your introduction start logically by telling the reader what the essay is about – for example, the various adaptations to habitat in the bear family?
• Does your introduction outline how you will address this topic – for example, by an overview of the habitats of bears, followed by in-depth treatment of some specific adaptations?
• Is it free of typos and spelling mistakes?

Conclusion 

An essay needs a conclusion. Like the introduction, this need not be long: 50 to 200 words long, depending on the length of the essay. It should draw the information together and, ideally, place it in a broader context by personalising the findings, stating an opinion or supporting a further direction which may follow on from the topic. The conclusion should not introduce facts in addition to those in the main body.

Check-list for the Conclusion

• Does your conclusion sum up what was said in the main body?
• If the title of the essay was a question, did you give a clear answer in the conclusion?
• Does your conclusion state your personal opinion on the topic or its future development or further work that needs to be done? Does it show that you are thinking further?

 References

In all scientific writing you are expected to cite your main sources of information. Scientific journals have their own preferred (usually obligatory) method of doing this. The piece of text below shows how you can cite work in an essay, dissertation or thesis. Then you supply an alphabetical list of references at the end of the essay. The Harvard style of referencing adopted at the University of Manchester will be covered in the Writing and Referencing Skills unit in Semester 3. For more information refer to the Referencing Guide from the University Library (http://subjects.library.manchester.ac.uk/referencing/referencing-harvard).

Citations in the text

Jones and Smith (1999) showed that the ribosomal RNA of fungi differs from that of slime moulds. This challenged the previous assumption that slime moulds are part of the fungal kingdom (Toby and Dean, 1987). However, according to Bloggs et al. (1999) the slime moulds can still be accommodated in the fungal kingdom for convenience. Slime moulds are considered part of the Eucarya domain by Todar (2012).

 

Reference list at the end of the essay:

List the references in alphabetical order and if you have several publications written by the same author(s) in the same year, add a letter (a,b,c…) after the year to distinguish between them.
Bloggs, A.E., Biggles, N.H. and Bow, R.T. (1999). The Slime Moulds. 2^nd edn. London and New York: Academic Press.

[Guidance: this reference is to a book. We give the names of all authors, the publication date, title, name of publisher and place of publication. Note that we referred to Bloggs et al.(1999) in the text. The term “et al.” is an abbreviation of the Latin et alia (meaning “and others”). Note also that within the text “Bloggs et al.” is part of a sentence, so we put only the date in parentheses for the citation in the text. If you wish to cite the entire book, then no page numbers are listed. To cite a specific portion of a book, page numbers are added following the book title in the reference list (see Toby and Dean below).]

Todar K. (2012) Overview Of Bacteriology. Available at: http://textbookofbacteriology.net, [Accessed 15 November 2013].

[Guidance: this reference is to a website. We give the name of the author (or organisation if there is no author or write “anonymous” if no other option is available) and the full URL (web address). It is important to state when you accessed the site, because the information on web sites can change.]

Jones, B.B. and Smith, J.O.E. (1999). Ribosomal RNA of slime moulds, Journal of Ribosomal RNA 12, 33-38.

[Guidance: this is a reference to a published scientific paper. We give the names of all authors, the date, title of the paper, the journal name (in italics), volume number and page numbers (first and last) of the paper.]

Toby F.S. and Dean P.L. (1987). Slime moulds are part of the fungal kingdom, in Edwards A.E. and Kane Y. (eds.) The Fungal Kingdom. Luton: Osbert Publishing Co., pp. 154-180.

[Guidance: this is a reference to a chapter in a book edited by Edwards and Kane. We give the names of all authors, date, title of the article, editors of the book, title of the book, first and last page numbers of the chapter cited, publisher and place of publication. Note how we cited this reference (Toby and Dean, 1987) in the text. We put the whole reference in brackets because it was not part of the sentence. If we wanted to put two references in brackets, we would write: (Toby and Dean, 1987; Todar, 2012). Typically, we would use chronological order (1987 before 2012) and separate the two references by a semicolon.]

Endnote: This is an electronic system for storing and retrieving references that you will learn about in the Writing and Referencing Skills (WRS) unit. It is very powerful and simple to use, but you must always check that the output is consistent with the instructions given in this section.

Visit the My Learning Essentials online resource for a guide to using EndNote: https://www.escholar.manchester.ac.uk/learning-objects/mle/endnote-guide/

(we recommend EndNote online if you wish to use your own computer).

Note that journals have their own house style so there will be minor differences between them, particularly in their use of punctuation, but all reference lists for the same journal will be in the same format.

First Draft

When you write your first draft, keep two things in mind:

• Length: you may lose marks if your essay is too long. Ensure therefore that your essay is within the page limit that has been set.

• Expression: don’t worry about such matters as punctuation, spelling or grammar at this stage. You can get this right at the editing stage. If you put too much time into getting these things right at the drafting stage, you will have less time to spend on thinking about the content, and you will be less willing to change it when you edit for sense and flow at the editing stage.

5. Edit

 Writing style

The style of your essay should fit the task or the questions asked and be targeted to your reader. Just as you are careful to use the correct tone of voice and language in different situations so you must take care with your writing. Generally writing should be:

• Make sure that you write exactly what you mean in a simple way.

• Write briefly and keep to the point. Use short sentences. Make sure that the meaning of your sentences is obvious.

• Check that you would feel comfortable reading your essay if you were actually the reader.

• Make sure that you have included everything of importance. Take care to explain or define any abbreviations or specialised jargon in full before using a shortened version later. Do not use slang, colloquialisms or cliches in formal written work.

Editing.

When you are editing your essay, you will need to bear in mind a number of things. The best way to do this, without forgetting something, is to edit in ‘layers’, using a check-list to make sure you have not forgotten anything.

Check-list for Style 

• Tone – is it right for the purpose and the receiver?
• Clarity – is it simple, clear and easy to understand?
• Complete – have you included everything of importance?

 Check-list for Sense

• Does your essay make sense?
• Does it flow logically?
• Have you got all the main points in?
• Are there bits of information that aren’t useful and need to be chopped out?
• Are your main ideas in paragraphs?
• Are the paragraphs linked to one another so that the essay flows rather than jumps from one thing to another?
• Is it about the right length?

 Check-list for Proofreading

• Are the punctuation, grammar, spelling and format correct?
• If you have written your essay on a word-processor, run the spell check over it.
• Have you referenced all quotes and names correctly?
• Is the essay written in the correct format? (one and a half line spacing, margins at least 2.5cm all around the text, minimum font size 10 point).

School Writer in Residence

The School has three ‘Writers in Residence’ who are funded by The Royal Literary Fund.

They are:

Susan Barker – Monday and Friday

Tania Hershman – Tuesday

Katherine Clements – Wednesday and Thursday

The Writers in Residence are based in the Simon Building. Please see the BIOL20000 Blackboard site for further information about the writers’ expertise and instructions for appointment booking.