Interpreting the Title
The first task involved in writing an essay is working out what is being asked for by the essay title; it is important that you interpret what the essay question is asking for correctly. This involves understanding what topic area the title refers to and what are you being asked to do with the information. Common faults with essays are that they cover the wrong topic or they fail to deal with the information in the way that was asked by the essay title. Thus there are two main questions that need to be asked at this stage; “what information is being asked for by the question?” and “what are you being asked to do with that information?”
What is the Topic?
The first question concerns what area of sociology the essay is to be about, for example: The Welfare State
Although the general area of the question is obvious, the relevance of the some of the information you gather may not be.
For the example above, the focus of the essay should be on the reasons the welfare state developed, but there can be arguments that there were ulterior motives to this to provide the contrast.
What is being asked?
The next issue to be dealt with when interpreting the question is; “what are you being asked to do with the information you have researched?” It is important to know initially what is being asked by the question.
Questions fall into two main categories; the descriptive and the analytic. The descriptive is merely asking for a description of a certain area, for example the title above should be answered with a full description of the different reasons the welfare state may have begun when it did. Therefore, in answering such a question you should provide a comprehensive account of the different reasons and sociological arguments within the essay’s word limit. The next type of question is the analytical. Title such as:
The Essay on Different types of business information, their sources and purposes
Introduction Having just started as a trainee at the Corporate Communications Department of Emirates Group, my line manager has tasked me with preparing this set of introductory training materials, on business information in general, for new members of staff in the department, to increase my knowledge and enhance communication skills. Different types of business information, their source and ...
The Structure of an Essay
It is a teaching cliché that an essay should have a beginning, middle and an end. It is however true, and its over use is due to its validity. This section of the guide will use these three wise structural elements to outline how you should attempt to write an essay, starting of course at the beginning, a very good place to start.
The Beginning
The beginning of an essay normally takes up around 1-2 paragraphs. These first paragraphs are where the topic is introduced and the main thrust of the essay is outlined. A good essay should begin with a definition of the main concept in the essay title. For example if you are writing an essay on the welfare state, then the essay should start with a definition of the concept (noting perhaps that definitions reflect different approaches to the topic).
The introduction should then give a picture of what is going to be said within the essay.
The Middle
This is the “meat” of the essay and normally where students’ essay structure starts to go wrong. The middle of the essay is where the information that you are providing to answer the question goes; the description of the theories, of the research, the discussion of the different concepts etc. The main issue here is how to link together this information into a coherent whole. There are few general guidelines that apply to all types of essay and structuring this section is really a skill you will develop with practice. There are however some hint that may be of use.
The main problems with this section are poor paragraphing. There are a few rules that are useful in writing paragraphs. The first one is have one general point per paragraph. An example from an essay on Piaget illustrates this:
Piaget’s(1932) early view was that social interaction had an early effect on children moral thinking. He suggested that children who are at the pre-operational level (2-7yrs old) are affected by interaction with children their own age. At this stage children’s interactions can lead to moral development when the children contradict each other during these interactions. The contradictions cause changes in the children’s cognitive structure. These changes lead to more sophisticated moral thinking…..
Paragraphs Writing Sentences Essays Reading
Strategies For College Writing: Sentences, Paragraphs, Essays Second Edition Jeanette Harris, Texas Christian University Ann Moseley, Texas A&M-Commerce Appropriate Courses Designed for courses in Developmental Writing and Basic Writing. Summary Strategies for College Writing offers full coverage of the basics of writing essays, paragraphs, and sentences with a focus on preparing students for ...
The above paragraph makes one general point, that Piaget viewed social interaction as a factor in moral development and importantly there is one sentence that states the main point of the paragraph (the first one).
This means that the point being made is clear, and the rest of the paragraph merely elaborates this point, in this case showing what processes were involved in the moral development.
It is not however enough to just produce well formed paragraphs, these paragraphs need to link together; it is important for the structure of an essay that each paragraph lead into the next. A useful way of doing this is to end each paragraph by relating it back to the question, but doing this you are making a ‘link of relevance’ to the next paragraph. When this does not happen the essay can become incoherent and disjointed.
These rules for paragraphs relate to the other sections of the essay, the end and beginning, but are particularly important for the middle section.
The End or Conclusions
This last section of your essay should be the conclusion. It should not just be a summary of the whole essay, but it should contain some conclusions about what you have written.
Essay Style
Like any form of style, good essay style is almost impossible to teach. Also (like for example your dress sense) it is difficult to be fully aware of and objective about your writing style. There are however certain questions which you can ask when you are reading over your essay which can tell how good or more importantly appropriate your style is.
Clarity
How clear is your essay? This is one of the biggest problems students have with essay style. If you read over your essay and find that you have to re-read something to fully understand it, then there may be a problem. One of the enemies of clarity is the overlong sentence. Students often tend to produce sentences that last for 5 or 6 lines. You should attempt to write in fairly short sentences that don’t tax the attention of the reader. Other factors such as poor sentence structure for example also produce poor clarity. In the end all that needs to asked is “can I write this sentence in such a way that makes its meaning clearer ?”. Before submitting, read your essay through out loud. This is the easiest way for you to identify any bits that don’t read well.
The Essay on The Author Of Her Book
In The Author to Her Book, Bradstreet is awash in indecision and internal conflicts over the merits and shortfalls of her creative abilities and the book that she produced. This elaborate internal struggle between pride and shame is manifested through a painstaking conceit in which she likens her book to her own child. An essential step in analyzing a poem is to provide a structural outline of the ...
Appropriateness
The next question asks is the style that you have used appropriate for a Sociology essay?. The correct style should be clear and concise. You should avoid unnecessary “rhetorical flourishes”, irony, ambiguity (intentional or otherwise), and informal language (for example using the first person or abbreviations).
A good plain style is encouraged. Good examples of such writing can be found in most journal articles or your text books. This might sound puritanical but the point of academic writing is to clearly convey information not to entertain.
Citing Sources
Almost all sociology essays are evidence based. This means that everything you say about the topic should be backed up by evidence. This can be illustrated by using one of our examples, “Discuss the different models of disability”. A good essay would have outlined the different models of disability, citing the sources that were used and then described the research evidence for each theory. For example if one model claims that disabled people are barred from participating because of institutional discrimination, is there research evidence to back this up? This illustrates one of the essential elements in academic essays; providing evidence. Essays that do not provide evidence for what they say receive very poor marks.
One difficulty that students have is how to cite the sources of information and evidence within an essay. This section of the guide will attempt to do outline how this is done.
The Essay on Adolescent Drug Abuse Source Article Journal
Adolescent Drug Abuse. ) Introduction:' Crack, booze, pot, crystal- from the inner city to the suburbs to small towns, the world of the adolescent is permeated by drugs. When 'a little harmless experimentation' becomes addiction, parents, teachers, and clinicians are often at a loss. For this age group (roughly ages 13 to 23), traditional substance abuse programs simply are not enough' (Nowinski, ...
The Basics
In Sociology there is a fairly standard method of citing sources within text. The standard way to cite a source is best shown by example; if you wanted to outline what Oliver said about disability and the information had been taken from his book; “Understanding Disability”. What you could perhaps write is:
“Baddeley1 (1997)2 states that disability is caused by social structures, created by non-disabled people.”
1..The author of the source
2. The year of publication of the source
This also could be equally correctly be written as:
“One view is that disability is caused by social structures, created by non-disabled people (Baddeley1.19972)”
1.The author of the source’s second name
2. The year of publication of the source
The main detail to remember is to give the name of the author of the source of information and its date of publication. These identify to the reader the author. The date is used to identify the source in the list of sources which you provide at the end of the essay (this is described in the next section).
If the source has two authors then use both the author’s names each time you cite the source:
“Oliver and Barnes (1996) state that…. “
If your source has three or more authors then you provide the second names of all the authors when you first cite the source:
“Oliver, Barnes, and Tomlinson (1988) state that…. “
and there after you can shorten this to:
“Oliver, et al.(1988) state that…. “
The Reference Section
The last section outlined how to cite or reference sources within the text. This section shows how to complete the reference section at the end of the essay. The reference section is the list of all the sources cited or referenced in the essay, and only those that were referenced or cited in the essay. The list is arranged alphabetically by the first author’s surname. There is a format for listing different types of sources such as books, journal articles and web sources, the format for each one is given.
The Essay on Book Title Globalization A Very Short Introduction Contributors Manfred B
Book Title: Globalization: A Very Short Introduction. Contributors: Manfred B. Steger - author. Publisher: Oxford University Press. Place of Publication: Oxford. Publication Year: 2003. Page Number: 17a Chapter 2 Is globalization a new phenomenon? If we asked an ordinary person on the streets of London, New York, Bangkok, or Rio de Janeiro about the essence of globalization, the answer would ...
Journal Article
When listing a journal article, you must give the name of the author(s), the year it was published, the title of the actual journal article, then in italics (or underlined) the name of the journal and volume number, and lastly the pages the articles is on. An example clarifies this:
Tudge, J.R.H.,1 (1989)2. When collaboration leads to regression: some negative consequences of socio-cognitive conflict3. European Journal Of Social Psychology4 19,5123-1386
1.The author(s) name(s)
2. The year of publication
3. The title of the article
4. The journal’s name (note italics)
5. The volume number of the Journal (again note italics)
6. The articles page numbers
If there is more that one author, merely give the authors’ names in the order they are on the article:
Tudge, J.R.H.,and Winterhoff, P.A.(1989) etc… Or for more than two authors:
Tudge, J.R.H., Winterhoff, P.A. and Hogan, D.M.(1996) etc..
Books
The format for books is a little different. The author(s) name(s) come first, then in italics the title of the Book, then where the book was published, and who it was published by:
Oliver, M1 (1996)2. Understnading Disability .Basingstoke: Macmillan5.
1. The Author(s) name(s)
2. The year of publication
3. The title of the book
4. Where the book was published
5. The publishers
If the book you are listing is an edited book, then you merely put the editors name where the authors’ names are normally put, and put (Eds) before the year of publication. If there is more than one author or editor then follow the format for authors outlined for journal articles.
Chapters in an Edited Book
The format is similar to the book format; first the names of the authors of the chapter, the title of the chapter, the name of the editors of the whole book, the title of the Book (in italics),and finally the place of publication and the publisher:
The Essay on Reference List Author Title First
... appears on a separate page at the end of an article. Titled 'References,' it documents books and articles actually used in the ... of multiple intelligences. New York: Basic Books. Authors or editors List the author by last name first, then initial ... 1992). Reinventing teaching. Teachers College Record, 93, 594-609. Journal article, two authors, journal paginated by issue Brinton, B. , & Fujii, M. ...
Glachan, M., and Light,P.1(1982)2Peer interaction and learning3. In G. Butterworth and P. Light (Eds) 4 Social Cognition5 Brighton: Harvester.6
1. The authors of the chapter
2. The year of publication
3. The title of the chapter
4. The editors of the book the chapter was in, (initials come before surname)
5. The title of the book
6. The place of publication and publisher
Electronic Sources
Electronic sources refer to sources that have been found or retrieved through computer. These can be CD-Roms, telnet sites, or Web pages. The example provided here is of a web-page which is the most common used type of electronic source. If you cite a whole web site then you merely need to give the URL (the web address) within the text and no corresponding entry in the reference section is needed.
If you are citing a page within a site then an entry within the reference section is needed:
Memory and dementia (1998)1. London: The Royal College of Psychiatrists2. Retrieved January 25, 19963, from the World Wide Web: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/public/help/memory/memory.htm4
1. The title of the page and date of publication
2. What organisation was responsible for the page
3. When you looked at the page
4. The URL or web address
If the page has an obvious author, his/her name goes before the title in the manner of a Journal Article.
