Social Research Methods

Essay Writing

Contributors: Nicholas Walliman Print Pub. Date: 2006 Print ISBN: 9781412910620 Online ISBN: 9781849209939 DOI: 10.4135/9781849209939 Print pages: 178-181 This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.

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Essay Writing

In essay writing, one of your first aims should be to get your mind active and engaged with your subject. Tennis players like to go out on to the court and hit the ball back and forth just before the competitive match begins. In the same way you can warm up for your essay by tossing the ideas to and fro within your head before you begin to write. This will allow you to think within the framework of your topic, and this will be especially important if you are coming to the subject for the first time. Make a list of the main points that occur to you and put them in a logical order if possible you can easily change these later. You can also add further points as they occur to you while you write.

Finding major questions

When you are constructing a draft outline for an essay or project, you should ask what is the major question or questions you wish to address. It is useful to make a list of all the issues that spring to mind that you may wish to tackle. Which are the most interesting and address the most important issues? The ability to design a good question is an artform that should be cultivated, and such questions will allow you to impress your assessor with the quality of your thinking.

If you construct your ideas around key questions, this will help you focus your mind and engage effectively with your subject. Your role will be like that of a detective exploring the evidence and investigating the findings.

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Listing and linking the key concepts

All subjects will have central concepts that can sometimes be usefully labelled by a single word. Course textbooks may include a glossary of terms and these provide a direct route to the beginning of efficient mastery of the topic. The central words or terms are the essential raw materials that you will need to build upon. Ensure that you learn the words and their definitions, and that you can go on to link the key words together so that in your learning activities you will add understanding to your basic memory work.

It is useful to list your key words under general headings if that is possible and logical. You may not always see the connections immediately but when you later come back to a problem that seemed intractable, you will often find that your thinking is much clearer.

An adversarial system
In higher education students are required to make the transition from descriptive to critical writing. Think of the critical approach as like a law case that is being conducted in a courtroom, where there is both a prosecution and a defence. Your concern should be for objectivity, transparency and fairness. No matter how passionately you may feel about a given cause, you must not allow information to be filtered out because of your personal prejudice. An essay is not to become a crusade for a cause in which the contrary arguments are not addressed in an even-handed manner. This means that you should show awareness that opposite views are held and you should at least represent these as accurately as possible. The challenge will be to present these in a balanced way and come to some conclusions based on what you have found out.

Your role as the writer is like that of the judge in that you must ensure that all the evidence is heard, and that nothing will compromise either party.

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Structuring an outline
It is a basic principle in all walks of life that structure and order facilitate good communication. Therefore, when you have the flow of inspiration in your essay you must get this into a structure that will allow the marker to recognize the true quality of your work. For example, you might plan for: an introduction three main headings (each of these with several sub-headings) a conclusion

In an introduction to an essay you have the opportunity to define the problem or issue that is being addressed and to set it within context. You can also provide a brief guide to the reader on the structure of your essay. Resist the temptation to elaborate on any issue at the introductory stage. The introduction should be written last, as you do not really know what you are introducing before you have actually written it Break down the main part of the essay into sections that address the main questions or major issues separately. Use the main points that you drafted out at the beginning. You can then deal with detailed matters under sub-headings. Don't forget to include secondary conclusions for each section. In the conclusion you should aim to tie your essay together in a clear and coherent manner. It is your last chance to leave an overall impression in your reader's mind. This is your opportunity to identify where the strongest evidence points or where the balance of probability lies. The conclusion to an exam question often has to be written hurriedly under the pressure of time, but with an essay (course work) you have time to reflect on, refine and adjust the content to your satisfaction. Do not underestimate the value of an effective conclusion. Once you have drafted this outline you can then easily sketch some material under the main headings and sub-headings, after which you will be well prepared for devising the main conclusion and the introduction.

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Social Research Methods: Essay Writing Sage Research Methods

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A good structure will help you to balance the weight of each of your arguments against each other, and arrange your points in the order that will facilitate the fluent progression of your argument.

Rest your case: evidence, citations and quotes

It should be your aim to give the clear impression that your arguments are not based entirely on hunches, bias, feelings or intuition. In exams and essay questions it is usually assumed (even if not directly specified) that you will appeal to evidence to support your claims. Therefore, when you write your essay you should ensure that it is liberally sprinkled with citations and evidence. By the time the assessor reaches the end of your work, he or she should be convinced that your conclusions are evidence-based. A fatal flaw to be avoided is to make claims for which you have provided no authoritative source.

Give the clear impression that what you have asserted is derived from recognized sources (including up-to-date sources). It also looks impressive if you spread your citations across your essay rather than compressing them into a paragraph or two at the beginning and end. It is sensible to vary the expression used so that you are not monotonous and repetitive, and it also aids variety to introduce researchers names at various places in the sentence (not always at the beginning). It is advisable to choose the expression that is most appropriate. For example, you can make a stronger statement about reviews that have identified recurrent and predominant trends in findings as opposed to one study that appears to run contrary to all the rest. Some examples of how you might introduce your evidence and sources are provided below:

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Social Research Methods: Essay Writing Sage Research Methods

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According to O'Neil (1999) Wilson (2003) has concluded that Taylor (2004) found that It has been claimed by McKibben (2002) that Appleby (2001) asserted that A review of the evidence by Lawlor (2004) suggests that Findings from a meta-analysis presented by Rea (2003) would indicate that

Credit is given for the use of caution and discretion when this is clearly needed. Although it is desirable to present a good range of cited sources, it is not judicious to present these as a patchwork quilt that is, you just paste together what others have said with little thought for interpretative comment or coherent structure. It is a good general point to aim to avoid very lengthy quotes short ones can be very effective. Aim at blending the quotations as naturally as possible into the flow of your sentences. Also, it is good to vary your practices sometimes use short, direct, brief quotes (cite page number as well as author and year), and at times you can summarize the gist of a quote in your own words. In this case you should cite the author's name and year of publication but leave out quotation marks and page number.

Use your quotes and evidence in a manner that demonstrates that you have thought the issues through, and have integrated them in a manner that shows you have been focused and selective in the use of your sources. In terms of referencing, practice may vary from one discipline to the next, but some general points that will go a long way in contributing to good practice are: If a reference is cited in the text, it must be included in the list of references at the end of the essay (and vice versa).

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Social Research Methods: Essay Writing Sage Research Methods

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SAGE Publications, Inc.

Names and dates in the text should correspond exactly with the list in the References or Bibliography. The list of References or Bibliography should be in alphabetical order by the surname (not the initials) of the author or first author. Any reference you make in the text should be traceable by the reader (readers should clearly be able to identify and trace the source).

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Social Research Methods: Essay Writing Sage Research Methods