Academic Essays?

Stasya_x

I'm a first year arts student and have 2 essays due within the next month. I'm feeling very intimidated by the prospect of writing an 'Academic Essay.' Seems like everything is plagiarism and completely different to anything I've ever had to write before.

Can anyone give me an quick idiots guide to academic essay writing? I'd really appreciate it as I haven't the slightest idea how to begin and the lectures brief outline of it didn't help at all..

littlefriend

Yeah its pretty intimidating at first but the best thing to do is get started early.

What school are the essay's for?

I'm guessing a first year essay is probably about 1200 - 1500 words. Break that down into smaller parts and go from there. Your introduction & conclusion should be about 150 words each. Then you should have 4 or maybe 5 paragraphs of say 250 words each. That will give you your total word count.

Look at your reading list which will hopefully be broken into weekly sections. At this stage your essay titles will probably focus on a topic which you did on a particular week. Get the relevant books out and read the suggested chapters. Google books is a great resource too as is jstor etc which you can access through the library website. You might want to leave those sources til the next time when you have a better hand on things though.


Don't worry about the plagiarism thing - just every time you use something that is the work of someone else make a note of it. When you are finished go back over the essay and use whatever referencing guidelines your school has to reference what you have quoted. Its a bit of a painful process at first but you'll get the hang of it quickly.


At this stage your introduction can be basic - just say if you agree or not with the essay title. You then say how you are going to back up your statement eg The purpose of this essay is to ...The paper will begin by discussing ....The next section will deal with.....From here it will go on to examine..... The final section will ....

The conclusion can be similar to the introduction. You can recap here on what each paragraph has looked. Don't introduce any new ideas in the conclusion save them for the main body.

Stasya_x

Thanks:) One essay is for politics and the other sociology.

littlefriend

Have a look through these.

HavingCrack

Over reference rather than under reference is a good rule of the thumb. If you're not sure if it's plagiarism just reference it, it won't do any harm.

triseke

Also, I wouldnt worry too much. There's a little bit of leeway given because its your "first essaay".

Good advice about over-referencing, and for the love of God, make sure its done properly. Can't tell you how many essays I've seen that have lost loads of marks because the referencing was incorrect.

Find out what system your schools use, and bookmark the tab. That way when you are reading over the essay at the end you can check it really easily.

For sociology and politics its the Harvard system if memory serves.

Good Luck!

doly

Good advice about over-referencing, and for the love of God, make sure its done properly. Can't tell you how many essays I've seen that have lost loads of marks because the referencing was incorrect.

There is no need to get it wrong if you use a programme to do it for you. It's magic and saves hours of tedium. If you don't already have on on your system, you can probably download one from Bibword. You are looking for Harvard, as has already been said. The Library has info on its site on referencing styles.
There are lots of books on essay-writing for Arts in the Library. Have a browse.
Someone on campus runs an essay writing workshop and I think there is one happening soon in the Library. I did get emails about it but deleted them. Maybe you could search the UCD site or perhaps someone else knows when and where they are held.

brokenhinge

Also make sure you give yourself enough time at the end to do it fully, properly and neatly. Make sure it looks professional.

I've heard stories that lecturers look at just the references and decide the grade upon the quality/appearance of the references..

littlefriend

The person to contact about the writing clinic mentioned above is - Dr Fionnuala Dillane at writing.clinics@ucd.ie