Topic

Topic Ultimately, your conclusion must demonstrate that you have fully answered the question. Please keep in mind the keywords ‘in red’, which we will identify in our sample conclusion in a moment. Always recall the essay question as you write and continually link your body paragraphs to the essay question. To ensure your writing is cohesive and coherent - use linking words. Try to synthesise your evidence into each body paragraph in order to substantiate your points. You should pay special attention to Section 4.3 on stylistic conventions, as there is little scope for flexibility on these matters within a particular academic discipline. First and foremost, you must fully understand what you're being asked and in how much depth you're required to answer the question. Essay writing is a skill worth perfecting as the techniques you need to master in order to write good essays generalize very well to the world outside academia. Components of a good essay also relate to other communicative skills, such as giving talks or presentations. What constitutes “good style” is one of the hardest things to state explicitly, and is perhaps the criterion most open to personal variation. But there are some points that you should bear in mind. One of these points is that you are writing an academic essay, and as such, are required to use a reasonably formal style of writing. Everything you write must be related to the question, and without a plan it is all too easy to lose focus and write irrelevant nonsense. This will be immediately obvious to anyone reading the essay and gain you a few marks. Read the question several times to make sure you understand what it is asking. Plan and structure the body paragraphs of your essay into topic sentences with bullet points for each paragraph. So you can either read it straight through from start to finish or you can go straight to the area that’s most relevant to you. Essentially, a conclusion consists of three main objectives. Firstly, it must summarise the arguments or information that has been presented in the body of the paper. The purpose of the conclusion is to consolidate or integrate the various issues or researched data that have been covered in the core of your paper. Then, it must restate the key points that have been presented â€" and reiterate the thesis statement. Finally, it should comment on any implications resulting from your discussion of the topic â€" this could include recommendations, forecasting future trends or the need for further research. In a previous online tutorial video we introduced you to a real-life assignment question and talked about how to structure the introduction to an essay. Notice the keywords including academic learning and literacy centres and the most effective approach. It’s very important to ensure that you fully analyse and understand the question before you start writing. Michael says that one of the biggest problems students face when it comes to essays is squarely addressing the topic. Writing Essays takes you through the whole essay writing process â€" from preparing and planning to completion. Writing essays is structured progressively and I recommend that you use it in this way. However, you will see from the sidebar that the guide is divided into a number of main sections. Click on any one of these and you will see that it’s divided into shorter sections or subsections. Keeping to the limit tells the marker that you understand what is important in your argument. You may already be quite comfortable writing essays and if so, you will have a definite feel for what works for you. Whenever you do use evidence you should follow the referencing guidelines that have been specified by your tutor or lecturer. Now let's try and identify the essential elements to a paragraph by looking at an example taken from our assignment question. You’ll notice the first sentence is the topic sentence which clearly states the theme of the paragraph. This is followed by the explanation or argument and then substantiated through the integration of evidence and demonstration of examples. If you have written your plan properly, you will know exactly what your answer is going to be â€" this is not something that should be decided while you are writing your essay. More importantly, your plan will ensure that you actually answer the question. This does not mean that you should be obscure, or use impossibly long sentences with multisyllabic words, but you should avoid being overly colloquial. Often you will be given a word limit, or suggested length for an essay. Use this information to gauge the level of detail, and degree of coverage that is expected. Obviously, an essay of 1500 words will have a narrower focus and will require greater summarizing skills than one of 3000 words. Note that markers will penalize essays that are too long.