Essay Writing Tips Gavin Austin, USQ

Here are some aspects of essay writing to be aware of.

(a) quality, quantity and relevance of ideas

• The topic of an essay usually asks you to take a position of some sort vis-à-vis the topic. Ensure that your response does indeed present such a position. It’s not enough just to provide a survey of other people’s ideas (e.g., “Richards said X and Widdowson said Y, but Breen said Z.”), and leave it at that.

• Answer the question. Avoid drifting off-topic, or ‘padding out’ the essay with content which is irrelevant to the essay topic.

• Check that the word count falls within the stipulated range.

(b) use of evidence to support ideas

• Support your position with solid evidence wherever possible. In general, the strength of your own position depends largely on the strength of the evidence that you present in favour of that position. Thus, if your evidence is weak, then your own position will seem weak too. If you have just written a long stretch of text which has no citations in it, stop and check to see if you can strengthen your position with evidence.

• Your evidence should be drawn from the research literature (in particular, mainly from refereed journals or books). It’s best to avoid relying on anecdotal evidence in an academic context. Note also that drawing upon the research literature does not imply compromising or even sacrificing your originality; rather, aim to present an original point of view as your first objective, and then back it up with robust research findings.

• Where possible, use more than one source to support a given assertion. This will help to make your coverage of the issue more representative.

• Adopt a critical perspective towards your evidence. For instance, if some of it suffers from a particular shortcoming, acknowledge this openly.

• Avoid dealing in vague generalities: use specific examples as evidence.

(c) organisation and integration of ideas

(i) introduction

• The background situates the specific topic of your essay within the broader context of language study in general.

• The thesis statement should indicate your position vis-à-vis the essay topic explicitly.

• It is possible to combine the thesis statement and the preview.

(ii) body

• Each body paragraph must be coherent (i.e., the ideas in the paragraph are well-organised) and cohesive (i.e., the ideas in the paragraph are glued together effectively).

• Each body paragraph must state and then develop a single controlling idea. • Each body paragraph must begin with a clear topic sentence which (i) relates

directly to the thesis statement, (ii) shows how the paragraph fits into the overall essay structure, and (iii) states the controlling idea of the paragraph (e.g., ‘The first approach discussed here is ...’).

(iii) conclusion

• The conclusion should not be a short ‘tour’ of the body of the essay (e.g., ‘First, I summarised .... Then I evaluated ... After that, I examined ...’). Instead, the conclusion should be integrative. What are the main points? How do they fit together?

• As a rule, you should avoid introducing new ideas in your conclusion; however, it is customary to include a closing comment (e.g., a recommendation for future research, or an evaluation of the importance of the issue at hand) in this section as well.

(d) referencing: in-text citations and reference list

• Your referencing must conform to APA guidelines. Go to < http://library.usq.edu.au/>. Click on ‘To reference items’ and then ‘APA referencing guide’.

• In the reference list, only include the sources that you actually referred to in the essay. In other words, if you read something but did not feel the need to quote or refer to that reading, you must not include that source in the list.

(e) other technical issues: register, word choice, expression, grammar, sentence structure, spelling, punctuation, presentation, formatting etc.

• Express your ideas using an appropriate academic register: avoid adopting a very informal approach. Use words like ‘every’ and ‘all’ judiciously: it’s rarely possible to make these kinds of sweeping statements with 100% certainty, simply because the world is rarely this well-behaved. Use of first person (singular or plural) is perfectly acceptable to me personally; however, other instructors might feel differently. At the same time, you should avoid using excessively elaborate language in an attempt to strike an ‘academic’ pose. Make clarity your priority. Let your language be the servant of your ideas, not the other way around.

• Quotes should be used sparingly, and only if there is something distinctive about the writer’s words that you want to preserve. Otherwise, just use a paraphrase.

• State the word count: marks are often deducted if this is not provided.