undergraduate essay writing

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Undergraduate Writing: Top 10 Writing Tips for Undergraduates

Top 10 writing tips for undergraduates.

Most undergraduate students at Walden have been out of high school or college for several years, so academic writing can feel unfamiliar. Just like anything else, though, writing is a skill you will learn to develop with practice. Below are the Writing Center’s top undergraduate writing tips to help you get started.

1. Plan Your Time

Walden courses are fast-paced, often with a paper assignment due every Sunday night. No matter how hard you try, you cannot write a perfect, polished essay at the very last minute. Schedule studying and writing times throughout the week, taking into account your work and family responsibilities. You might find that writing a little bit each day, in chunks, helps manage your assignment load. For more planning tips and tools, see the Academic Skills Center’s page on Managing Time/Stress and the Writing Center’s Assignment Planner .

2. Know the Academic Writing Expectations (AWE)

The Academic Writing Expectations, AWE, document lists the writing expectations for each undergraduate course level. In early courses, you practice writing compelling sentences and paragraphs and integrating evidence. Later on, you learn more about citations and references in APA style, as well as essay-level skills. Consult the AWE comparison document for your current course level.

• Comparison of AWE Expectations by Course Level (PDF)

3. Use the Assignment Instructions and Rubric

Within your courses, there are several powerful tools to help focus and develop your writing. First, the assignment instructions give you important information about the length of the assignment and the topics you should cover. Use these instructions as an outline as you are writing. Second, the rubric tells you how your work will be assessed. If a certain part of the assignment is worth more points on the rubric, you know you should devote a lot of attention to it. For more tips on writing and revising using your assignment materials, listen to this podcast episode or view our Revising webinar .

4. Get Comfortable With Writing

At Walden, most communication with peers and professors occurs in writing. You are also assessed on your writing via discussion board and essay assignments. This attention to writing can be scary, especially for students who have been away from an academic setting for some time. You might need to start journaling or find a writing buddy to feel more comfortable. See our Writing Through Fear blog post for more tips.

5. Read Your Professor's Feedback

One of the fundamental ways to learn is through the written feedback from your professor. This might seem like a simple statement, but some students do not ever access this written feedback, and so they miss out on a valuable opportunity. When you receive your grades in Canvas, click on the individual assignment title to bring up the professor’s general comments. In those comments, you should see your attached submission with specific feedback embedded. Read our page on Using Feedback for more tips and download a feedback journal as a way to keep track of suggested improvements.

6. Make an Argument

In most assignments, you need to discuss a topic and have a reason for discussing that topic. Rather than just summarizing, you need to analyze and convince your reader of something. For example, if your topic is electric cars, your purpose might be to convince the reader that electric cars are an efficient alternative to gas cars. This means that every paragraph will be part of your overall goal to argue this point. Kayla explores the importance of argument in her blog post Argue Is Not a Dirty Word .

7. Practice Academic Integrity

As an academic writer, you use information from books, journal articles, and trusted websites to support your argument. To present this information ethically and with integrity, you need to give credit to the original source. At Walden, students give credit through APA citations in the text. Citations should accompany any ideas, information, or phrasing from others. You will gain familiarity with citing sources as you progress through your program; for now, see our  Using and Crediting Sources playlist  for an overview.

8. Organize Your Ideas

All of your discussion posts and papers should have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. An introduction provides background on the topic and includes your thesis statement. In essence, the introduction prepares the reader for all of the main points you will be making in the body. The body is where you develop your argument, paragraph by paragraph . Your conclusion acts as a summary and helps the reader understand the significance of the information presented.

9. Develop an Academic Voice

A formal, direct, and precise voice is expected in college-level writing. This means that you should avoid informal language such as colloquialisms, slang, metaphors, clichés, and jargon, as well as questions and contractions. Instead of having a conversation with the reader, you are an authority building an argument. The reader needs to trust in you.

10. Revisit Grammar and Sentence Structure

Because the goal of academic writing is to clearly communicate, you should ensure that your writing follows proper American English grammar and sentence structure rules. Otherwise, a reader might become confused. The Grammar page of our website provides explanation on many common grammar concerns. You might also find Grammarly helpful; Grammarly is an automated program that identifies potential sentence errors and offers revision tips.

Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

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• Subject Guides

Academic writing: a practical guide

• Academic writing
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• Referencing
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Showing your understanding of a topic and the critical arguments that relate to it.

What are essays?

Most degree programmes include essays. They are the most common form of written assignment and so for most students, being good at essays is essential to gaining good marks, which lead to good grades, which lead to the degree classification desired. Essays are both a particular method of writing and a collection of sub-skills that students need to master during degree studies.

Find out more:

Essays: a Conceptual and Practical Guide [interactive tutorial]  |  Essays: a Conceptual and Practical Guide [Google Doc]

General essay writing

You have an essay to write... what next .

• Read the assessment brief carefully to find out what the essay is about, what you are required to do specifically. What instructions are you given (discuss, explain, explore)? What choices do you need to make?
• Work through the practical guide to essays above. This will help you to think about what an essay is and what is required of you.
• Look at the  assignment writing process . How will you produce your essay?
• Make a plan for when, where, and how you will research, think, draft, and write your essay.
• Execute your plan .
• Finish early. Leave a couple of spare days at the end to  edit and proofread . 
• Hand it in and move on to the next challenge!

Features of essay writing

Essays vary lots between disciplines and specific tasks, but they share several features that are important to bear in mind. 

• They are an argument towards a conclusion.  The conclusion can be for or against a position, or just a narrative conclusion. All your writing and argumentation should lead to this conclusion. 
• They have a reader.  It is essential that you show the logic of your argument and the information it is based on to your reader. 
• They are based on evidence . You must show this using both your referencing and also through interacting with the ideas and thinking found within the sources you use. 
• They have a structure.  You need to ensure your structure is logical and that it matches the expectations of your department. You should also ensure that the structure enables the reader to follow your argument easily. 
• They have a word limit.  1000 words means 'be concise and make decisions about exactly what is important to include' whereas 3500 words means 'write in more depth, and show the reader a more complex and broad range of critical understanding'. 
• They are part of a discipline/subject area, each of which has conventions . For example, Chemistry requires third person impersonal writing, whereas Women's Studies requires the voice (meaning experiential viewpoint) of the author in the writing. 

Types of essay

Each essay task is different and consequently the information below is not designed to be a substitute for checking the information for your specific essay task. It is essential that you check the assessment brief, module handbook and programme handbook, as well as attend any lectures, seminars and webinars devoted to the essay you are working on.  

Essays in each subject area belong to a faculty (science, social sciences, arts and Humanities). Essays within the same faculty tend to share some features of style, structure, language choice, and scholarly practices. Please click through to the section relevant to your faculty area and if you want to be curious, the other ones too! 

Arts & Humanities essays

Arts and Humanities is a faculty that includes a huge range of subject areas, from Music to Philosophy. Study in the arts and humanities typically focuses on products of the human mind, like music, artistic endeavour, philosophical ideas, and literary productions. This means that essays in the arts and humanities are typically exploring ideas, or interpreting the products of thinking (such as music, art, literature). 

There are a range of essay writing styles in arts and humanities, and each subject area has its own conventions and expectations, which are explained and built into modules within each degree programme. Typically, each essay explores an idea, using critical engagement with source material, to produce an argument.

There is typically more reliance on the interpretation of ideas and evidence by the student than in the sciences and social sciences. For the student, the challenge is to understand and control the ideas in each essay, producing a coherent and logical argument that fulfils the essay brief. As with all essays, careful structure, word choices, and language use are essential to succeeding.

Department-specific advice for essays in Arts and Humanities 

Some departments provide web-based advice:

• English and Related Literature essay writing advice pages
• Philosophy essay writing advice pages
• Music Department 'House Style' guidance for essay writing
• Language and Linguistic Science style guide

If your department does not appear above, do ask your supervisor or other academic staff what specific guidance is available. 

Key Features of Arts and Humanities essays

• They are based on evidence . It is important that ideas used in essays are derived from credible and usable sources to root your essay in the scholarly materials of the subject that you are writing about. 
• There is usually a thesis statement.  This appears towards the end of your introductory paragraph, concisely outlining the purpose and the main argument of the essay. It is short (once sentence), concise, and precise. Though the essay may have multiple sub-arguments, all must tie into the thesis statement. This means it is important to know, state and stick to the primary focus set out in your thesis statement. 
• They require you to interpret evidence. It is unlikely that you will find a source that directly answers the essay question set. You will typically be required to interpret primary and secondary evidence. Primary evidence includes the manuscript of a novel, or a letter describing an historical event. Secondary evidence includes academic books and peer reviewed articles. 
• They require you to apply ideas. Many essays will ask you to apply an abstract idea to a scenario, or interpretation of something. For example, you could be asked to apply a Marxist ideology upon Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights or Post-Colonialist theories upon Shakespeare's The Tempest.
• Essays vary greatly in terms of length, required depth of thinking and purpose.  You must carefully read the assessment brief and any supporting materials provided to you. It is also important to complete formative tasks that prepare you for an essay, as these will help you to become use to the requirements of the summative essay. 
• They must show criticality. When interpreting evidence, or applying ideas in your essay you must be aware that there is more than one possible understanding. Through exploring multiple sources and showing the limits and interconnectedness of ideas you show criticality. More information on criticality can be found on the Criticality page of this guide . 

Example extract of an arts and humanities essay

Essay Title: Liturgical expression and national identity during the reign of Æthelred the Unready

This essay is from English studies and shows typical features of an arts and humanities essay. It is examining two ideas, namely 'national identity' and 'liturgical expression' and applying them both to a period of history. The essay does this by analysing linguistic choices, using interpretation from the literature base to create an argument that addresses the essay title. 

It also has the feature of the student using sources of evidence to offer an interpretation that may disagree with some published sources. This use of evidence to create an argument that is novel to the student and requires interpretation of ideas is typical of arts and humanities writing. '"engla God", these liturgical verses themselves both signify and enact a ritualised unity with God.' is an example from the essay extract that shows the careful language choices used to create a concise and precise argument that clearly conveys complex thought to the reader from the author. 

One way of thinking about a good arts and humanities essay is that it is like you are producing a garment from threads. The overall piece has a shape that people can recognise and understand, and each word, like each stitch, builds the whole piece slowly, whilst some key threads, like core ideas in your argument, run through the whole to hold it all together. It is the threading together of the strands of argument that determines the quality of the final essay, just as the threading of strands in a garment determine the quality of the final piece. 

Good arts and humanities essay writing is...

• Based on evidence sources,
• built on the interpretation and application of ideas, evidence and theories,
• a clearly expressed, logical argument that addresses the essay question,
• carefully constructed to guide the reader in a logical path from the introduction to the conclusion,
• filled with carefully chosen language to precisely and accurately convey ideas and interpretations to the reader,
• built on rigorous, careful and close analysis of ideas,
• constructed using careful evaluation of the significance of each idea and concept used,
• readable, meaning it is clear and logical, using clearly understandable English,
• rewarded with high marks.

Common mistakes in arts and humanities essay writing

• Not answering the question posed. It is very easy to answer the question you wished had been asked, or drift away from the question during your writing. Keep checking back to the question to ensure you are still focussed and make a clear plan before writing.  
• Moving beyond the evidence. You are required to interpret ideas and evidence that exist, this requires some application and novelty, but should not be making up new ideas/knowledge to make your argument work; your writing must be rooted in evidence. 
• Using complex and long words where simpler word choices would convey meaning more clearly. Think of the reader. 
• Leaving the reader to draw their own conclusion s, or requiring the reader to make assumptions. They must be able to see your thinking clearly on the page. 
• Using lots of direct quotes . There are times when using quotes is important to detail lines from a novel for example, but you need to use them carefully and judiciously, so that most of your writing is based on your use of sources, for which you gain credit. 

Social Science essays

Social Sciences, as the name suggests, can be thought of as an attempt to use a 'scientific method' to investigate social phenomena. There is a recognition that applying the strict rules of the level of proof required in science subjects is not appropriate when studying complex social phenomena. But, there is an expectation of as much rigour as is possible to achieve in each investigation.

Consequently, there is a huge variation in the types of essays that can be found within the social sciences. An essay based on the carbon dating of human remains within Archaeology is clearly very different from an essay based on the application of an ethical framework in Human Resources Management. The former is likely to be much more like a science essay, whilst the latter may edge towards a Philosophy essay, which is part of arts and humanities. 

Key features of social science essays

• They are evidence-based.  It is crucial to use the evidence in a way that shows you understand how significant the evidence used is. 
• They require interpretation of evidence . By its nature, evidence in social sciences may be less definite than in sciences, and so interpretation is required.  When you interpret evidence, this too must be based on evidence, rather than personal opinion or personal observation. 
• They often require the application of abstract theories to real-world scenarios . The theories are 'clean and clear' and the real world is 'messy and unclear'; the skill of the student is to make plausible judgements. For example, 
• The level of detail and breadth of knowledge that must be displayed varies greatly, depending on the length of the essay. 1000 word essays need concise wording and for the student to limit the breadth of knowledge displayed in order to achieve the depth needed for a high mark. Conversely, 5000 word essays require both breadth and depth of knowledge.
• They should show criticality. This means you need to show uncertainty in the theories and ideas used, and how ideas and theories interact with others. You should present counter-facts and counter-arguments and use the information in the literature base to reach supported conclusions and judgements. 

Example extract of a social science essay

Essay Title: Who Gets What in Education and is that Fair?

Education in the western world has historically favoured men in the regard that women were essentially denied access to it for no other reason than their gender (Trueman,2016) and even though it would seem there is certainly “equality on paper” (Penny, 2010,p1.) when looking at statistics for achievement and gender, the reality is that the struggles facing anyone who does not identify as male require a little more effort to recognise. An excellent example of this can be found in the 2014 OECD report. In the UK women significantly outnumbered men in their application for university places- 376,860 women to 282,170 men (ICEF,2014)- but when observed closer men are applying for places at higher ranking universities and often studying in fields that will eventually allow them to earn better salaries. The same report praised women for the ability to combine their studies with family life and having higher aspirations than boys and therefore likely as being more determined to obtain degrees (ICEF, 2014), yet in reality women have very little choice about coping with the stressful burdens placed on them. The concepts of double burden and triple shift where women are expected to deal with housework and earning an income, or housework, raising children and earning an income (Einhorn, 1993) could in this case relate to the pressure for women to work hard at school to allow them to be able to provide for their families in future. Even women who do not necessarily have their own families or children to care for must face the double burden and triple shift phenomenon in the workplace, as women who work in the higher education sector almost always have the duty of a more pastoral and caring role of their students than male counterparts (Morley,1994).

Education is a social science subject. Some studies within it follow a scientific method of quantitative data collection, whilst others are more qualitative, and others still are more theoretical. In the case of this extract it is about gendered effects in university applications. This is an inevitably complex area to write about, intersecting as it does with social class, economic status, social norms, cultural history, political policy... To name but a few. 

The essay is clearly based on evidence, which in places in numerical and in places is derived from previously written papers, such as 'triple shift where women are expected to deal with housework and earning an income, or housework, raising children and earning an income (Einhorn, 1993)', where the concept of triple shift is derived from the named paper. It is this interleaving of numerical and concrete facts with theoretical ideas that have been created and/or observed that is a typical feature in social sciences. In this case, the author has clearly shown the reader where the information is from and has 'controlled' the ideas to form a narrative that is plausible and evidence-based. 

When compared to science writing, it can appear to be more wordy and this is largely due to the greater degree of interpretation that is required to use and synthesise complex ideas and concepts that have meanings that are more fluid and necessarily less precise than many scientific concepts. 

Good social science essay writing is...

• filled with clearly articulated thinking from the mind of the author,
• well structured to guide the reader through the argument or narrative being created,
• focussed on answering the question or addressing the task presented,
• filled with carefully chosen evaluative language to tell the reader what is more and less significant,
• readable - sounds simple, but is difficult to achieve whilst remaining precise,

Common mistakes in social science essay writing 

• Speculating beyond the limits of the evidence presented . It is important to limit your interpretation to that which is supported by existing evidence. This can be frustrating, but is essential.
• Using complex words where simpler ones will do. It is tempting to try to appear 'clever' by using 'big words', but in most cases, the simplest form of writing something is clearer. Your aim is to clearly communicate with the reader. 
• Giving your personal opinion - this is rarely asked for or required. 
• Not answering the question or fulfilling the task . This is possibly the most common error and largely comes from letting one's own ideas infect the essay writing process. 
• Not being critical. You need to show the limits of the ideas used, how they interact, counter-arguments and include evaluation and analysis of the ideas involved. If you find yourself being descriptive, ask why. 
• Using lots of direct quotes, particularly in first year writing . Quotes should be rare and used carefully because they are basically photocopying. Use your words to show you have understood the concepts involved. 

Science essays

Science essays are precise, logical and strictly evidence-based pieces of writing. They employ cautious language to accurately convey the level of certainty within the scientific understanding that is being discussed and are strictly objective. This means that the author has to make the effort to really understand the meaning and significance of the science being discussed.

In a science essay, your aim is to summarise and critically evaluate existing knowledge in the field. If you're doing your own research and data collection, that will be written up in a report  instead.

The skill of the student is to thread together the ideas and facts they have read in a logical order that addresses the task set. When judgements are made they must be justified against the strength and significance of the theories, findings, and ideas being used. Generally, the student should not be undertaking their own interpretation of the results and facts, but instead be using those of others to create a justifiable narrative. 

Example extract of a science essay

Essay title:  To what extent has Ungerleider and Mishkin’s notion of separate ‘what’ and ‘where’ pathways been vindicated by neuropsychological research?

Van Polanen & Davare (2015) showed that the dorsal stream and ventral streams are not strictly independent, but do interact with each other. Interactions between dorsal and ventral streams are important for controlling complex object-oriented hand movements, especially skilled grasp. Anatomical studies have reported the existence of direct connections between dorsal and ventral stream areas. These physiological interconnections appear to gradually more active as the precision demands of the grasp become higher. 

However, cognition is a dynamic process, and a flexible interactive system is required to coordinate and modulate activity across cortical networks to enable the adaptation of processing to meet variable task demands. The clear division of the dorsal and ventral processing streams is artificial, resulting from experimental situations, which do not reflect processing within the natural environment (Weiller et al., 2011). Most successful execution of visual behaviours require the complex collaboration and seamless integration of processing between the two systems.

Cloutman (2013) had stated that dorsal and ventral streams can be functionally connected in three regards: (1) the independent processing account – where they remain separate but terminate on the same brain area, (2) the feedback account – where feedback loops from locations downstream on one pathway is constantly providing input to the other and (3) the continuous cross-talk account – where information is transferred to and from the system constantly when processing. 

Indeed, the authors found that there were numerous anatomical cross-connections between the two pathways, most notably between inferior parietal and inferior temporal areas. For example, ventral regions TE and TEO have been found to have extensive connectivity with dorsal stream areas, demonstrating direct projections with areas including V3A, MT, MST, FST and LIP (Baizer et al., 1991; Disler et al., 1993).

The first obvious comment is that it is not going to win a prize for literary entertainment! The writing is what one might call 'dry'. This is because it is good scientific writing. It is clearly evidence-based, and is explaining complex interrelationships in a way that is clear, leaves little for the reader to assume and that uses carefully graded language to show the significance of each fact. 

The language choices are carefully aligned with the strength of the evidence that is used. For example, 'have been found to have extensive interconnectivity' is graded to convey that many connections have been detailed in the evidence presented. Similarly, 'Most successful execution of visual behaviours require the complex collaboration' is graded carefully to convey meaning to the reader, derived from the evidence used. The sample displays many examples of controlled word choices that leave the reader in no doubt regarding the meaning they are to take from reading the piece. This concise, controlled, evidence-based and carefully considered writing is typical of that found in the science essays. 

Good science essay writing is...

• evidence-based,
• cohesive due to language choices,
• well-structured to help the reader follow the ideas,
• carefully planned,
• filled with carefully chosen evaluative and analytical language,
• rewarded with high grades.

Common mistakes in science essay writing

• The most common mistake is a lack of accuracy in the language used to convey meaning. This can be due to inadequate reading or a lack of understanding of the subject matter, or alternatively, due to not giving sufficient care to word choice. 'Increased greatly' is different to 'increased', which is different again to 'increased significantly'; it is very important that you understand what you are writing about in enough detail that you can accurately convey an understanding of it accurately to the reader. 
• Trying to put 'you' into the essay. It is highly unlikely that you will be required to refer to your own viewpoints, opinions or lived experience within scientific essay writing. Science is impersonal, it deals in fact, and so you are a third person, impersonal author who is interpreting and curating facts and knowledge into an essay that makes sense to the reader. 
• Going beyond the facts. It is rare that you will be asked to speculate in a science essay. When you are, you will be asked to extrapolate from known understanding in the relevant literature. Stick to the facts and to their meaning and significance. 
• Not placing understanding in context . Each scientific idea sits within a bigger discipline and interacts with other ideas. When you write about ideas, you need to acknowledge this, unless you are specifically told to only focus on one idea. An example would be genomics of viral pathogens, which is currently a much discussed area of activity. This sits within public health, virology, and genomics disciplines, to name a few. Depending on how it is to be written about, you may need to acknowledge one or more of these larger areas. 

Using evidence in essays

Sources of evidence are at the heart of essay writing. You need sources that are both usable and credible, in the specific context of your essay.

A good starting point is often the materials used in the module your essay is attached to. You can then work outwards into the wider field of study as you develop your thinking, and seek to show critical analysis, critical evaluation and critical thought in your essay. 

Discover more about using evidence in your assignments:

Structuring an essay

Clear structure is a key element of an effective essay. This requires careful thought and you to make choices about the order the reader needs the information to be in. 

These resources contain advice and guides to help you structure your work:

You can use these templates to help develop the structure of your essay.

Go to File > Make a copy... to create your own version of the template that you can edit.

Structuring essay introductions

Play this tutorial in full screen

• Explain the different functions that can be fulfilled by an introduction.
• Provide examples of introductions from the Faculties of Social Sciences, Sciences, and Arts and Humanities.
• Evaluating your own introductions.
• Matching elements of an introduction to a description of their purpose.
• Highlighting where evidence is used to support elements of the introduction.
• Highlighting how introductions can make clear links to the essay question.

In this section, you will learn about the functions and key components of an essay introduction.

An introduction can fulfill the functions below. These often move from a broad overview of the topic in context to a narrow focus on the scope of the discussion, key terms and organisational structure.

Click on each function to reveal more.

• It can establish the overall topic and explain the relevance and significance of the essay question to that topic
• What is the topic?
• Why is the essay question worth exploring? Why is the essay worth reading?
• How is it relevant to wider / important / current debates in the field?
• It can briefly explain the background and context and define the scope of the discussion
• Is it helpful to mention some background, historical or broader factors to give the reader some context?
• Is the discussion set in a particular context (geographical; political; economic; social; historical; legal)?
• Does the essay question set a particular scope or are you going to narrow the scope of the discussion?
• It can highlight key concepts or ideas
• Are the key concepts or ideas contentious or open to interpretation?
• Will the key concepts need to be defined and explained?
• It can signpost the broad organisational structure of the essay
• Indicate what you will cover and a brief overview of the structure of your essay
• points made should be supported by evidence
• clear links should be made to the question

Note: Introductions may not cover all of these elements, and they may not be covered in this order.

Useful Link: See the University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank for useful key phrases to introduce work.

In this activity, you will review and evaluate introductions you have written, identifying areas for improvement.

Find some examples of introductions you have written for essays.

• Which of the features do they use?
• Are any elements missing?
• How might you improve them?

For the following tasks, you will be using an example introduction from one of the following three faculties. Select a faculty to use an introduction from a corresponding subject.

In this activity, you will look at examples of introductions, identifying key features and their purpose.

Here is an example question:

Sociology: Examine some of the factors that influence procrastination in individuals, exploring and evaluating their impact. Identify an area(s) for future research, justifying your choice.

And here is a sample introduction written for this question:

Procrastination is a complex concept which manifests itself in different types of behaviour yet is experienced by individuals universally. A useful definition of procrastination is ‘the voluntary delay of important, necessary, and intended action despite knowing there will be negative consequences for this delay’ (Ferrari and Tice, 2000, Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 cited in Sirois and Giguère, 2018). The influences on procrastination are multi-faceted, which makes their study incredibly challenging. Researchers are now producing a body of work dedicated to procrastination; including meta-analyses such as those by Varvaricheva (2010) and Smith (2015). Influences on procrastination can be considered in two categories, factors with external, environmental, sources and factors with internal sources due to individual differences. However, these external and environmental categories are not completely independent of one another and this essay will seek to explore the complexities of this interdependence. This essay will discuss how different factors influence individual procrastination, by first examining how gender, age and personality affect the procrastination trait under internal factors, before discussing the external factors; how task aversiveness, deadlines and the internet affect procrastination behavioural outcomes. This will be followed by a brief exploration of how the two interact. Finally there a number of gaps in the literature, which suggest avenues for future research.

Click on the Next arrow to match each section of this introduction with a description of its purpose.

Procrastination is a complex concept which manifests itself in different types of behaviour yet is experienced by individuals universally.

Signposts the broad organisational structure of the essay

Narrows the topic and explains its relevance or significance to current debates

Defines the scope of the discussion

Establishes the topic and explains its broad significance

Defines key concepts

That's not the right answer

Have another go.

Yes, that's the right answer!

A useful definition of procrastination is ‘the voluntary delay of important, necessary, and intended action despite knowing there will be negative consequences for this delay’ (Ferrari and Tice, 2000, Sirois and Pychyl, 2013 cited in Sirois and Giguère, 2018).

The influences on procrastination are multi-faceted, which makes their study incredibly challenging. Researchers are now producing a body of work dedicated to procrastination; including meta-analyses such as those by Varvaricheva (2010) and Smith (2015).

Influences on procrastination can be considered in two categories, factors with external, environmental, sources and factors with internal sources due to individual differences. However, these external and environmental categories are not completely independent of one another and this essay will seek to explore the complexities of this interdependence.

This essay will discuss how different factors influence individual procrastination, by first examining how gender, age and personality affect the procrastination trait under internal factors, before discussing the external factors; how task aversiveness, deadlines and the internet affect procrastination behavioural outcomes. This will be followed by a brief exploration of how the two interact. Finally there a number of gaps in the literature, which suggest avenues for future research.

In this activity, you will identify how introductions make links to the question.

Here is the question again:

Click to highlight the places where the introduction below links closely to the question.

Have another go. You can remove the highlighting on sections by clicking on them again.

Those are the parts of the introduction that link closely to the question.

In this activity, you will consider how introductions make use of supporting evidence.

• Define key concepts
• Establish the topic and explain its relevance or significance

Click to highlight the places where the introduction below supports points with evidence .

Those are the parts of the introduction that use evidence to support points.

Congratulations! You've made it through the introduction!

Click on the icon at the bottom to restart the tutorial.

Nursing: Drawing on your own experiences and understanding gained from the module readings, discuss and evaluate the values, attributes and behaviours of a good nurse.

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) (2015) Code states that a nurse must always put the care of patients first, be open and honest, and be empathic towards patients and their families. Student nurses are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the need for these key skills even at the interview stage and then gain the experiences to develop certain fundamental attributes, values and behaviours in order to advance through the stages of nursing. This assignment will highlight a variety of values, attributes and behaviours a good nurse should have, focusing on courage in particular. Views of courage from political, professional, and social perspectives will be considered, alongside a comparison between the attribute courage and a student nurse’s abilities. This will be demonstrated using observations from practice, appropriate theorists such as Sellman (2011), Lachman (2010) and philosophers including Aristotle and Ross (2011).

The Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) (2015) Code states that a nurse must always put the care of patients first, be open and honest, and be empathic towards patients and their families.

Explains the context to the discussion, with reference to the workplace

Defines the scope of the discussion by narrowing it

Defines relevant key concepts or ideas

Student nurses are expected to demonstrate an understanding of the need for these key skills even at the interview stage and then gain the experiences to develop certain fundamental attributes, values and behaviours in order to advance through the stages of nursing.

This assignment will highlight a variety of values, attributes and behaviours a good nurse should have, focusing on courage in particular.

Views of courage from political, professional, and social perspectives will be considered, alongside a comparison between the attribute courage and a student nurse’s abilities. This will be demonstrated using observations from practice, appropriate theorists such as Sellman (2011), Lachman (2010) and philosophers including Aristotle and Ross (2011).

• Define relevant key concepts or ideas
• Signpost the broad organisational structure of the essay, making a clear link to the question

Archaeology: Explain some of the ways in which Star Carr has been re-interpreted since the initial discovery in the 1940s. Briefly evaluate how the results of recent excavations further dramatically affect our understanding of this site.

Star Carr has become the ‘best known’ Mesolithic site in Britain (Conneller, 2007, 3), in part because of its high levels of artefact preservation due to waterlogging, as the site was once on the Eastern edge of the ancient Lake Flixton, close to a small peninsula (Taylor, 2007). First excavated by Grahame Clark in 1949-51, there was a further invasive investigation in 1985 and 1989, again in 2006-8, and 2010. An impressive haul of artefacts have been excavated over the years, including bone and antler tools, barbed points, flint tools and microliths, and enigmatic red deer frontlets (Milner et al., 2016). Since Clark’s first published report in 1954 there have been numerous re-examinations of the subject, including by Clark himself in 1974. Resulting interpretations of the site have been much debated; it has been classified as ‘in situ settlement, a refuse dump, and the result of culturally prescribed acts of deposition’ (Taylor et al., 2017). This discussion will explore the ways in which the site has been variously re-interpreted during this time period, and consider how more recent study of the site has prompted new perspectives.

Star Carr has become the ‘best known’ Mesolithic site in Britain (Conneller, 2007, 3), in part because of its high levels of artefact preservation due to waterlogging, as the site was once on the Eastern edge of the ancient Lake Flixton, close to a small peninsula (Taylor, 2007).

Explains the background to the discussion and its significance

Establishes the topic

Explains the scope of the topic and highlights key interpretations

First excavated by Grahame Clark in 1949-51, there was a further invasive investigation in 1985 and 1989, again in 2006-8, and 2010. An impressive haul of artefacts have been excavated over the years, including bone and antler tools, barbed points, flint tools and microliths, and enigmatic red deer frontlets (Milner et al., 2016).

Since Clark’s first published report in 1954 there have been numerous re-examinations of the subject, including by Clark himself in 1974. Resulting interpretations of the site have been much debated; it has been classified as ‘in situ settlement, a refuse dump, and the result of culturally prescribed acts of deposition’ (Taylor et al., 2017).

This discussion will explore the ways in which the site has been variously re-interpreted during this time period, and consider how more recent study of the site has prompted new perspectives.

• Establish the topic, explains the background and significance
• Explains the significance of the topic
• Highlights key interpretations

Structuring essay conclusions

In this section you will consider the different functions a conclusion can fulfil, look at examples of conclusions, and identify key features and their purpose.

A conclusion can fulfil the functions below. These often move from a narrow focus on the outcomes of the discussion to a broad view of the topic's relevance to the wider context.

Summary of the main points in relation to the question

• This might involve restating the scope of the discussion and clarifying if there any limitations of your discussion or of the evidence provided
• This may include synthesising the key arguments and weighing up the evidence

Arrive at a judgement or conclusion

• Having weighed up the evidence, come to a judgement about the strength of the arguments

Restate the relevance or significance of the topic to the wider context

• Make it clear why your conclusions - which are based on your discussion through the essay - are important or significant in relation to wider/current debates in the field

Make recommendations or indicate the direction for further study, if applicable

• Recommendations may be for further research or for practice/policy
• What further research/investigation would be necessary to overcome the limitations above?
• What are the implications of your findings for policy/practice?

Note: Conclusions may not cover all of these elements, and they may not be covered in this order.

• Clear links should be made to the question
• Do not make new points in the conclusion

Useful Link: See the University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank for useful key phrases to conclude work.

In this activity, you will look at an example conclusion, identifying key features and their purpose.

In this task, you will be using an example conclusion from one of the following three faculties. Select a faculty to use a conclusion from a corresponding subject.

And here is a sample conclusion written for the question:

In conclusion procrastination is a complex psychological phenomenon that is influenced by a number of factors, both internal and external. However it has a hugely multifaceted nature and the factors that influence it are not truly independent of one another. Character traits and the environmental impact on behaviour are interrelated; for example similar procrastination outcomes may arise from a highly conscientious individual in a distracting environment and an individual low in conscientiousness in a non-distracting setting. This means that future studies need to be very considered in their approach to separating, or controlling for, these factors. These further studies are important and urgently needed as the impact of procrastination on society is far-reaching. For instance: individuals delay contributing to a pension, meaning that old age may bring poverty for many; couples put off entering into formal contracts with each other, potentially increasing disputes over child custody and inheritance; and indeed women delay starting a family and increasing age leads to decreased fertility, thus leading to higher societal costs of providing assisted fertilisation. Furthermore one could expand the scope to include the effects on children of being born to older parents (such as risks of inherited genetic defects). These are themselves wide fields of study and are mentioned merely to illustrate the importance of further research. Until the nature of influences on procrastination is fully understood, our development of approaches to reduce procrastination is likely to be hindered.

Click on the Next arrow to match each section of the conclusion with a description of its purpose.

In conclusion procrastination is a complex psychological phenomenon that is influenced by a number of factors, both internal and external.

Synthesises the key arguments and weighs up the evidence

Indicates limitations

Restates the scope of the discussion

Indicates the direction and significance for further study

Summary of the main point in relation to the question

However it has a hugely multifaceted nature and the factors that influence it are not truly independent of one another.

Character traits and the environmental impact on behaviour are interrelated; for example similar procrastination outcomes may arise from a highly conscientious individual in a distracting environment and an individual low in conscientiousness in a non-distracting setting.

This means that future studies need to be very considered in their approach to separating, or controlling for, these factors. These further studies are important and urgently needed as the impact of procrastination on society is far-reaching. For instance: individuals delay contributing to a pension, meaning that old age may bring poverty for many; couples put off entering into formal contracts with each other, potentially increasing disputes over child custody and inheritance; and indeed women delay starting a family and increasing age leads to decreased fertility, thus leading to higher societal costs of providing assisted fertilisation. Furthermore one could expand the scope to include the effects on children of being born to older parents (such as risks of inherited genetic defects). These are themselves wide fields of study and are mentioned merely to illustrate the importance of further research.

Until the nature of influences on procrastination is fully understood, our development of approaches to reduce procrastination is likely to be hindered.

Opportunities for nurses to display courage occur every day, although it is at the nurse’s discretion whether they act courageously or not. As discussed in this assignment, courage is likewise an important attribute for a good nurse to possess and could be the difference between good and bad practice. It is significantly important that nurses speak up about bad practice to minimize potential harm to patients. However nurses do not need to raise concerns in order to be courageous, as nurses must act courageously every day. Professional bodies such as the RCN and NMC recognise that courage is important by highlighting this attribute in the RCN principles. The guidelines for raising concerns unite the attribute courage with the RCN’s principles of nursing practice by improving nurses’ awareness of how to raise concerns. Lachman’s (2010) CODE is an accessible model that modern nurses could use as a strategy to help them when raising concerns. Although students find it difficult to challenge more senior nursing professionals, they could also benefit from learning the acronym to help them as they progress through their career. For nursing students, courage could be seen as a learning development of the ability to confront their fear of personal emotional consequences from participating in what they believe to be the right action. On the whole a range of values, attributes and behaviours are needed in order to be a good nurse, including being caring, honest, compassionate, reliable and professional. These qualities are all important, but courage is an attribute that is widely overlooked for nurses to possess but vitally fundamental.

Opportunities for nurses to display courage occur every day, although it is at the nurse’s discretion whether they act courageously or not. As discussed in this assignment, courage is likewise an important attribute for a good nurse to possess and could be the difference between good and bad practice. It is significantly important that nurses speak up about bad practice to minimize potential harm to patients. However nurses do not need to raise concerns in order to be courageous, as nurses must act courageously every day.

Arrives at an overall judgement or conclusion

Make recommendations for practice

Professional bodies such as the RCN and NMC recognise that courage is important by highlighting this attribute in the RCN principles. The guidelines for raising concerns unite the attribute courage with the RCN’s principles of nursing practice by improving nurses’ awareness of how to raise concerns. Lachman’s (2010) CODE is an accessible model that modern nurses could use as a strategy to help them when raising concerns.

Although students find it difficult to challenge more senior nursing professionals, they could also benefit from learning the acronym to help them as they progress through their career. For nursing students, courage could be seen as a learning development of the ability to confront their fear of personal emotional consequences from participating in what they believe to be the right action.

On the whole a range of values, attributes and behaviours are needed in order to be a good nurse, including being caring, honest, compassionate, reliable and professional. These qualities are all important, but courage is an attribute that is widely overlooked for nurses to possess but vitally fundamental.

Star Carr is one of the most fascinating and informative Mesolithic sites in the world. What was once considered to be the occasional winter settlement of a group of hunter-gatherer families, now appears to be a site of year-round settlement occupied over centuries. Since its initial discovery and excavation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a great deal of further data has been collected, altering interpretations made by the primary excavators who pioneered analysis of the site. What once was considered a typical textbook Mesolithic hunting encampment is now theorized to be a site of ritual importance. The site has produced unique findings such as a multitude of barbed points, twenty one antlered headdresses and the earliest known example of a permanent living structure in Britain. These factors will combine to immortalise the site, even when its potential for further research is thoroughly decayed, which tragically could be very soon (Taylor et al. 2010).

Star Carr is one of the most fascinating and informative Mesolithic sites in the world.

Synthesise the main points

Limitations and implications for future research

Restate the significance of the topic to the wider context

What was once considered to be the occasional winter settlement of a group of hunter-gatherer families, now appears to be a site of year-round settlement occupied over centuries. Since its initial discovery and excavation in the late 1940s and early 1950s, a great deal of further data has been collected, altering interpretations made by the primary excavators who pioneered analysis of the site. What once was considered a typical textbook Mesolithic hunting encampment is now theorized to be a site of ritual importance. The site has produced unique findings such as a multitude of barbed points, twenty one antlered headdresses and the earliest known example of a permanent living structure in Britain.

These factors will combine to immortalise the site, even when its potential for further research is thoroughly decayed, which tragically could be very soon (Taylor et al. 2010).

Congratulations! You've made it through the conclusion!

Click on the icon below to restart the tutorial.

Other support for essay writing

Online resources.

The general writing pages of this site offer guidance that can be applied to all types of writing, including essays. Also check your department guidance and VLE sites for tailored resources.

Other useful resources for essay writing:

Appointments and workshops 

There is lots of support and advice for essay writing. This is likely to be in your department, and particularly from your academic supervisor and module tutors, but there is also central support, which you can access using the links below. 

• << Previous: Types of academic writing
• Next: Reports >>
• Last Updated: Apr 3, 2024 4:02 PM
• URL: https://subjectguides.york.ac.uk/academic-writing

How to write an undergraduate-level essay

What's in this guide: site map.

• 2. Create a preliminary document plan
• 3. Draft your thesis statement
• 4a. Become familiar with information sources
• 4b. Select the appropriate search tool
• 4c. Develop effective searches
• 4d. Beyond keyword searching
• 4e. Find statistical information
• 4f. Evaluate the resources you find
• 4g. Read, absorb, and organize the information you find
• 5. Create the final version of your document plan
• 6. Double-check your research
• 7. Start writing the first draft
• 8. Overcome writer's block
• 9. Revise the draft
• 10. Edit the draft
• 11. Prepare the final version
• 12. Submit the assignment

Are you a new undergraduate student?

Here are some video resources to support you as you begin your journey.

• Gradschoolitis  (6:50) / Transcript (while targeted to graduate students, relevant for undergraduate students as well)
• Introduction to Library Services   (9:45)
• Introduction to the Writing Centre   (3:03)
• Introduction to Academic Writing  (37:11)
• Writing an Academic Paragraph (19:35)
• Introduction to APA Style (7th ed.)  (28:19)

Feeling stuck?

• Ask the Library a question via LibAnswers
• Ask the Writing Centre a question via WriteAnswers
• Book an Appointment (Library or Writing Centre)

How to use this guide

Depending on where you're at in your writing process and how you learn, you can:

• Work through each step in sequence using the "prev" and "next" navigation at the bottom of each page.
• Use the right-hand menu or the map below to jump straight into a particular topic.

I'm ready now – let's go to Step 1.

Image credit: Paul Brennan via Pixabay

• Next: 1. Understand the assignment >>
• Last Updated: Feb 6, 2024 4:01 PM
• URL: https://libguides.royalroads.ca/ugrad_essay

Think of yourself as a member of a jury, listening to a lawyer who is presenting an opening argument. You'll want to know very soon whether the lawyer believes the accused to be guilty or not guilty, and how the lawyer plans to convince you. Readers of academic essays are like jury members: before they have read too far, they want to know what the essay argues as well as how the writer plans to make the argument. After reading your thesis statement, the reader should think, "This essay is going to try to convince me of something. I'm not convinced yet, but I'm interested to see how I might be."

An effective thesis cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." A thesis is not a topic; nor is it a fact; nor is it an opinion. "Reasons for the fall of communism" is a topic. "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" is a fact known by educated people. "The fall of communism is the best thing that ever happened in Europe" is an opinion. (Superlatives like "the best" almost always lead to trouble. It's impossible to weigh every "thing" that ever happened in Europe. And what about the fall of Hitler? Couldn't that be "the best thing"?)

A good thesis has two parts. It should tell what you plan to argue, and it should "telegraph" how you plan to argue—that is, what particular support for your claim is going where in your essay.

Steps in Constructing a Thesis

First, analyze your primary sources.  Look for tension, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication. Does the author contradict himself or herself? Is a point made and later reversed? What are the deeper implications of the author's argument? Figuring out the why to one or more of these questions, or to related questions, will put you on the path to developing a working thesis. (Without the why, you probably have only come up with an observation—that there are, for instance, many different metaphors in such-and-such a poem—which is not a thesis.)

Once you have a working thesis, write it down.  There is nothing as frustrating as hitting on a great idea for a thesis, then forgetting it when you lose concentration. And by writing down your thesis you will be forced to think of it clearly, logically, and concisely. You probably will not be able to write out a final-draft version of your thesis the first time you try, but you'll get yourself on the right track by writing down what you have.

Keep your thesis prominent in your introduction.  A good, standard place for your thesis statement is at the end of an introductory paragraph, especially in shorter (5-15 page) essays. Readers are used to finding theses there, so they automatically pay more attention when they read the last sentence of your introduction. Although this is not required in all academic essays, it is a good rule of thumb.

Anticipate the counterarguments.  Once you have a working thesis, you should think about what might be said against it. This will help you to refine your thesis, and it will also make you think of the arguments that you'll need to refute later on in your essay. (Every argument has a counterargument. If yours doesn't, then it's not an argument—it may be a fact, or an opinion, but it is not an argument.)

This statement is on its way to being a thesis. However, it is too easy to imagine possible counterarguments. For example, a political observer might believe that Dukakis lost because he suffered from a "soft-on-crime" image. If you complicate your thesis by anticipating the counterargument, you'll strengthen your argument, as shown in the sentence below.

Some Caveats and Some Examples

A thesis is never a question.  Readers of academic essays expect to have questions discussed, explored, or even answered. A question ("Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?") is not an argument, and without an argument, a thesis is dead in the water.

A thesis is never a list.  "For political, economic, social and cultural reasons, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" does a good job of "telegraphing" the reader what to expect in the essay—a section about political reasons, a section about economic reasons, a section about social reasons, and a section about cultural reasons. However, political, economic, social and cultural reasons are pretty much the only possible reasons why communism could collapse. This sentence lacks tension and doesn't advance an argument. Everyone knows that politics, economics, and culture are important.

A thesis should never be vague, combative or confrontational.  An ineffective thesis would be, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because communism is evil." This is hard to argue (evil from whose perspective? what does evil mean?) and it is likely to mark you as moralistic and judgmental rather than rational and thorough. It also may spark a defensive reaction from readers sympathetic to communism. If readers strongly disagree with you right off the bat, they may stop reading.

An effective thesis has a definable, arguable claim.  "While cultural forces contributed to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the disintegration of economies played the key role in driving its decline" is an effective thesis sentence that "telegraphs," so that the reader expects the essay to have a section about cultural forces and another about the disintegration of economies. This thesis makes a definite, arguable claim: that the disintegration of economies played a more important role than cultural forces in defeating communism in Eastern Europe. The reader would react to this statement by thinking, "Perhaps what the author says is true, but I am not convinced. I want to read further to see how the author argues this claim."

A thesis should be as clear and specific as possible.  Avoid overused, general terms and abstractions. For example, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because of the ruling elite's inability to address the economic concerns of the people" is more powerful than "Communism collapsed due to societal discontent."

Copyright 1999, Maxine Rodburg and The Tutors of the Writing Center at Harvard University

Approaching Your First Essay : A Quick Guide to Undergraduate Essays

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Approaching your first essay: a quick guide to undergraduate essays.

Writing your first undergraduate essay can be daunting. How similar are the requirements of university essays to your high school essays? This article is the first in a series on how to approach undergraduate essays.

This series is our quick guide to essay writing and it provides very practical advice. If you would like to read a more comprehensive guide that focuses more on the overall method of planning and organising your research before writing your essay, please visit our Undergraduate Resources page.

Consider the Whole Essay First

An essay consists of three main parts: an introduction, the body and a conclusion.

The introduction is the first paragraph of the essay and its purpose is to give a clear explanation to the reader about the contents of the essay.

The body is the main part of the essay. It contains the quotations, references, examples, ideas, and arguments you are putting forth in writing. It should be written in paragraphs. This is where you elaborate on your answer to the essay question. You might expect to have 3–4 body paragraphs in a 1000-word paper. Each paragraph contains one argument or idea that you propose in your response to the given question.

The conclusion is the final paragraph of the essay. The conclusion is necessary for drawing together your evidence and restating the main argument of the essay.

No paragraph is written in isolation. Each paragraph of an essay is written in light of the whole. It’s absolutely necessary that you have planned the contents of the essay body before you begin writing the introduction (and the essay itself). An essay is a means for presenting a planned, coherent and well-reasoned argument. This brings us nicely to our next point.

Plan Your Reading

Before you begin writing, you should begin reading and research. Your university library is your research hub. Not only are there plenty of hard copy books and journals, but you will also have access to an extensive online catalogue.

Ask your librarian to show you how to search the catalogue effectively and begin collating relevant research materials.

And remember only to use academic sources! Please read our articles ‘What is an Academic Source’ and ‘ What is Peer Review? ’ for more information.

Keep Track of Your References

It is necessary that you cite the references you’ve used in your essay. However, different faculties have different referencing styles. It’s important to know which style is required and follow the necessary formatting.

You will be required to include either in-text references or footnotes, as well as a reference list or bibliography at the end of the essay. There are many articles on our blog specifically related to the different referencing system, for example, ‘ APA Referencing—The Finer Points of Page Numbering ’. Capstone Editing also offers our comprehensive referencing guides for a range of styles, to make referencing simpler for students and academics alike.

Your university library should be able to give you access to a referencing guide. Some libraries have licenses for referencing software (such as EndNote) that can assist you with your referencing, though we don’t recommend that you use software if you can possibly avoid it. You will achieve a much better understanding of referencing and learn how to reference properly much more easily if you manually create all of your references.

As you read, keep track of your research. It’s a good idea to write down all the information you will need for your reference list, including the author/s, title, year of publication, publisher, and city and state of publication of each text alongside your reading notes so you know where your information has come from.

It’s certainly a time-saver to record the page numbers for the ideas you note down as you read. It will make it easy to find them again, and you’ll need to cite page numbers at every reference, unless you are referring to the entire source or citing an unnumbered source like a website. It is a common misconception that page numbers are only required for direct quotations.

Consider attending referencing workshops or library tours. The more comfortable you are in the library, the easier your research will be.

For more help with writing an introduction, you can read our articles ' How to Write a Great Introduction: The Basics ' and ' How to Write a More Sophisticated Introduction '. If you need any further assistance, you can read more about our professional editing service . Capstone Editing is always here to help.

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Advice for Writing Application Essays

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Advice for Writing Successful Application Essays

When you sit down to write your application essays, there is very little left that you can control. You should have already taken, or retaken, the SAT and ACT, your grades from your first three years of high school are set on your transcript, and your recommenders all have their impressions of you that are unlikely to change before the recommendation deadline. The only thing that left in your control is your writing for the application essay.

As with all things related to your college application, you will need to start drafting your application essay far ahead of the due date. In fact, you should move each school’s deadline up two weeks so that no unexpected events prevent you from completing and submitting your application. The reason that you need so much time to work on your essay is primarily because many schools will ask you to write about similar topics, but to do so in different ways. You will need enough time to draft essays that address each of these questions or prompts for each school to which you are applying.

Don't use boilerplate essays. That is, resist the urge to reuse the exact same essay for different schools if each of them is giving you a slightly different writing prompt. You can, of course, adapt the same essay for similar prompts. Many schools do allow you to use the Common Application essay for admission to several participating schools. For more information on the Common Application and to check which schools participate as members, click here .

Although using the Common Application does simplify the processes, make sure that you review each of the schools’ application requirements. as many of these same schools also request that you submit a second essay along with the Common Application essay. For instance, in addition to answering one of the standard Common Application questions, Amherst College asks that you write an additional essay responding to one of several quotations.

Before you can start writing your essay, you will need to begin by reading the prompts and questions carefully. Even the Common Application has six prompts that you can choose from. Don’t feel as though you must choose one immediately after reading them. You should ask yourself what sticks out the most for you after having read through them. Think about what is most salient for you.

Brainstorm by putting your thoughts on paper. You can free write (writing without stopping or censoring yourself), create word association maps (visually clustering concepts that you feel go together), or keep a journal over the course of several days so that you can collect your thoughts in one place. See the Purdue OWL's PowerPoint on “ Finding your Focus ” for more details on these strategies.

After you have generated several ideas, reflect on where you find the most intensity or excitement in what you were writing. If nothing jumps out at you, keep brainstorming or talk with others about some possible topics until something grabs you.

Once you know what want to write about, put a rough draft on paper. Don’t be afraid of stray thoughts if they lead you to something more interesting than you had set out to write. Just make sure that you eventually come to have a rough draft that is about one thing.

Look over your draft and check for the following.

• Your writing should be personal. After reading your essay, does it seem like anyone could have written this? Make sure that your essay captures who you are.
• You writing should show, not tell, through vivid language. Successful essays relate an experience or analyze a pattern from the writer’s life. It is not enough to make general claims about what impacted your decision to go to college, for instance; you must elaborate by including evidence that answers “how” and “why” when you make your claims.

It is important to note that admissions officers care as much about your structure, style, and insights as they do about your content. That is not meant to add an extra layer of anxiety to your writing process, but to highlight the fact that you don’t necessarily need to have something life-changing to write about in order to write a successful essay. As Dowhan, Dowhan and Kaufman note in Essays that Will Get You into College , “Personal does not have to mean heavy, emotional or even inspiring” (10). In fact, as the authors explain, students might over rely on the significant event that they write about to speak for itself and don’t “explain what it meant to them or give a solid example of how it changed them. In other words, they do not make it personal” (10).

Finally, your writing should be about a sustained topic. You must use vivid description with a purpose. What is it that you learned because of this experience? What message can you decipher from the series of events that you present? What led you to your conclusions?

Once you have completed your rough draft, put it away for a few days. Afterwards, read the question again and look through your essay. Ask yourself if the essay answers the prompt. Is it personal? Does it use vivid language? Is it focused on one topic? Rewrite whatever needs to be strengthened. This is a great time to have other people look through your draft and get their reaction. Make sure that you ask someone early, and that you trust this person’s judgment; they will be putting in a lot of time to help you, so don’t disregard anything that is inconvenient or that you don’t want to hear.

Again, giving yourself plenty of time to work on this essay is vital. You should have enough time to rewrite or restructure your essay based on the feedback that you have received. As you are drafting and revising, feel free to fix any mistakes that you catch in terms of spelling, grammar, and mechanics, but don’t spend too much time editing early on in the writing process. Working on lower-order concerns can give you the impression that the essay is ready to submit prematurely. Instead, use this time to strengthen the main points of your essay.

To supplement the advice offered on this page, you can find a handout on writing the admissions application essay here .

Top 20 Errors in Undergraduate Writing

Main navigation.

The Top Twenty: A Quick Guide to Troubleshooting Your Writing

Readers judge your writing by your control of certain conventions, which may change depending on your audience, purpose, and writing situation.  For example, your instructor may or may not mark errors in your paper if he’s more concerned with its argument or structure than he is with sentence-level correctness; he could also decide an error is not serious.  Some instructors may even see the errors listed below as stylistic options. However, a large-scale study by Andrea Lunsford and Karen Lunsford (2008) found that these errors are the most likely to attract readers’ negative attention.  Before handing in your papers, proofread them carefully for these errors, which are illustrated below in the sentences in italics.  

THE TOP TWENTY

1. wrong word.

Wrong word errors take a number of forms. They may convey a slightly different meaning than you intend ( compose instead of comprise ) or a completely wrong meaning ( prevaricate  instead of procrastinate ). They may also be as simple as a wrong preposition or other type of wrong word in an idiom.

Use your thesaurus and spell checker with care. If you select a word from a thesaurus without knowing its precise meaning or allow a spell checker to correct spelling automatically, you may make wrong-word errors. If prepositions and idioms are tricky for you, look up the standard usage.

Here are a couple of wrong word examples:

Did you catch my illusion to the Bible?

Illusion means “an erroneous perception of reality.” In the context of this sentence,  allusion was needed because it means "reference.”

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is a magnificent sixteenth-century allergy.

A spell checker replaced allegory with allergy.

2. Missing Comma after an Introductory Element

Use a comma after every introductory element—whether word, phrase or clause—to clarify where it ends and the rest of the sentence begins. When the introductory element is very short, you can skip the comma, but including it is never wrong.

Without a comma after the introductory element, it’s hard to see the location of the subject (“they”) in this sentence:

Determined to make their flight on time they rose at dawn.

3. Incomplete or Missing Documentation

Documentation practices vary from discipline to discipline.  But in academic and research writing, it’s a good idea to always cite your sources: omitting documentation can result in charges of plagiarism.

The examples below follow MLA style.  In this example, the page number of the print source for this quotation must be included.

The Social Media Bible defines social media as the “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational media.”

And here, the source mentioned should be identified because it makes a specific, arguable claim:

According to one source, it costs almost twice an employee’s salary to recruit and train a replacement. 

Cite each source you refer to in the text, following the guidelines of the documentation style you are using. 

4. Vague Pronoun Reference

A pronoun (e.g., he, this, it) should refer clearly to the noun it replaces (called the antecedent).  If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make the meaning clear.

In this sentence, it possibly refers to more than one word:

If you put this handout in your binder, it may remind you of important tutoring strategies .

In some pronoun usage, the reference is implied but not stated.  Here, for example, you might wonder what which refers to:

The authoritarian school changed its cell phone policy, which many students resisted.

To improve this sentence, the writer needs to make explicit what students resisted.

5. Spelling

Even though technology now reviews much of our spelling for us, one of the top 20 most common errors is a spelling error.  That’s because spell checkers cannot identify many misspellings, and are most likely to miss homonyms (e.g., presence/presents), compound words incorrectly spelled as separate words, and proper nouns, particularly names. After you run the spell checker, proofread carefully for errors such as these:

Vladmir Putin is the controversial leader of Russia.

Every where she walked, she was reminded of him.

6. Mechanical Error with a Quotation

When we quote other writers, we bring their voices into our arguments.  Quotation marks crucially show where their words end and our own begin. 

Quotation marks come in pairs; don’t forget to open and close your quotations.  In most documentation styles (e.g., MLA Style), block quotations do not need quotations marks.  Consult your professor’s preferred style manual to learn how to present block quotations. 

Follow conventions when using quotation marks with other punctuation. Here, the comma should be placed inside the quotation marks:

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction", Virginia Woolf argues.

7. Unnecessary Comma

We often have a choice about whether or not to use a comma.  But if we add them to our sentences when and where they are not needed, then we may obscure rather than clarify our meaning.

Do not use commas to set off restrictive elements that are necessary to the meaning of the words they modify.  Here, for example, no comma is needed to set off the restrictive phrase  of working parents , which is necessary to indicate which parents the sentence is talking about.

Many children, of working parents, walk home from school by themselves.

Do not use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) when the conjunction does not join parts of a compound sentence.  In this example, no comma is needed before the word  and  because it joins two phrases that modify the same verb, applies.

  This social scourge can be seen in urban centers, and in rural outposts.

Do not use a comma before the first or after the last item in a series.

The students asked their TAs to review, the assignment rubric, a sample paper and their comments, before the end of the quarter.

Do not use a comma between a subject and verb.

Happily, the waiters, sat down during a break.

Do not use a comma between a verb and its object or complement.

On her way home from work, she bought, a book at the bookstore.

Do not use a comma between a preposition and its object.

On her way home from work, she bought a book at, the bookstore.

8. Unnecessary or Missing Capitalization

Capitalize proper nouns and proper adjectives, the first words of sentences, and important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships. Do not capitalize most other words. When in doubt, check a dictionary.

Financial Aid is a pressing concern for many University Students.

9. Missing Word

If you read your work outloud before submittingit, you are more likely to notice omitted words.  Be particularly careful not to omit words from quotations.

Soccer fans the globe rejoiced when the striker scored the second goal.

10. Faulty Sentence Structure

If a sentence starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind, it will confuse readers.

The information that families have access to is what financial aid is available and thinking about the classes available, and how to register.

Maintain the grammatical pattern within a sentence.  Each sentence must have a subject and a verb, and the subjects and predicates must make sense together.  In the example above, thinking about the classes available does not help the reader understand the information families have access to.  Parallel structures can help your reader see the relationships among your ideas.  Here’s the sentence revised:

Families have access to information about financial aid, class availability, and registration.

11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element

A nonrestrictive phrase or clause provides additional information that is not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence.  Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.

David who loved to read history was the first to head to the British Library.

The clause  who loved to read history does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence.  The clause could be taken out and the reader would still understand that David was the first to head to the British Library.  

12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense

Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.

Martin searched for a great horned owl.  He takes photographs of all the birds he sights.

13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence

A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses.  When the clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.

Miranda drove her brother and her mother waited at home.

Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Miranda drove both her brother and her mother.

14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)

To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's phone) or an apostrophe alone (the girls’ bathroom). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Use its to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.

Repeated viral infections compromise doctors immune systems.

The chef lifted the skillet off it’s hook.  Its a fourteen-inch, copper skillet.

15. Fused (run-on) Sentence

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

The house was flooded with light, the moon rose above the horizon.

He wondered what the decision meant he thought about it all night.

16. Comma Splice

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and/or/because, or restructure the sentence.

The students rushed the field, they tore down the goalposts. 

17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

Pronouns typically must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female, if appropriate) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular.  However,  they can be used to agree with a singular antecedent in order to use inclusive or gender-neutral language.  When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.

Every guest left their shoes at the door.

18. Poorly Integrated Quotation

Quotations should be logically and smoothly integrated with the writing around them, the grammar of the quotation complementing the grammar of the neighboring prose.  They usually need to be introduced (with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.

An award-winning 2009 study of friendship "understanding social networks allows us to understand how indeed, in the case of humans, the whole comes to be greater than the sum of its parts" (Christakis and Fowler 26).

"Social networks are intricate things of beauty" (Christakis and Fowler xiii). Maintaining close friendships is good for your health.

19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen

A compound adjective requires a hyphen when it modifies a noun that follows it.

This article describes eighteenth century theater.

A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. 

The dealers want to buy-back the computers and refurbish them.

20. Sentence Fragment

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is presented as if it were a complete sentence.  The following illustrate the ways sentence fragments can be created:

Without a subject

The American colonists resisted British taxation.  And started the American Revolution.

No complete verb

The pink geranium blooming in its pot.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We visited the park. Where we threw the Frisbee.

These 20 most common errors can be avoided in your writing if you reserve time to proofread your final draft before submission.

Works Cited

Lunsford, Andrea A. and Karen J. Lunsford.  “Mistakes are a Fact of Life: A National Comparative Study.”   CCC 59 (2008) 781-806.

English and Comparative Literary Studies

How to write an essay.

This handbook is a guide that I’m hoping will enable you. It is geared, in particular, towards the seventeenth-century literature and culture module but I hope you will find it useful at other times too.

I would like to stress, though, that it is not the only way to do things. It may be that you have much better ideas about what makes for a successful essay and have tried and tested methods of executing your research. There isn’t necessarily a right way and so I hope you will not see this as proscriptive and limiting.

You should talk to all your tutors about what makes for a good essay to get a sense of the different ways that you might construct an essay.

1. Essay writing (p.2)

2. Close reading (p. 4)

3. Research (p. 6)

4. Constructing an argument (p. 8)

5. Help with this particular assessment (p. 9)

6. Grade descriptions (p. 10)

1. ESSAY WRITING (and historicist writing in particular)

Essay writing has four stages: reading, planning, writing and proof-reading. Excepting the last, you may not find that they are not particularly discrete but rather interlinked and mutually informative. If any stage is skipped or done badly, though, it will impair your work.

1) Read the text and make sure you understand it. Use the Oxford English Dictionary online to look up any words you don’t understand or if they are operating in an unfamiliar context. Available on the Warwick web: http://www.oed.com

2) Do a close reading. Make a list technical features (cf. the page in this booklet entitled ‘close reading’; refer to the section on poetic form in the back of your Norton Anthologies pp. 2944-52). Ask yourself: ‘how does the text achieve its effects?’ Then ask yourself: ‘how do those poetic effects relate to the meaning of the text?’.

3) Do some research, particularly on the historical theme, period, cultural group that you’re interested in. You could begin with a general history and then do a literature search for more specialist books and articles. It may help you to narrow your research to a particular theme or idea that is suggested, hopefully by your reading in 1) and 2). Rather than trying to find out about the whole of seventeenth-century culture, limit your research to the restoration, cavalier culture, medicine, the family or whatever. (See the handout on research).

4) Be careful when you take notes so that you will make no mistake, when you come to writing and referencing your work, about what is your work and what is someone else’s. Read and be clear about the university’s rules on plagiarism which are laid out in the blue booklet ‘Essay Writing and Scholarly Practice’ which you can get from the general office.

B) Planning

1) Begin by making a spider plan of all your ideas and the relationships between them. IF YOU DON'T LIKE SPIDERS FORGET THIS BIT.

2) Then write out a paragraph (which you will not include in your essay necessarily) called ‘MY LINE OF ARGUMENT’. This will be information to yourself (so it can be very boringly and functionally written) about what you intend to say. Ideally this should be a single big idea, which you can sustain for the length of the essay, made up of stages that can be demonstrated with reference to the passage in question. It may well be that you want to write something similar to this ‘line of argument’ paragraph, only in a more dynamic and elegant way, for your introduction. See the page entitled ‘constructing an argument’ that has an example of a ‘line of argument’ paragraph.

3) Then write out a linear plan of your essay with a logical ARGUMENT, an argument that is assertively stated and then proved through the course of your piece. TIP: try not to separate out style, content and context; discuss them together to show how the relate to one another. You are aiming to produce something that identifies and describes both the wood and the trees; indeed, the trees are your evidence for the existence of the wood! You need to put together a big argument out of lots of bits of evidence.

1) Everyone has his or her own way of writing. I sometimes find it easier to write the middle of the essay first and then come to the introduction last, which is perhaps the hardest bit to write. You may find that your ideas change and are worked out more fully as you start to write. In which case go back to B) and produce another plan. Present your ideas as a finished thought, rather than a thought process.

2) Keep yourself closely to your argument by imagining your reader. Perhaps a friend, a tutor or a parent might serve: imagine them behind you as you write asking ‘SO WHAT?’, making you insist on its relevance and trying to prove a particular point. Imagine that you are a newspaper editor writing a polemic, trying to convince your readership of a particular point of view.

3) Inventing a title and writing an introduction. You should try to make your essay interesting to an examiner. Which do you think is the best of these three titles: ‘Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko’; ‘Discuss the question of race in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko’; ‘The “gallant slave”: the idea of the noble savage in Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko’. Similarly with the introduction. The first sentence should grab the examiner immediately. Which is a better first sentence: ‘Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko was published in 1688 and is a prose work about Surinam’; ‘At the heart of Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko stands the deep paradox of the ‘royal slave’.

4) Using secondary literary criticism. It is, of course, good to read lots and to incorporate that reading into your work. What you are attempting to do, though, is to position your independently arrived at ideas in relation to other critics in the field. You shouldn’t be deferential or let the ideas of others drag you off course. You should USE other people’s work in the service of your own argument. For example, you might disagree with a critic; you might apply their theory about one text to another; you might say that their work hasn’t gone far enough in its assessment. Never use a quotation from someone else to clinch an argument: just because someone famous has said x or y it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily true. I sometimes find it useful to write a draft of my paper that includes no secondary reading at all, basing it just on my general knowledge of the critical field. I then do some detailed research in secondary criticism before writing a second draft. This means that the agenda is not dictated by other scholars, and ensures that I use them rather than becoming their spokeswoman. Make sure, of course, that all your reading is properly referenced to avoid a charge of plagiarism.

D) Proof-reading

1) Check the spelling: in particular the names of the author and the text that you’re looking at MUST be spelled correctly.

2) Check your punctuation. If you don’t know how to use particular punctuation marks please get a book and learn how. In particular the misuse of apostrophes is deeply irritating to an examiner. The Collins gem guides are really good also Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves is fun and informative.

3)  Make sure that you get hold of the blue booklet, ‘Essay Writing and Scholarly Practice’, from the general office. You must use the reference guide in there. I favor the MHRA guidelines; you may prefer the MLA style. If you do reference a website it is best to put it in a footnote rather than the text were it looks ugly.

2. CLOSE READING

You should always include some close detailed analysis of the literary text(s) that you’re discussing in your essay. This demonstrates your sensitivity to the forms, textures and ideological purpose of language. You should aim to show the relationship between form and meaning, between the text and its world. Before you can put together an argument about the relationship between a text and its time you will need to do some close reading, compiling a list of technical features in a text or an excerpt from a text. Choose excerpts that relate to themes or passages that interest you. Then you can develop a checklist of features to look for. Use this as a guide but you may want to add to, or amend it.

*** What you see will be very different from what other people see. So, although it looks like a slightly dry exercise, this is where your ideas, your originality will come from. Close reading, in any module, will make your essays sparkle. ***

Big questions:

 Prose, drama or poetry?

 Genre? (e.g. is it panegyric, epic, restoration comedy or what ever)

 Does it remind you of anything? Can you compare or contrast it with something of a similar date? Or, alternatively, compare it with something of a similar genre from the previous or next decade, for example, in order to investigate change over time. 

Smaller questions:

 Poetry: metre, rhythm and rhyme. Look at the section on poetic form at the back of the Norton Anthology (p. 2944) and other guides. Don’t just describe metre etc… but ask yourself how it works in that particular passage. How are units of meaning created by the line divisions? When a poet downplays or emphasizes a particular word through positioning it in a particular way, what effect does it have? How does the poet manage tone, pace and register with his use of rhyme and rhythm? iF THESE FEATURES ARE NOT IMPORTANT IN YOUR PIECE IGNORE THEM.

 Drama: look at the length / speed of the speeches, the stage directions, the entrances and exits.

 Prose: rhetorical features and clause structure are the things to look out for in particular. Are the sentences complex or simple? Is it in hypotaxis or parataxis? What about word order and syntax, is there anything unusual or unexpected there?

 What is the overall structure of the passage / text? Are there abrupt changes or a progression from one idea to another?

 What other structures are there? Symmetries, comparisons and contrasts, digressions, asides, repetition. Is there any dialogue? Are the arguments circular or progressive?

 Are there any words you don’t fully understand? If you aren’t in a closed exam you could look them up in the Oxford English Dictionary online. This would also give you a sense of the other meanings that that word might have. Are there any puns?

 Think about grammatical features: tenses, conditional constructions, the passive voice. Is the passage in the first, second or third person? Perhaps there are tense or person shifts; what effect do these produce?

 Look out for predominance: several superlatives or comparative adjectives and adverbs; a lot of words that mean a similar thing, repetitions of possessive pronouns or what ever.

 What kind of language is being used? i.e. what register is it in? Is it elevated or earthy, legal or lyrical, rhetorical or religious? Why?

 Look for particular rhetorical features: metaphor and simile, hyperbole and litotes, personification, metonymy and so on.

 Look at punctuation (but be careful: it could be the intervention of a printer or a later editor). Look out for: enjambment, parentheses, direct speech? When the punctuation is sparse, why? Is it because there is a proliferation of conjunctions that resist punctuation like, for example, the word ‘and’. This may indicate parataxis or a very conversational style.

 Look out for allusions and references, often to the bible or classical stories. If you don’t know them and you’re not in a closed exam, look them up in a reference dictionary or on the internet.

 What is the tone of the passage? Is it homiletic, comic, anxious, melancholy or ironic? How is this effect created?

 Where else does that poet use similar phrases, ideas, patterns and images? What does it say about his or her concerns and art?

TIP: Don’t make simple associations between sense and sound. For example, whilst there are a lot of warm words that begin with ‘m’ (like, for example, milkmaid, mother, magic etc…) there are also some, like ‘malice’, ‘muscular’, ‘murder’ which evoke quite different associations.

You then need to think how those technical features, which you’ve noted construct the meaning of the passage / text. Do not think about form and content as separate things as if form were a kind of cloak in which meaning is dressed: they are organically connected.

Above and beyond that you will also need to think about how that text (both its form and its meaning) relate to the particular concerns and fashions (literary, political, philosophical etc…) of its time. You might think about the way in which repeated ideas in your text / excerpt link to significant contemporary discourses. Look for substituted vocabularies: i.e. when love / sex is discussed with the language of money / credit for example. Could that be related to prevailing economic trends and ideas?

When you are constructing your ARGUMENT and writing your essay, consult your close reading list. Not everything there will be relevant to your ARGUMENT; you only want to include the things that relate, that offer evidence for a particular point of view about how the text is placed culturally, politically, socially and / or historically.

3. RESEARCH

Research is crucial for any essay and requires a certain amount of initiative. You will partly have to learn by trial and error. Here are a few tips and ideas, though. Read both narrowly (and address the theme of your essay) and also widely. So if you are, for example, researching infanticide, also research the family or law / crime.

When you research a context it might be worth look at the work of philosophers, painters, and theologians and see what they were saying / doing in this period. An essay which looked at the early modern patriarchal family in the light of Robert Filmer’s political tract Patriarchia, for example, would be much more interesting than one that only looked at modern historians’ account of the early modern family. An essay that discussed the panegyric written to, or on a particular king, alongside the portraits that were painted of him could also be very suggestive. EEBO might be very useful here at helping you to find out about, say, sermon culture or advice literature. (look at the last page of this booklet for some help here).

Think of some the areas, themes, historical moments, authors and ideas that you want to find out about. List them as key words. For example: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, race, royalism, restoration, early modern, colonialism, slavery etc… Do not be limited here. Think of terms / phrases that will give you some background too. How about ‘cheap print’, ‘renaissance politics’ etc…

Then begin on the computer. Be careful of stuff that you find on the ordinary WWW. It is not usually very reliable. Often this is stuff that people can’t publish in proper books. Use it is a guide and be very critical.

1) http://www.jstor.org (through the Warwick network only). Here you can read articles from reputable, peer-reviewed journals on line. An excellent starting point. Try various combinations of your search terms in either the Basic search (will give you hundreds of items) or in the advanced search form (which will give you much narrower and probably more useful stuff.

Try it out; go to the advanced search form:

A) In the box marked ‘All of these words’ insert the word ‘Behn’. Then tick the box marked ‘title’ and then also the box marked ‘article’.  Press the ‘Search’ button. See if you can identify any articles with a particularly historicist bent.

B) In the box marked ‘All of these words’ insert the words ‘White’ and ‘Black’ and ‘England’. In the box marked ‘exact phrase’ enter ‘Seventeenth-century’. Press search and see what you get out. Try other, similar search terms.

C) In the box marked ‘All of these words’ insert the word ‘Royalist’. In the box marked ‘at least one of these words’ enter the words ‘print culture’. Perhaps limit to articles by checking the relevant tick box. Press search and see if any of those are useful. [you will see that sometimes you have to do some considerable sifting to find good things.]

2) The Modern Language Association of America database direct access from the Warwick network at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/electronicresources/databases/#m

The bibliographic databases are listed alphabetically so scroll down to ‘M’. Select ‘MLA’. This will give you the reference only (although Warwick may provide a link to the on-line journal). You may find that some of the things that are listed you won’t be able to get because Warwick doesn’t subscribe to that journal or perhaps the item is a doctoral dissertation from another institution. Don’t worry, you’re not expected to read everything under the sun. Leave those things that you can’t get.

Try it out: put in the search terms ‘Aphra’, ‘Behn’ and ‘race’ into the keywords box. Press search and see what you get.

3) Historical abstracts: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/subjects/arts/elecresources/#databases_internet

Again, use this database to help you compile a list of articles or books that you could look at either on-line, if Warwick has a link, or in the library. Ignore the things that you can’t get hold of.

Try it out:

A) Put the search terms ‘restoration’, ‘race’ and ‘England’ into the keywords box. Press search.

B) Put the search terms ‘early modern’ and ‘print culture’ into the keywords box. Press search. Again you will have to decide what’s useful / relevant.

4) Use the library catalogue, don’t limit yourself to books about English. Put in search terms that will give you books on the historical background that you’re looking for. Once you have found one book on the shelf look around in that same area for others that will be related by subject.

5) Look on your reading list for general background books.

 CONSTRUCTING AN ARGUMENT

Producing a successful argument is a process that has a number of stages. Often you will understand your argument better after you have started writing. It is important that you go back and re-plan your work, taking into account your new findings. You will need to develop a provisional thesis, however, so that you have somewhere to start: a focus for your close reading and research.

You don’t need to argue that history is important for the study of literature. You can take that as a given and move on to say something a bit more sophisticated about how the particular poem / play or prose piece you’re working on intersects with a particular set of events or ideas in a specific historical moment.

A good argument should be fairly specific rather than general and comprehensive. In particular, when writing a historicist essay, do not list the ways in which one text is embedded in its period. Instead choose one of those ways and research it in more depth. So, rather than writing about, say, Ben Jonson’s interest in Anabaptists, Spanishness, alchemy, the plague, etc… in The Alchemist, choose one of these themes and find out about it in the historiography of the seventeenth century and couple this research with a close reading of those sections of the play that treat that theme.

Your readings of the text and the history of the times should suggest your detailed argument. Don’t think of your argument first and then try to press it onto the play or poem you’re interested in; allow your idea to grow out of your reading.

Below is my best attempt at a LINE OF ARGUMENT for an essay on Rochester and Milton. Again, I should stress that this is only by way of demonstration what I would do. This is very different from what you would do. There is no one way and your ideas will be as interesting / valid as mine. Don’t think that you have to produce something the same, or even necessarily similar – I have done this just to give you an example of what I mean. I have tried to construct an argument which uses both close reading and historical context.

Imagining the future in the restoration: a critical comparison of the poetry of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and John Milton.

Line of Argument:

This essay will argue that Rochester’s poetry is not only everywhere fascinated by time, regularly exploring what it is and how it operates, but that this interest betrays his sophisticated engagement with contemporary political philosophy. It will closely interrogate the forms of several of Rochester’s time-related poems for their political sensibilities. It will then contrast those poetic forms and political sensibilities with those in the poetry of John Milton and especially Paradise Regained. Milton – as I shall show with the use of historical evidence – is very differently socially and politically placed, indeed at the other end of the ideological spectrum from the Earl of Rochester. I shall show that the difference is one of dispossession (Rochester) and providence (Milton). Rochester’s narrators exist in fear of, and subject to an arbitrary and absolute future; Milton’s Paradise Regained, on the other hand, asks an imagined republican reader to wait in anticipation of a future in which God will deliver their political success. I shall explore the way in which Rochester’s pessimism – the idea and tone of dispossession in his poetry – and Milton’s optimism – the visionary quality of his providential allegory – stand in contrast to the respective fortunes of the political groups to which those poets actually belonged and at the particular times when the poems I’m discussing here were written and published: i.e. Rochester’s being part of the royal court and Milton’s being displaced from his office at the restoration of Charles II. This will arrive at, by way of conclusion, the demonstrable sadness of some of Rochester’s verse which indicates the complex circumspection with which he viewed his own aristocratic, political community and its limited expectations of monarchical authority.

HELP FOR THIS PARTICULAR ASSESSMENT

Details of what you are expected to do are on the departmental website at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/undergrad/modules/second/en228/assessedessay2/

There you will find a list of texts and details of how to find them on EEBO (Early English Books Online). Their website is at: http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home

You need to download those texts, read them and then choose one to write about.

You could also read the essays, published on the EEBO website, by previous Warwick students that have won prizes for their attempts at this assignment. http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/eebo/edu/edu_win_03.html

You might also use EEBO in your essay research. Try the subject list in particular. If you get yourself to the search form at http://eebo.chadwyck.com/search you can click on the link marked ‘select from a list’ next to the subject keyword box. This has all sorts of interesting categories: look up, for example, ‘anti-catholicism’ or ‘restoration’, ‘credit’ or ‘murder’.

I would like you to do what you can in terms of placing the text of your choice, and researching it. Then I’d like you to come and see me at the end of term with a title and a line of argument. You could also, if you wish, bring a longer essay plan.

This is Isabel talking to her group. We will all be available on email over the holidays--do ask. Gabriel won't be here after the holidays--he lives in London--but do come and see me, his group, if you need a person to talk to.

USING THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

The OED can be found online (through the Warwick network) at http://www.oed.com. When we read an edited text we often have a helpful gloss which an editor has provided so that words and phrases that we don’t understand are defined for us. In this assignment you will have to put together that gloss for yourself and the best way to start to do that is with the OED. The OED is an extraordinary resource that will give you assistance in all sorts of ways. For example:

a) it will obviously help you to understand words which you don’t understand or unusual applications. It will also help you to find obsolete and dialect words.

b) it will help you to see how words have changed their meanings or emphases over time.

c) it will help you to identify puns. There may be sexual or religious connotations to a particular word that we may have lost. Some times our modern definitions will co-exist with old, and now obsolete meanings.

d) it will tell you the earliest use of a particular word. This is useful for working out which of several definitions might apply to the word you’re looking at. Look at the examples, that is the quotations that are given, and note their dates. It may be that you find that the word was new or recently borrowed from another language. Click the ‘date chart’ button to see the uses represented on a time line. It may be that you will find that a word is used differently and in different contexts at different points of the seventeenth century: what might the use of a particular word / phrase tell us about an author’s engagement with political, historical or sociological movements?

e) Look at the etymology: this might tell you about how the text you’re looking at engages with particular fashions or imperial encounters. Look up, for example, ‘chocolate’ where does the word come from? At what period does it come into the language?

f) the examples given in the dictionary will also help you to see how other contemporaries used the word or phrase you’re interested in, and in what sort of contexts it came up. In this way it can operate as a concordance. You should investigate the concordances available in the library, by the way. Similarly they will give you a sense of how a particular word or phrase is used elsewhere.

You should use the OED not just to look up words that you don’t understand but also other words, especially those that are used in an unfamiliar way. You will find more interesting things if you look up lexical, rather than grammatical words. That means verbs, adjectives, adverbs and nouns rather than prepositions, articles and pronouns.

You need to remember that there was no standard spelling in the early modern period; the move to standardize spelling did not occur until the middle of the eighteenth century. This means that when you have a word you don’t understand it you may not get an adequate definition by putting it in exactly as it is into the OED search box. Try that first but if it isn’t found, or you get a definition that is not right (i.e. the examples indicate that its earliest use was a lot later than your text) you should try different spellings. In particular the vowels are often interchangeable. Try every vowel combination that you can think of. Try substituting ts and cs, us and vs and other related consonants.

Try out the OED. Look up the following words: how have their meanings have changed? Where do the words come from? How were the words used at different points in history? And in the seventeenth century in particular?

 Isabel Davis

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