THE ACADEMIC ESSAY DG

Derek Soles

Description

Who else wants to spend less time studying and get better grades ?
The academic essay is the mainstay of assessment from year-10 upwards. Yet formal training is rarely given and students spend unncessary time struggling to get it right.
The book includes details on:
-researching your topic,
-writing a clear and succinct opening,
-using the right words and grammar,
-analysing and interpreting information,
-writing complete body paragraphs.
The book is ideal for:
– all students in full or part-time education from 14 upwards,
-teachers, tutors and parents who want to support their learners,
-University, College, Academy, UTC and Comprehensive school and town libraries,
-Adult students in further education and /or higher education.
Previous editions have had glowing reviews on Amazon
‘ This is a great flick through book… and is easy to understand’
‘ This book is a real little pocket rocket… Don’t start your studies without this book’.
The Academic Essay: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Revise (Studymates in Focus)
5 out of 5 stars Five Stars By Peter Dickson
very good.
4.0 out of 5 stars It is a good book that is helping me gain a better understanding .
Format: Paperback| Verified Purchase
I bought this book to help me with my degree. It is a good book that is helping me gain a better understanding of how to construct an academic essay. For the price and the content, I am happy with this purchase.
4.0 out of 5 stars Good for uni
By Emma Shawcross
Format: Paperback
This is a great flick through book. You don’t have to read it cover to cover, you can simply just pick out what you need and when. It was well written, clearly explained and easy to understand.
I bought it for university and it has been used by myself and borrowed by my cohorts many times.
5.0 out of 5 stars True to it’s summary
By Helga
Format: Paperback
The book is a real little “pocket-rocket” – the summary on the website was “too good to be true” Once i received the book it lived up to the expectation it created. Don’t start your studies without this book. True value for money.
5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful tool.
By Jo Wilson
Format: Paperback
This is a handy reference for those with no or little experience of formal essay writing. It demonstrates the correct way to plan, research, draft and finally write your essay, giving additional pointers regarding correct use of grammar and syntax, and the importance of thorough proof-reading before final submission.
Easy to understand, with examples given to demonstrate the content more fully.
Well worth getting a hold of if you’re facing the horror of essay time at school, college or university!
By S Smyth
This is an excellent book about the subject of writing academic essays. It is concise, clearly written and contains many examples of the good, the bad and the indifferent. It is useful for those who have not had to write such an essay for many years. It will be especially useful for those who need to rapidly get up to speed with the demands of a formal academic essay. Either due to the lines of study that did not need a particularly formal essay, that is suddenly now the new normal. Or who have come from a less rigorous academic background, and suddenly find themselves at a loss as to why their assignment scores are so poor, from a tutor who, not unreasonably, expects that they know how to write a formal academic essay already.
Mention is made of meeting the peculiarities of a tutor’s expectations. This may be a minefield if the student has a number of tutors’ peculiarities to accommodate. Directly and/or via external examiners. I would argue that if the essay is soundly composed, the student is in a strong position from where to defend their position.
Such is not an issue in France, where the student at Sciences Po, for example, has a strict essay/dissertation format to adhere to, and woe betide the student who fails to comply.
5.0 out of 5 stars By White Tara
Format: Paperback| Verified Purchase
Found this book very useful when writing my assignment for my course at the University, and I would recommend this book to students

Sujets

• Communication Studies
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Essays
• EDUCATION
• Lettres et linguistique
• Writing
• Punctuation
• Grammar

Informations

• Publié par: Graham Lawler Media and Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781842855454
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Academic Essay
How to plan, draft, write and revise.
Studymates
Better English (2 nd Ed)
Better French (3 rd Ed)
Better French 2
Better German
Better Spanish
British History 1870-1918
Business Communication
Calculus
Chemistry: As Chemistry Explained
Chemistry: Chemistry Calculations Explained (3 rd Ed)
European History
Genetics (2 nd Ed)
Growing Workplace Champions
Hitler and Nazi Germany (3 rd Ed)
Lenin, Stalin and Communist Russia (2 nd Ed)
Organic Chemistry (2 nd Ed)
Perfect Grammar
Plant Physiology
Poems to live By
Practical Drama (2 nd Ed)
Project Management (2 nd Ed)
Shakespeare
Social Anthropology (2 nd Ed)
The Academic Essay (3 rd Ed)
The English Reformation
The Theatre Makers (2 nd Ed)
Trigonometry
Understanding Algebra (2 nd Ed)
Understanding Literature and Film (2 nd Ed)
Understanding Maths (5 th Ed)
Understanding Poetry (2 nd Ed)
Understanding the Numbers
Warfare 1792-1918
Writing for Professional Purposes
Writing Your Undergraduate Dissertation
Your Master s Thesis (2 nd Ed)
Your Ph. D. Thesis
Many other titles in preparation
The Academic Essay
How to plan, draft, write and revise.
3 rd edition
Dr Derek Soles
In memory of my father
2005, 2008, 2016 Derek Soles
First Published by Studymates
3rd edition reprinted 2018
978-1-84285-425-9
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or stored in an information retrieval system without the express permission of the Publishers given in writing.
Studymates is a division of GLMP Ltd, www.graham-lawler.com
Typeset by documen , Wales
Printed and Bound in Europe
Contents
Studymates
Preface to the Third Edition
1 Getting Started
Considering your reader
Establishing your purpose
Thinking about your topic
Composing your thesis statement
A Case Study
2 Researching Your Topic
Finding the right books
Checking periodicals
Searching the internet
Consulting your librarian
Our Case Study continued
3 Making a Plan
Planning an informative essay
Planning a compare/contrast essay
Planning a persuasive essay
Conclusion
Our Case Study continued
4 Analysing and Interpreting
Define the distinguishing features of the whole
Dividing the whole into its component parts and analysing the parts
Interpreting the relationship of the parts to the whole
Learning how to analyse and interpret
5 Writing a Clear and Specific Opening
Sample introductory paragraph one
Sample introductory paragraph two
Sample introductory paragraph three
Sample introductory paragraph four
Sample introductory paragraph five
Our Case Study continued
6 Writing Complete Body Paragraphs
Composing a topic sentence
Developing your topic sentence
Maintaining paragraph unity
Sample body paragraphs
Our Case Study continued
7 Writing an Explicit Conclusion
Sample concluding paragraph one
Sample concluding paragraph two
Sample concluding paragraph three
Sample concluding paragraph four
Sample concluding paragraph five
Our Case Study continued
8 Using Cohesive Ties between Sentences and Paragraphs
Using transitional words and phrases
Using repetition
Using substitution
Our Case Study continued
9 Avoiding Errors in Sentence Grammar
Pronoun case
Pronoun reference
Verb tense and mood
10 Avoiding Errors in Sentence Structure
Sentence fragments
The run-on sentence
Misplaced and dangling modifiers
Faulty parallelism
Wordiness
11 Writing with Style
Using subordination
Effective parallelism
Using word order effectively
12 Punctuating Your Sentences Correctly
Punctuation at the end of a sentence
Punctuation within a sentence
Punctuation within a word
13 Choosing the Best Words
Establishing context
Determining the meaning
Choosing the right voice
An example
Our Case Study continued
14 Acknowledging Sources Accurately and Completely
Footnotes
The References list
Bibliography
Our Case Study concluded
15 Writing the Examination Essay
The purpose of the examination essay
The process of writing an effective examination essay
Other words of advice
Index
Preface to the Third Edition
To succeed in your school, college, and university courses, you will be required to write many academic essays. Writing an academic essay is a demanding intellectual activity. You must read books and journal articles about your topic and surf the Net for the best electronic sources, making careful and detailed notes as you proceed. You must analyse and synthesise these notes and from them develop a plan to guide you as you draft the paragraphs that will comprise your essay. You must write and revise your work, checking to make certain you are providing your readers with the detailed, authoritative information they expect. You must go through your paper yet again, this time proofreading and editing, correcting those errors in grammar, sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation, which can mar an otherwise solid effort.
As if all of this were not challenge enough, you then must pass along all of your hard work to someone who probably knows even more than you do about the subject of your essay and about how to express knowledge about that subject clearly, persuasively, and forcefully. Finally, you must wait, while that person judges the quality of your academic essay, and assigns to it a value, in relation to the value of similar essays written by your classmates.
The book you are holding, The Academic Essay: How to plan, draft, write and revise, will help you meet this challenge confidently and successfully. It is what you need to succeed at school and college: a step-by-step guide to writing excellent academic essays. The first four chapters explain how to gather, evaluate, organise, analyse, and synthesise the information you will need to provide content for your essay. Chapters 5 through 7 explain how to write effective introductory, body, and concluding paragraphs for academic essays. Chapters 8 through 13 teach you how to revise and edit your work, to correct errors in grammar, sentence structure, and diction. Chapter 14 explains, clearly and simply, how to acknowledge the sources you have used and chapter 15 shows you how to use all of this information to write an essay in an examination.
The Academic Essay also includes a case study of one student, Audrey, as she works her way through each component of the process of writing an essay. You will hear from Audrey and follow her along as she considers her topic, does some research, plans her essay, drafts her paragraphs, revises, edits, and compiles her source list. By watching over Audrey s shoulder as she methodically works her way through the process of writing her essay (about the characters in Shakespeare s sonnets), you will gain a solid understanding of what you need to do write successful essays yourself and an understanding of how you need to proceed.
The Academic Essay will, in short, teach you those skills in written composition that you will need to succeed in those many school, college, and university courses that require academic writing.
Dr Derek Soles
1 Getting Started

One-minute overview: If you are like most students, you begin work on an academic essay immediately, by annotating the assignment sheet containing the list of topics your teacher or professor has given you. You circle the number of the topic that most appeals to you, underline a key phrase or two and make a few preliminary notes about main points to cover and references to check. Perhaps then you put a question mark beside another topic or two that you could turn to if your first choice doesn t work out. Perhaps in other topics you find information which might provide some insights into the topic you have chosen. This is a good strategy, a good place to begin. Having selected your topic, you then must consider the expectations of your professor, who is, after all, going to be judging your work. What exactly does he or she want from you? Next, you must be clear about the purpose of your academic essay. Why are you writing this essay? What do you want to accomplish? What are your goals? Next, you need to think about your topic, determining especially how much you already know about it and how much more you need to learn.
Finally, you need to compose your thesis, the controlling idea of your essay. In other words, to get started writing an academic essay, you need to: consider your reader establish your purpose think about your topic compose your thesis statement
Considering your reader
In the process of researching a subject, synthesising that research, and shaping it into a coherent text, you will learn that subject thoroughly. By writing an essay about a subject, you master it in a way you could not do so merely by reading or listening to a lecture. You learn more efficiently and remember longer knowledge you have expressed in written form.
You don t, however, write academic essays only for yourself. You write them to display to your professors the extent to which you understand an aspect of the content of a course you are taking. Your professors will read your essay, decide on its worth, and give it a grade. For this reason, it is crucial that, before you begin to write, you consider the expectations of your reader.
Readers influence content
Your primary reader is your teacher. You might share your essay with a classmate, a friend, or a family member and get their input before you hand your essay in. Your professor might show your essay to a colleague or share it with the rest of the class. But your primary reader is your teacher and it is his or her needs and expectations you must meet. In other words, you must match the content of your essay to the needs and expectations of your reader.
Begin by reading the assignment sheet and list of topics with extreme care. Look for terms like describe, explain, define, analyse, compare and contrast, discuss. These are key clues to