THE ACADEMIC ESSAY DG

By Derek Soles

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 thi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Studymates
• Release date: Mar 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781842855454

Derek Soles

Dr Derek Soles is an award winning expert in English language education. He has taught in a number of universities and has experience in preparing many students for examinations.

Book preview

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 your professor’s expectations. If your topic is describe and explain the process of photosynthesis, that is exactly what you must do. If your topic is discuss the causes of the First World War, do not compare and contrast the peace settlement of World War One with the peace settlement of World War Two. If you are asked to compare and contrast Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn, do not discuss the life of John Keats, except insofar as it might be relevant to the main topic. The first few words of the topic usually identify the focus your professor expects you to take. Successful writers accommodate their reader’s expectations.

Be clear about the required length of your essay, as well. Length will determine the level of detail you are expected to provide. An economics professor, for example, could ask for a thousand-word or a five thousand-word essay on the law of demand and supply; the length would dictate the level of detail you would include in such an essay. You must meet or exceed slightly the required length. If you do not, your ideas are likely not developed in the detail your professor wants.

Finally, clarify any important aspect of the assignment your teacher may not have made clear. Question anything not clear to you: Do you want us to include a plot summary along with our analysis of the story? How many sources do you expect us to cite? Are there sources you would particularly recommend? How many words do you want? May we use sub-titles? The more you know about what your reader wants, the more successful your writing will be.

Readers influence style

Style identifies the manner in which you present information to your readers. If you are sending an email to your friend, your writing style will be informal; your sentence structure might be fragmented; you will likely use slang; you will not be overly concerned about spelling.

The reader of your academic essays, on the other hand, are well-educated and working with you in an academic setting. They will expect you to present your information in a fairly mature and relatively formal writing style. You should not be flippant or sarcastic in an academic essay, nor, at the other extreme, should you be pedantic. Try to strike a balance with a style that is smooth and natural but appropriate for a well-educated reader. Most of your textbooks should be written in such a style and might provide you with a model to emulate.

Readers judge quality

Your friend who receives your email will not judge your sentence structure, paragraph structure, spelling, or grammar. Your professor who grades your academic essay will make that judgement.

Try to find out everything you can about the criteria your professor will use to assess your work. If your professor provides you with a list of the criteria, work closely with it as you write and revise your essay. If your professor does not provide the class with specific information about how essays will be evaluated, try to get some general guidelines at least. Studies clearly indicate that students who understand the criteria on which their writing will be judged write better essays than students who do not know how their teachers will evaluate their writing.

Establishing your purpose

After you have considered the needs of your reader, consider your purpose in writing this academic essay. We write for many reasons: we write a letter to exchange news with friends; we write a poem to express our feelings; we keep a journal to record daily observations.

Academic writing has usually one of two purposes: to provide information which a teacher has requested or to advance an argument about an issue related to the subject you are studying. In other words, academic essays are generally written in either the informative (also known as the expository) rhetorical mode or in the persuasive rhetorical mode.

The informative mode

An informative (also known as the expository) essay presents complete and accurate information about a specific topic. If you are asked to discuss the causes of the war in Iraq or to explain how to treat a victim of a heart attack or to define post structuralism or to compare and contrast Freudian and Jungian methods of treating obsessive-compulsive disorder or to explain the rules of cricket, you will write an informative essay. The purpose of an informative essay is to provide your reader with information he or she has requested or can use. Here is an example of a paragraph written in the informative mode. It is from an essay, which explains to readers how to choose an appropriate bottle of wine. Notice that the information provided is specific and detailed, the result mainly of the author’s use of examples in support of the paragraph’s main idea.

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The good host will also know something about the grapes from which wines are made, if he is to make just the right choice for his dinner guests. A wine made from the cabernet sauvignon grape will be rich and deep red and will go best with red meats, especially pot roasts, steaks, ribs, and lamb. Wines made from the chardonnay grape, on the other hand, produce dry white wines that will go well with main courses made from fish, shellfish, poultry, and veal. Wines made from the pinot noir grape will be red, but lighter than those made from the cabernet sauvignon. Pinot noir wines are the perfect complement to barbequed red meat and chicken. The gewürztraminer grape, native to Germany, produces dry white wines with exotic perfumes and are perfect complements to Asian food, Japanese and Thai dishes especially. With a vegetarian meal, a light and crisp wine made from the sauvignon blanc grape, with its wonderful aroma of grass and pea pods, is ideal.

A special type of informative writing, known as the

literature review

, is an important component of much academic writing. The lit review is a component of masters theses, doctoral dissertations, and research studies; it is the section where authors put their own study in context by reviewing related work done earlier on the subject of their investigation. If, for example, a psychologist were designing and conducting a study to investigate the effect of aging on memory loss, she would need a special section of her report to review relevant studies done before she did hers. Here is an excerpt from such a lit review:

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Gershin (2001) conducted a longitudinal study to measure memory loss among residents of a nursing home in Cornwall. The study was done over a ten-year period with twenty-three residents who were in their late seventies at the start of the study. Gershin found that there was an average of an 8% memory loss per resident per year over the ten-year