Writing Essays

1. Getting started

The worst part about writing an essay can be starting the process. Before you rush into doing a pile of reading, you need to be very clear what your essay is about and what you are actually being asked to do.

Typical essay questions:

a) How do organizations typically manage stress? Critically evaluate the evidence for the effectiveness of stress management.

b) Critically assess the extent to which a Conceptual Framework may guide the accounting standard-setting process.

c) Identify and analyse significant developments in technology impacting on IMC. Discuss how such developments might affect international marketers and notions of the audience.

The important thing to do when you approach an essay is carefully unpacking the essay question. For example, in question (a) above, you are being asked to do two things. First, to describe how organizations manage stress, and then to examine the evidence regarding the effectiveness of stress management. The first part of the essay, therefore, will be fairly descriptive, and you will be looking to read books and journal articles that discuss the ways that organizations manage stress. Don’t rely too heavily on one book or one particular journal article. Try to read as widely possible and make notes as you do so (see handout on reading and note-taking).

The second part of the essay is rather more difficult, and it is here that many students fall down and lose marks. The key phrase in the second part of the essay is critically evaluate the evidence. Therefore, for the second part of the essay, you are looking for books and journal articles that talk about whether stress management techniques have an effect in organizations, either for the good or the bad. Again, you need to read quite widely and to make notes before you start writing. Critically evaluating means looking at the evidence and judging its worth. What you therefore need to is to explain how you will judge the worth of the evidence you review. So, for example, if you are judging evidence about how effective stress management techniques can be, it is more likely that evidence that has been gathered from scientific studies will be more valid (that is accurate and reliable) than anecdotal evidence. However, you may need to go further even than that and think about the type of scientific evidence that is being presented. For example, if your reading leads you to the conclusion that most of the evidence about the effectiveness of stress management is based upon the views of people providing stress management, you might be less impressed by it, than if it was from individuals who had actually experienced stress management first hand.

In question (b) you are being asked to critically evaluate the extent to which a specific technique guides a specific accounting process. So here, you would need to define and explain what is meant by a Conceptual Framework, providing a number of examples, as well as defining and explaining what is meant by the accounting standard-setting process. Other key terms in this question are extent and guide. In answering the essay, you would need to explain how a Conceptual Framework can act as a guide: what exactly does it do and how? In assessing the extent to which it can be used as guide, you need to look at the limitations of the technique – what can it not do and why not?

In question (c ), you are again asked to do two things. First, to identify and analyse significant developments in technology impacting on International Marketing Communications (IMC). Here, therefore, the first thing to do is to explain what you will view as significant technological development. How will significance be judged? You also need to explain what IMC is and how and why this process can be influenced by technological developments. The second thing is that after identifying these significant developments, you need to analyse them in terms of their impact on IMC, and specifically, their effects on international marketers and audience. Again, therefore, you need to define and explain what is meant by “international marketers” and by “audience”. You then need to explain exactly how and in what specific ways these developments have affected these two groups. Have they, for example, influenced what their behaviour, and if so, how?

Common weaknesses

1) Not answering the question or answering only parts of it: If you unpack the question and make sure you understand the key tasks required, then you should avoid falling into the trap of simply regurgitating material you have read in books or gleaned from lectures.

2) Re-writing the question: Sometimes, and inexplicably, students decide to ignore the question set for the essay and write an answer to a question they have basically invented themselves.

3) Not thinking about the question: Astonishingly, some students will type the whole essay question into google, and then e-mail staff when they can’t find a web-site that contains the exact question. Essay questions are designed to make you think – there are no easy routes to answering essay questions.

4) Not producing coherent arguments: Essays can be difficult to read and can attract poor marks if they are disjointed and do not read very well. You should not only proof read your essay, but you should try and make sure that it is structured in a logical and coherent manner. Don’t for example, jump from topic to topic. In answering the question about how organizations carry out stress management, for example, it might be useful to think about ways of categorising the information you have found. Some categorisations may be suggested by text books; others you might develop yourself. For example, “Stress management techniques can be thought of as either proactive or reactive”. Or, “Stress management techniques can be aimed at changing the individual, the job or the organization”. Developing categories like this will help the organization and coherence of your essay.

5) Not being clear about what you are doing in the essay. Sometimes, students launch into essays without explaining what precisely they are doing and how they intend to do it. So, for example, if an essay asks you to evaluate or critically examine some or other issue, you need to explain how you intend to do this. What criteria are you going to use to make judgements about the issues raised by the essay question?

2. Structuring your essay.

Each module leader will have specific guidelines about how they want you to structure your essay and if this is not made explicit, you should ask for guidance. However, these are some general aspects of structure that are important within any essay:

1. Introduction:

a) Defining terms and unpacking the question. You need to define any relevant terms or phrases that are used in the essay question, such as, for example, stress management. What is this and what does it mean? Likewise, if you are asked to critically evaluate the evidence, you need to say how you are going to do this.

b) Signposting – a brief paragraph that outlines the structure and content of your essay.

2. Main body:

a) If the question has a number of parts to it, then it is sensible to structure the main body of your essay accordingly. While you shouldn’t over-use headings, it is always helpful to split any lengthy passages into sub-sections.

b) Using the literature. Good essays are always those that make good use of relevant literature and reference it correctly. We always use the Harvard referencing system (see referencing guidelines on MOLE) unless you are specifically told otherwise. Using the literature to develop your essay is very important. You need to show that you understand what the literature has to say about a given issue, while also illustrating that you can identify common themes or divergences. For example, you may find that the literature is divided on whether stress management techniques are effective, with some claiming it is and some claiming it is not. Alternatively, you may find that there is agreement that stress management should be primarily aimed at individuals rather than at jobs. There is no easy way to make good use of the literature – you have to read it and you have to think about it. As noted in Section 1, point 4 above, you need to think of ways of categorising the literature so that you can produce a coherent and well-argued essay.

c) Signposts and summaries: It is always helpful to finish sections with a brief summary of what you have said so far and then point to what you are going to cover next.

3. Conclusions:

A good essay should finish with a good conclusion. Here, the skill is not to simply summarise the essay, but to pull out your key arguments with specific reference to the essay title. If you have been asked to critically assess the extent to which a Conceptual Framework may guide the accounting standard-setting process, then you should be clear about your judgement of this. Can be used to a large, moderate or a small extent and why?

Some dos and don’ts

1. Avoid journalistic language and rhetorical questions. E.g. “We are witnessing an explosion in the stress management industry as stress reaches epidemic proportions”, or , ”Is stress a problem, or is it in the mind of the beholder?”

2. While you can offer your own opinion in an essay, this should be based upon the reading you have done and the evidence you have gathered.

3. Do not overuse quotes. Use these judiciously and make sure they are sourced correctly.

4. Do not lie about your word-count. All essays have to be submitted via turnitin and the word-count can be checked.