Essay Writing - brief notes

opinions, without any reference to the information or scholarly writings on which they’rebased.When you’re thinking about your argument it may help to imagine yourself discussing theanswer with another student on the course. Suppose they disagreed with you, whatarguments might they use against what you want to say? How would you present yourideas in a way which would convince them? If you can convince the other student youshould be able to convince the marker.Conclusion. This is where you make absolutely clear what conclusions you want to drawfrom the evidence you have produced. The conclusion will seem rather repetitive. Youwill have said this already as your essay has developed but this is where you bring it alltogether. It’s a very good rule never to bring any new information into the conclusion.5. Essay structureEven before you start reading you will probably have some ideas about what you might wantto say in your essay. As you read you will develop new ideas about the essay question and youwill begin to know what points you want to make. The structure of the essay is about gettingthese points into a logical order and deciding how important each one is and how much roomyou want to give it. There is no single pattern for getting the structure of an essay right. Theimportant thing is that you know why you’re presenting your ideas in a particular order, andthat you’ve thought about which points are the most important, in making your essayconvincing. If you’ve really thought about this beforehand you will get much better resultsthan if you start writing with a vague general idea of what you want to say and just keepwriting until you’ve run out of words.6. QuotationsThere are two different kinds of quotation: quotations from the Bible or from historical writers which you want to use asevidence or as matters for discussion (primary sources). quotations from other scholars (secondary sources)In general you should be sparing with quotations from secondary sources. Unless thequotation is using a particular form of words which you need to have in full, you should alwaystry to give the views of other scholars in your own words to show that you have fullyunderstood them. You will find this easier if your notes have included summaries of writers’views (see above)7. ReferencesBoth the Cardiff programme and Exploring Faith have study guides which give details of howto reference. There are likely to be slight differences between them so make sure you followthese instructions consistently when writing footnotes. Don’t be intimidated by this. You justneed to make sure that you have made clear where you got your ideas and quotations fromand given all the information others would need if they wanted to find these for themselves.Your computer will insert footnotes automatically for you and renumber them if necessarywhen you alter your text so it’s well worth finding out how to use that function.8. PlagiarismWhen you fail to make it clear that you are using other people’s ideas and words it is calledplagiarism and is a serious academic offence. It can lead to your being penalised or failing themodule. This is why it’s so important to get quotations and references complete and accurate.If you’re conscientious about that you should have nothing to worry about.