Essay writing!

I really struggle with essay writing for coursework. In my first year I only ever got around 40-50% for essays :frown:

I did slightly better in practical reports because they are more structured i.e I got 55% and 62%. How can I get better at essay writing? I feel like it's really holding me back and I'm panicking that I'm going to fail my second year because of it! I've done okay in exams as well.. but it's just the essays that I really struggle with. I can't do anything like 'Compare and Contrast', 'To what extent' 'What is the necessary criteria' etc and it's just stressing me out so much! I'm also awful at referencing.. I do it how it says in the guides, (Harvard referencing, alphabetical order) but when I get my coursework feedback I've always been told it's wrong.
Help :frown:

Reply 1

Liv1204

Firstly, have a look at whether your uni does study groups, or learning groups - most universities will have workshops where they actually focus on essay technique, referencing, etc, etc, etc.

Might sound silly, but it might be worthwhile to actually Google some of the phrases you mention, like 'Compare and contrast', or 'To what extent' just so you can get some ideas of what they're actually looking for in your answer. Most of your marks will come from the evaluations you include of research, not from just stating the research, so if you're not evaluating points enough or actually answering the question in full, you're potentially losing a lot of marks.

E.g. for 'Compare and contrast', a good plan might be to think of (for example) four similarities and four differences between whatever you're contrasting (or even two or three of each if four is too many). You'd start the essay with an introductory paragraph into the topic, and then, even if it feels a bit forced, at first just start the essay with something like 'One similarity between...[whatever]'. For 'Compare and contrast' essays there are some general points you might want to think about, e.g. the psychological viewpoint of the researchers (e.g. you might think about whether the psychologists involved viewed a particular problem as a biological or medical problem, from a developmental perspective, from a behavioural or learning perspective etc). Things like the methods they used in their studies, anything relevant at all.

Good phrases to use in essays are e.g.: 'However...', 'It could be argued that...', 'Although...', etc etc. Things like suggest different viewpoints or ways of looking at things, not just 'This researcher said that...'.

I find it quite helpful to use a different colour font for each paragraph of my essay at first. Might sound strange, but I find it much easier that way because it means I can add information easily to the relevant paragraph and I can find what I want easily. So that might be worth a try. The other thing I do is just Google the topic, look on Google Scholar and PsycInfo and all the other research places etc and just copy and paste all the relevant info into a Word document. Then I go through and read it all properly, delete anything that isn't relevant, re-word anything that is, and then keep adding to that, adapting it, editing it, and evaluating it with any other information I find along the way and making it into paragraphs.

What are they saying is wrong with your referencing? It's hard to help with referencing without knowing what's actually going wrong with it, but there are some good guides online if it's easier than the ones you have.

Good luck anyways, it takes a lot of practice but you'll get there. :smile:

Essay writing!

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