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Essays in Social Sciences

Hello,

I'm going to intercalate in a social science and have no prior experience of writing social sciences essay. Could any current social science students please recommend any books they used on the topic which helped them to improve their essay-writing skills?

Many thanks.
What do you mean by 'intercalate'? What has this got to do with writing an essay?
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by returnmigrant
What do you mean by 'intercalate'? What has this got to do with writing an essay?


Unless I'm being thick, usually it means taking a year out of a medical degree in order to get a separate BSc/BA by taking third year modules with no introduction, so a med student would have no prior experience of writing essays and would need to hit the ground running. Assuming this is the case I think it's fantastic - more doctors doing medical sociology etc can only be for the good!

OP, not to blow the trumpet of this site's owners, but you may find signing up to markedbyteachers for a month quite helpful to get a feel for what makes a good or bad essay. As for books and resources, I find they're actually a bit thin on the ground for the social sciences. There are lots of resources for writing specific kinds of projects (for example a research project or dissertation) but not much for essays. I would suggest you make sure your tutors are aware of your situation from an early stage and go speak with them to ask what they think makes a good essay. General rules are to make sure you state an argument upfront in the introduction, have a clear structure, engage with the academic literature, and make sure you analyse the question rather than describing.

Happy to help if I can with any more specific questions. (I'm not the world expert, but I've marked about...um....600 pieces of work by now, so I can spot the shockers a mile off...)

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