Example essays

One way of improving your essay writing is to see what other people have written. Of course you read books, you read articles, you listen to your lecturers, but how often do you get the chance to read an essay written by another student which has had a good mark? By looking at other people’s work you can see how they express themselves, what academic phrases they use, how they lay out their bibliography and so on. So I am going to show you an ‘essay pool’ where you can read what other students have written. This is not an excuse to copy work! There are huge problems around the issue of plagiarism (or copying) at university and lecturers are very strict on you creating your own work. Unfortunately, because of cultural differences in approaches to study and the language problems that some international students have, plagiarism does happen and when it happens the student will be in big trouble. However, you can still look at other students’ work to see what a good essay looks like. The essay pool set up by Lancaster University is here.

Two new things you might notice about the site: firstly, there is a new url which is http://englishforuniversity.com (don’t worry you will be redirected there automatically) and secondly I have added a message forum – please feel free to drop by, add a message, answer a message, ask a question, or whatever!

Editing your work when you have finished

I’ve noticed that when I’m in my office going through a piece of work with a student, as they are sitting there with me they often find lots of mistakes themselves. Even though they wrote the essay, now they are seeing it again more objectively, as if for the first time, and they find the mistakes they didn’t see before. If you can try to see your work objectively like this, you will find errors which you missed when you wrote it. I’ve got two suggestions for helping you check your work to find mistakes.

The first method is to read your piece of work checking only for ONE particular type of mistake each time. You should know what type of mistakes that you most commonly make – for example subject-verb agreement mistakes, mistakes with articles, singular/plural mistakes, mistakes with tenses. Decide which type of mistake to check for first (eg subject-verb agreement) and then read through the essay checking for ONLY this type of mistake. If you are doing subject-verb agreement start with the first sentence and find the subject. Is it singular or plural? Countable or uncountable? Now find the verb that goes with this subject – is it in the right form to go with the subject? (For more on subject-verb agreeement and a nice exercise on this see my post Subject and verb agreement archived on the right-hand side of the page.) Go on to the next sentence and do the same, and so on through the piece of work. When you have done that you choose the next type of mistake, maybe articles, and you go through the piece of work checking just for article mistakes. Then you do it again with the next type of mistake and so on.

Phew. That may take some time but your work will benefit from it. What you are trying to achieve is objectivity when you look at your work. The problem is that you have been so involved in it that you cannot see it with new eyes. So my second method is to suggestion is that you check your work by reading it backwards. Sounds rather odd! What I mean is that you look at the final sentence first. You begin at the start of the final sentence and read it checking for mistakes. Then you move back to the next sentence and check that one, and then the one before that. The reason for doing this is that when you do this you take the meaning out of the sentence and you check it just for its grammatical form. When you read from start to finish you are focused on meaning, and it is really difficult to try and ignore the meaning and focus just on the grammar.

Try putting these two suggestions together!

Writing your concluding paragraph

Writing a good conclusion is tricky! (Just like writing the rest of the essay!) I’ve been reading a lot of conclusions recently and I am trying to put my finger on what makes a good one, which is not an easy job. You shouldn’t just repeat your main points, because the reader has read them already. I think one of the most important things to do is to think about the message that you want to leave the reader with. After all your hard work – so what? What did you discover? What was the point of the essay?

In the last couple of posts I’ve been thinking about this essay title:

“Is the present level of immigration in the United Kingdom beneficial to the country?”

I have come up with this conclusion:

In conclusion, it does seem that there are some very real economic and social benefits to be enjoyed from the number of migrant workers that have come to the UK recently. The strain on public services has been blamed on immigration, however it is the government that has failed to put extra money into these services whilst reaping the rewards of economic growth and greater tax revenues. It is not sustainable to follow an ‘open door’ policy towards European workers without supporting communities to cope with a bigger population. The current level of immigration can only continue to be beneficial if the national and local government respond to the needs of a bigger and more diverse population.

This conclusion is a strong one because:

1. It briefly mentions the strongest points

2. It has a message

3. It suggests a course of action to take in the future

As usual I’d like to leave you with a useful link which has some really good comments (and more links!) about writing conclusions. Today’s link is the online writing workshop from Purdue University.

Writing the main paragraphs of your essay

This post is about writing your main paragraphs and the most important point to make here is that of having a strong first sentence which presents the main idea of your paragraph. This sentence is often called your topic sentence. In an argumentative essay this sentence will present a strong argument. Look at the last post to see the plan and the introduction for the essay title:

“Is the present level of immigration in the United Kingdom beneficial to the country?”

This is the start of my first main paragraph after the introduction:

There is a widespread perception shared by big business and the government that the United Kingdom has benefited from immigration because these new workers firstly take certain low paid jobs which the existing population decline to take, and secondly, and more importantly, they help to overcome skill shortages in the country.

This is a good topic sentence because it:
1. puts forward an argument
2. it uses words from the title (which means you are hopefully answering the question)
3. it tells you what the rest of the sentence is going to be about.

After this sentence you need to support what you have said. That means giving evidence which justifies what you said in your topic sentence. Often this is when you will bring in your sources and refer to other people’s work and this is where referencing is so important (see “Referencing” post).

I would like to direct you to Andy Gillett’s site at the University of Hertfordshire which has some good exercises on topic sentences. Of course the danger of sending you there is that you won’t come back here! When you get to the writing page following this link click on TOPIC at the top of the page for topic sentence exercises.