Guide to Writing Psychology Essays for Masters Students, Study notes of Psychology

Download Guide to Writing Psychology Essays for Masters Students and more Study notes Psychology in PDF only on Docsity! Writing Essays for Psychology MScs Martin Corley October 21, 2009 This is a brief guide to essay writing, originally written for the the MSc Psycholinguistics Handbook.1 Section 2 covers the issues in writing an argumentative essay. Section 3 covers the format requirements for essays submitted to Psychology; although these requirements are unlikely to differ substantially from course to course, it is your responsibility to check with the appropriate Module Conveners that other formatting conventions do not apply. In the Taught Masters Handbook you can find detailed information on the marking scheme used throughout the course. 1 Choosing a Topic In general, the choice of an essay topic will not be dependent on an understanding of all topics covered by the classwork of a given module: whereas each module is designed to give you an overview of a particular area, in the essay you are expected to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of theoretical (and possibly methodological) issues concerning a topic of your choice. This will allow you to go into much greater depth than is possible during classes, and your essay will, of necessity, cover areas which are not explicitly addressed by the course material. To select a topic, you should normally begin with a vague idea of a topic that is of interest to you, and find some relevant material to read. Once you are starting to become familiar with the relevant literature, you should be able to generate the core thesis of your essay (this might be a claim about the subject, or a question that has provoked debate in the literature, for example). You should be able to summarise the thesis into a couple of sentences (beginning What my essay is about is. . . ). With a little further reading, you should be able to refine your thesis and choose an essay title. During this process, you should feel free to consult your Module Convener, who will normally be able to point you in the direction of relevant literature, or help you refine the question that you aim to address in the essay. Sources of Information A prime consideration in essay-writing is that of how to obtain relevant information. Clearly the libraries (see section ??) are the most essential resource, and your module organiser should be able to point you at readings relevant to your topic of interest. However, you should also have the skills to search for information yourself (module organisers don’t know everything; 1Parts of this document have been compiled from documents originally written by Marielle Lange, Mits Ota, and Sue Widdicombe. 1 nor will they be impressed if you’ve simply read and regurgitated what they’ve suggested). Two primary sources of relevant information which the University subscribes to are Web of Knowledge (http://wok.mimas.ac.uk/) and PsycInfo (see http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/ resources/databases/Quickstarts/PSYCHINFO.pdf). These are searchable databases of journal articles (Web of Knowledge) and other printed material (PsycInfo), which should make the task of finding relevant literature much easier. You should take some time to ensure that you become familiar with them. Many recent journal articles, including those from journals published by the APA, are available electronically to users at Edinburgh University. To find these, go to the library website (http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/) and select ‘electronic journals’. 2 Writing Argumentative Essays Once you have chosen a topic, you should produce an argumentative essay of 3,000 words. This section contains basic advice on writing argumentative essays, which may be of use if you come from a more technical background. Organisation Essays should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The introduction should rehearse the issues raised by the title; the main body of the essay should take these issues one by one, discussing and illustrating them; the conclusion will pull together the various strands of argument and contain a final and extended statement of your position on the topic addressed. You should ensure that paragraphs contain ideas, theories, and experiments which make sense when considered together—don’t scatter them through the essay as you remember them or come across them. Although there are of course exceptions to every rule, a good essay will rarely address a topic by considering relevant literature in chronological order. Style The language of the essay should be scientific, but this does not mean that it should be written in a high-flown manner which doesn’t come naturally to you (on the other hand, you shouldn’t resort to slang). The target audience for your essay is the “intelligent layperson”— ideally, anyone should be able to follow your ideas and arguments. If you don’t think they would be able to, it could be the case that your understanding of the issues is at fault—time for a re-think? Essays are not formally penalised for minor grammatical errors. However, poor grammar can affect your mark in 2 ways: 1. if the grammar renders a section incomprehensible, then the marker must assume you don’t know the correct story; 2. a continuous series of grammatical errors, which the marker has to waste time deciphering and correcting, will produce a feeling of irritation (quite rightly) and this will affect the final mark (again, quite rightly). It is clearly to your advantage, therefore, to proof-read and spellcheck your essays before submission. 2