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Essay writing guide

Contributed by Paul Bishop

Essay Writing Guide Introduction This section of the Tutorial Web Site is dedicated to providing some guidance about
writing essays in psychology. It is not a complete guide to essay writing (it is debatable whether such a thing can exist)
but an attempt to provide some hints about writing essays in psychology. If you follow the advice within these pages, it
will not guarantee you a good grade, but it may help. This guide is split into 5 sections; Titles, Structure, Writing Style,
Citing Sources and References. Each section deals with a topic that students have difficulty with when writing essays.
The section on titles outlines how to interpret the essay titles that you have been given. The next section deals with
structure and gives some hints as to how to develop and write a coherent essay. Writing style gives a few pointers about
what type of style is appropriate for a psychology essay. Citing sources outlines how to cite sources of information within
the text of the essay. Finally references shows how to provide a reference section that lists the sources that you have
used within the essay. {mospagebreak title=The Title}Interpreting the Title The first task involved in writing an essay is
working out what is being asked for by the essay title; it is important that you interpret what the essay question is asking
for correctly. This involves understanding what topic area the title refers to and what are you being asked to do with the
information. Common faults with essays are that they cover the wrong topic or they fail to deal with the information in the
way that was asked by the essay title. Thus there are two main questions that need to be asked at this stage; "what
information is being asked for by the question?" and "what are you being asked to do with that information?". The next
two sections will deal with each question in detail. What is the Topic? The first question concerns what area of
psychology the essay is to be about, for example: Describe the different models of short term memory obviously
concerns short term memory. Titles are normally transparent as regards the general area that they concern. Talking to
your tutor or the lecturer that set the question can normally clear up any ambiguities. It must be added that although the
general area of the question is obvious, the relevance of the some of the information you gather may not be. It is part of
the art of essay writing to decide what information should be used. For the example above, the focus of the essay should
be on short term memory, but there could be some mention of long term memory to provide the contrast. However the
discussion of long term memory should be kept to a minimum, and the LTM system should only be discussed in terms of
its relationship to short term memory What is being asked? The next issue to be dealt with when interpreting the question
is; "what are you being asked to do with the information you have researched?". It is important to know initially what is
being asked by the question. There are many different types of essay question, but they fall into two main categories; the
descriptive and the analytic. The descriptive is merely asking for a description of a certain area, for example the title
above should be answered with a full description of the different models of Short Term Memory. Therefore the main
objective in answering such a question is to provide a full and comprehensive account of the models of memory within
the essay's word limit. The next type of question is the analytical. Title such as: Compare and contrast different models of
memory or Discuss the different models of memory demand answers which have a degree of analysis of the topic. It
would not be enough to merely describe the different models of memory in an essay like this as that would only partially
answer the question. Analytical essay titles ask for a full discussion of the topic; for example, in the above titles, a good
answer would outline the different models of STM, and then describe any evidence for the different models. The analysis
of the topic would involve discussing the differences between the models, also how well they are supported by the
experimental evidence? Do some models explain the experimental results better than others? These questions, although
specific to the titles that we have outlined, are typical of the question you should be asking yourself when answering a
analytical essay. As can be seen, the first task of writing an essay is understanding what the title is asking. It should be
clear in your mind what the topic area is and what is being asked for, before you start to do research for the essay, never
mind start to write. The next section within this guide concerns another area that causes students' problems, structuring
the essay.{mospagebreak title=Structure} The Structure of an Essay It is a teaching cliché that an essay should have a
beginning, a middle and an end. You will have heard this old saw time and again. It is however true, and its over use is
due to its validity rather than lazy thinking. This section of the guide will use these three wise structural elements to
outline how you should attempt to write an essay, starting of course at the beginning, a very good place to start. The
Beginning The beginning of a essay normally takes up around 1-2 paragraphs. These first paragraphs are where the
topic is introduced and the main thrust of the essay is outlined. A good essay should begin with a definition of the main
concept in the essay title. For example if you are writing an essay on short term memory, then the essay should start with
a definition of the concept. The introduction should then give a picture of what is going to be said within the essay. The
Middle This is the "meat" of the essay and normally where students' essay structure starts to go wrong. The middle of the
essay is where the information that you are providing to answer the question goes; the description of the theories, of the
research, the discussion of the different concepts etc. The main issue here is how to link together this information into a
coherent whole. There are few general guidelines that apply to all types of essay and structuring this section is really a
skill you will develop with practice. There are however some hint that may be of use. The main problem with this section
is poor paragraphing. There are a few rules that are useful in writing paragraphs. The first one is have one general point
per paragraph. An example from an essay on Piaget illustrates this: Piaget's (1932) early view was that social interaction
had an early effect on children moral thinking. He suggested that children who are at the pre-operational level (2-7yrs
old) are affected by interaction with children their own age. At this stage children's interactions can lead to moral
development when the children contradict each other during these interactions. The contradictions cause changes in the
children's cognitive structure. These changes lead to more sophisticated moral thinking..... The above paragraph makes
one general point, that Piaget viewed social interaction as a factor in moral development and importantly there is one
sentence that states the main point of the paragraph (the first one). This means that the point being made is clear, and
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the rest of the paragraph merely elaborates this point, in this case showing what processes were involved in the moral
development. It is not however enough to just produce well formed paragraphs, these paragraph need to link together; it
is important for the structure of an essay that each paragraph lead into the next. When this does not happen the essay
can become incoherent and disjointed. These rules for paragraphs relate to the other sections of the essay, the end and
beginning, but are particularly important for the middle section. The End or Conclusions This last section of your essay
should be the conclusion. It should not just be a summary of the whole essay, but it should contain some conclusions
about what you have written. {mospagebreak title=Style}Essay Style Like any form of style, good essay style is almost
impossible to teach. Also (like for example your dress sense) it is difficult to be fully aware of and objective about your
writing style. There are however certain questions which you can ask when you are reading over your essay which can
tell how good or more importantly appropriate your style is. Clarity How clear is your essay? This is one of the biggest
problems students have with essay style. If you read over your essay and find that you have to re-read something to fully
understand it, then there may be a problem. One of the enemies of clarity is the overlong sentence. Students often tend
to produce sentences that last for 5 or 6 lines. You should attempt to write in fairly short sentences that don't tax the
attention of the reader. Other factors such as poor sentence structure for example also produce poor clarity. In the end
all that needs to asked is "can I write this sentence in such a way that makes its meaning clearer?". Appropriateness The
next question asks is the style that you have used appropriate for a Psychology essay? The correct style should be clear
and scientific. You should avoid unnecessary "rhetorical flourishes", irony, ambiguity (intentional or otherwise), and
informal language (for example using the first person). A good plain style is encouraged. Good examples of such writing
can be found in most psychological journal articles. This might sound puritanical but the point of scientific writing is to
clearly convey information not to entertain. Grammar There is little that needs to be said here. You must make sure that
your essay follows the rules of grammar, period. Some useful online resources are: Online English Grammar:This a fairly
comprehensive grammar online. The Elements of Style:This is the online version of a classic work on essay style and
good form in writing in general by William Strunk, Jr. It is specifically intended for English Literature students, so some of
the advice is inappropriate for psychology students. It has however interesting things to say to anyone who writes. It is
also important that you check your spelling either electronically or manually. If you use your word-processor's spell
checker make sure it does not replace any psychological terms with approximations (hippo campus-
hippopotamus)(Surely people with even the weakest sense of humour don't find these funny anymore). {mospagebreak
title=Citing Sources}Citing Sources Almost all psychology essays are evidence based. This means that everything you
say about the topic should be backed up by evidence. This can be illustrated by using one of our examples, "Discuss the
different models of short term memory". A good essay would have outlined the different models of memory, citing the
sources that were used and then described the experimental evidence for each theory. For example if one model
predicts that different types of stimulus are remembered differently, is there experimental evidence to back this up? This
illustrates one of the essential elements in psychological essays; providing evidence. Essays that do not provide
evidence for what they say receive very poor marks. One difficulty that students have is how to cite the sources of
information and evidence within an essay. This section of the guide will attempt to do outline how this is done. The
Basics In Psychology there is a fairly standard method of citing sources within text. It differs from other disciplines such
as English or some of the physical sciences, and is set by the APA. The standard way to cite a source is best shown by
example; if you wanted to outline what Baddeley said about short term memory and the information had been taken from
his book; "Human Memory: theory and practice". What you could perhaps write is: "Baddeley 1(1997)2 states that STM
can be perhaps split into different subsystems..."
- The author of the source
- The year of publication of the source This also could be equally correctly be written as: "One view is that STM can be
perhaps split into different subsystems (Baddeley1 19972)…"
- The author of the source's second name
- The year of publication of the source The main detail to remember is to give the name of the author of the source of
information and its date of publication. These identify the author to the author. The date is used to identify the source in
the list of sources that you provide at the end of the essay (this is described in the next section). If the source has two
authors then use both the author's names each time you cite the source: "Bronfenbrenner and Ceci (1985) state that.... "
If your source has three or more authors then you provide the second names of all the authors when you first cite the
source: "Ceci, Baker, and Bronfenbrenner(1988) state that.... " and there after you can shorten this to: "Ceci, et al.(1988)
state that.... " As has been said citing evidence is something many student get wrong, the next page shows some of the
common errors that are produced. {mospagebreak title=Citing Problems}No Sources There are numerous type of errors
that can be made, the main one being not citing sources at all. The next example illustrates this: "Some Psychologists
believe that Short Term Memory has more than one system. It has been shown that there could be three independent
subsystems, each dealing with different memory processes." There are two major errors within this example. The first
mistake is that there are no sources referenced; it is not clear from what is written where the information comes from.
The next error concerns the second sentence. This sentence states that it has been shown that there are three
subsystems but provides no evidence from experimental work to back this up. The writer should have provided, at least,
references to experiments that have backed up their assertions and perhaps short descriptions of the experiments. When
you make any statement of psychological fact, you must back it up with evidence. Taking what has said to heart, the
above example could be rewritten: "Baddeley (1997) believes that Short Term Memory is more than one system.
Evidence from experimental studies using dual task methodology (Baddeley 1998) has shown that there could be three
inter-dependent subsystems, each dealing with different memory processes. Baddeley et al.(1975) found that..." The
above provides both the sources and starts to outline the evidence for the assertion that STM has more than one system.
Footnotes A further error is the use of footnotes; although this is common usage in other social sciences and the
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humanities, footnotes are not generally used in psychology to reference sources. It is sometimes difficult when you are
starting to write essays to keep changing styles but it is important that you keep to the standard style used in psychology.
Poor Formatting The rules involved in citing sources within text are outlined clearly here and elsewhere (for example
http://nutsandbolts.washcoll.edu/apa.html). There are problems that occur more often than others such as using the title
of the source within the reference in the text: Piaget was one of the main founders of developmental psychology
(Gleitman et al. Psychology)... This example makes two mistakes, forgetting to put the date with the reference, and giving
the title of the source. There are many different ways of doing referencing wrong and only one way of doing it right. So do
it right. {mospagebreak title=Quotations}Quoting other AuthorsThe use of quotations is not as common in Psychology as
it is in other subjects. Generally at Level 1 and 2 the use of quotations is not encouraged. It is important to make obvious
to the marker that you understand the material in your essay and this may not be clear if you use quotations extensively.
An example of bad use of quotations is students quoting from the introductory textbook, it is better that you show you
understand of the concept and issues by using your own words.However there are times when you encounter a particular
well worded passage that you can work into your essay and still show understanding. There are rules set by the APA on
how to do this, these stipulate what information you need to give about the quotation and how you format it in your essay.
If you quotation is short (less than 2 lines long), then it is included in the text in quotation marks e.g.Piaget (1969) states
"Equilibration is the fundamental factor in development" (p. 23).There are two important bits of referencing here that are
needed for any quotation that you provide. Firstly the source of the quote Piaget (1969) is given in the normal fashion,
which is the last name and publication date of the source. Then at the end of the quote the page number in the source
that the quote comes is given in parenthesis (p.23). You need to give both of these pieces of information for a proper
formatted quotation. Obviously the source is then listed in full in the Reference Section.If the quote is long then is
customary to indent the quote for clarity without quotation marks:Piaget (1969) summarises his account of infant
cognitive development thus:A sensorimotor phase lasts until approximately 1½ years of age with a first sub period of
centration the subjects own body (lasting about 7 to 9 months) followed by a second one of objectification and
spatialization of the schemes of practical intelligence. (p.9)It can be see that Piaget…The actual text of the quote is
in the indented section starting "A sensorimotor phase…" and finishing "… practical intelligence". The same
referencing information is given in the above example as before with the publication date and the page from which the
quote is taken. More detail can be found at here{mospagebreak title=Reference Section}The Reference Section The last
section outlined how to cite or reference sources within the text. This section shows how to complete the reference
section at the end of the essay. The reference section is the list of all the sources cited or referenced in the essay, and
only those that were referenced or cited in the essay. The list is arranged alphabetically by the first author's surname.
There is a format for listing different types of sources such as books, journal articles and web sources. These are set by
the APA and there are numerous sources on the Web that outline the guidelines, (many can be found in the weblinks
section of the portal) which describes the different formats and also gives more advice on referencing within the essay
text. In order to give you some idea how to format the most common sources, the APA format for each one is given
below (note: these are taken from the Report Writing Guide but copied here to save download time). Journal Article
When listing a journal article, you must give the name of the author(s), the year it was published, the title of the actual
journal article, then in italics (or underlined) the name of the journal and volume number, and lastly the pages the articles
is on. An example clarifies this: Tudge, J.R.H.,1 (1989)2. When collaboration leads to regression: some negative
consequences of socio-cognitive conflict3. European Journal Of Social Psychology4 195,123-1386
- The author(s) name(s)
- The year of publication .
- The title of the article
- The journal's name (note italics)
- The volume number of the Journal (again note italics)
- The articles page numbers If there is more that one author, merely give the authors' names in the order they are on the
article: Tudge, J.R.H., and Winterhoff, P.A.(1989) etc... Or for more than two authors: Tudge, J.R.H., Winterhoff, P.A. and
Hogan, D.M.(1996) etc.. Books The format for books is a little different. The author(s) name(s) come first, then in italics
the title of the Book, then where the book was published, and who it was published by: Piaget, J.1 (1928)2. Judgement
and reasoning in the child3.London4:Routledge and Kegan Paul5
- The Author(s) name(s)
- The year of publication
- The title of the book
- Where the book was published
- The publishers If the book you are listing is an edited book, then you merely put the editors name where the authors'
names are normally put, and put (Eds) before the year of publication. If there is more than one author or editor then
follow the format for authors outlined for journal articles. Chapters in an Edited Book The format is similar to the book
format; first the names of the authors of the chapter, the title of the chapter, the name of the editors of the whole book,
the title of the Book (in italics),and finally the place of publication and the publisher: Glachan, M., and
Light,P.1(1982)2Peer interaction and learning3. In G. Butterworth and P. Light (Eds) 4 Social Cognition5 Brighton:
Harvester.6
- The authors of the chapter
- The year of publication
- The title of the chapter
- The editors of the book the chapter was in, (note the initials come before the surname)
- The title of the book
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- The place of publication and publisher Electronic Sources Electronic sources refer to sources that have been found or
retrieved through computer. These can be CD-Roms, telnet sites, or Web pages. The format for most types of electronic
source can be found at the APA's own site (http://www.apastyle.org/elecref.html). The example provided here is of a web
page, which is the most common used type of electronic source. It is important to note that the APA make a distinction
between citing a whole web site and citing individual pages within a web site. If you cite a whole web site then you merely
need to give the URL (the web address) within the text and no corresponding entry in the reference section is needed. If
you are citing a page within a site then a entry within the reference section is needed: Memory and dementia (1998)1.
London: The Royal College of Psychiatrists2. Retrieved January 25, 19963, from the World Wide Web:
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/public/help/memory/memory.htm4
- The title of the page and date of publication
- Which organisation was responsible for the page
- When you looked at the page
- The URL or web address If the page has an obvious author, his/her name goes before the title in the manner of a
Journal Article. If you have any problems with reference formatting then check out the websites included on the Links
section within the Report Writing Guide. The next page outlines a few of the errors made by students in referencing a
text. Common Errors The major error that students make with this section is listing sources that are not referenced or
cited in the text. If you have not cited a source then do not put it in the references section. Even if you use a book for
background reading, if you did not cite it within the text then do not list it in the reference section. The reference section is
there to allow people who have read your essay to find the sources of information that you have cited, not to show how
much you have read. The other main error is not following the rules outlined on the previous page. The rules are easy
enough to follow and if you get into the habit of following them, they become second nature. It is important that you follow
the format that has been outlined; you will lose marks if you don't. Conclusion and a Short Sermon Over the few pages
within this guide we have attempted to provide at least a few hints on how to complete psychology essays. The rest is up
to you, no amount of hints and tips can save you if you do not do enough background reading or tackle the question
correctly. One final point to be made is that what is normally missing from most undergraduate essays is thought. It
seems often the case that the information within an essay has passed from the books the student has read to the notes
she has taken to the first-to-last draft of the essay, at no time passing through the student's cerebral cortex. It pays to
spend some time thinking about the information that you have found, making sure that you fully understand it and have a
clear grasp of any issues. It is almost immediately clear to any marker which students have thought about what they are
writing and which students have not. It should be clear which essays get the better marks.

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