Studying Sociology

Getting good grades for your written work

There are many websites that will provide you with good advice on writing papers and essays in sociology (for example, see http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/writpap.html). The most important advice we can give you is that any assignment needs careful planning, not a last-minute rush. As lecturers, we are realistic about the way that students go about their assignments - we were once students ourselves! What we have learned from our own bitter experience is that the 'night before the deadline' strategy guarantees that you will not do as well as you could have done with a little forethought and planning. So, here are some further general guidelines to help you up the grade.

1    The first task when given an assignment is to work out how long you have to complete it and the space/timeslots that you can devote to it. We advocate the use of Individual Action Planning (see http://p2001.health.org/st02/appnd9.htm for an example of an IAP) as a tool to manage your time and resources to complete your assignments effectively. This will involve you in identifying:

• the formative and summative targets (the summative being the completion of the assignment)
• the strategies that will achieve these targets
• and the time-scale within which each stage has to be completed.

Writing the targets down - usually in a diary mode - will help you to keep track of all your work and social commitments and ensure that you deliver a top quality assignment on time.

2    When you receive your assignment, you also need to carry out an audit of the essay question or task, identifying what the question requires you to do and what it requires you to do it about. The list of sociological concepts that you should have completed for each chapter will help you with the subject matter of the task. It is important that you are clear about the action words in an assignment as well as the subject of the task. For example, if the question asks you to 'assess' something sociological, you need to ensure that a good proportion of your work is directed explicitly towards evaluation, considering the strengths and weaknesses of a case/issue before coming to a conclusion about it.

3    When you are clear about what you have to do - both in terms of subject and action - then you need to begin to gather information about the task/assignment. It is never enough just to reproduce your notes (or even our text!) in answer to a question. High marks are given for originality of thought and materials and for the way that you take new information and apply it to the question in hand. You therefore need to do some basic research yourself in gathering materials.

4    A good starting-point for this process is our textbook and this website. In the text, we make suggestions for further reading in each chapter and these should be your first port of call in stretching your sociological knowledge. The bibliography in the text is another source of relevant references. In other sections of this website, you will also find advice on further reading and website links that will be worth following up. Another tack might be to look at the timeline on this site, locating important sociologists who might contribute to the debate in whatever area you are studying. Do not neglect to widen your research by using your library's search facility on the database or search engines on the world wide web.

5    When you have collected enough material to begin to write the assignment/essay, you need to sit down and plan the structure of what you are going to

• Begin with an introduction that sets out the problem/issue in your own words.
• End with a conclusion that summarises or encapsulates the substance of the argument/debate that you have been engaged in, without introducing new material.
• The middle of the assignment should incorporate a series of paragraphs, each containing a point of substance, and each following on from the next logically.
• You need to address all aspects of the task/question in the body of your work.
• You should include a balance of opinions/viewpoints, even where you do not agree with some, to show where your conclusions emerge from.

6    However, there are some other aspects of writing for an academic purpose that you need to be aware of:

• Proper referencing is essential in academic writing. To support points made, you need to be able to give enough information about your sources that readers can go and find the original for themselves. Each institution will have their own preferred system of referencing, so make sure that you conform to it.
• Plagiarism is penalised in all academic work. If you are using other people's words you must use quotation and reference and not present them as your own. It is actually relatively easy to spot large chunks of text taken from another source and unacknowledged. The style and context are the key discrepancies.
• Downloading pre-prepared materials from the internet (whether free or paid for!) and presenting these as your own work is plagiarism and subject to censure.

7    When you have completed your first draft (bearing these factors in mind), word- processing applications offer a whole range of tools that will enable you to hone your work.

• Changes of font colour can help you to highlight where you feel particular aspects of your work are strong or weak. Alternatively, you might want to change to red where you think evaluation has taken place, or use two colours to identify the pros and cons of an argument. In this way, you can effectively review and assess your own work before you submit it for formal assessment.
• Re-writing to produce a more focused argument is easy and clean in a word-processed document.
• Cutting and pasting paragraphs can assist you in organising your material to best advantage.
• Bibliographic facilities can ensure that your referencing is systematic, consistent and accurate.
• Always spell-check your work, but beware of relying completely on this facility as it is not perfect.
• Read through your assignment carefully and correct errors before you hand it in.

8    When you receive your assignment back, look carefully at the comments made about it and identify any strategies suggested for making improvements. Act upon these in your next assignment.