Essays and Essay Planning Guidance Essay Example

Essays and Essay Planning Guidance Essay Example Essays and Essay Planning Guidance Essay Essays and Essay Planning Guidance Essay political ideas. 7. Impractical: Who decides? How is it to be done? Is it not impossible to be correct? Any decision has to be arbitrary Case for censorship 10 1. Sex is private and precious: it should not be demeaned by representations of it in public. 2. Sex can be offensive: some people may find it so and should not have to risk being exposed to what they would find pornographic. . Corruption can be progressive: can begin with sex and continue until all decent values are eventually destroyed. 4. Participants might be corrupted: especially true of young children. 5. Violence can encourage imitation: by displaying violence even while condemning it -it can be legitimised and can also encourage imitation amongst a dangerous minority. 6. Violence is often glorified: encourages callous attitudes. Conclusion Case against censorship much stronger. No necessary connection between the two topics. From: mantex. co. uk/samples/plan. htm : 11 Planning Guide to Essay Planning 3 Strategy Many students, after having analysed an essay topic, may go straight to the library and read extensively on the subject. It is only after doing this research that they feel confident enough to start thinking and planning out their answer. Such an approach can be a mistake, however. They may find themselves producing a myriad of notes and then being at a loss to figure how these notes can be transformed into a coherent piece of writing. Before you read too much (or if possible, before you read anything at all), it is a good idea to do as much thinking and planning around the topic as you can. The benefit of this approach is that right from the start you can begin to get a sense of the shape your essay will take. It also means you can be more strategic in your reading, allowing you to search for specific reading materials rather than collecting a mass of material that may ultimately have limited relevance to your work. The task of writing is usually much easier if you create a set of notes which outline the points you are going to make. Using this approach, you will create a basic structure on which your ideas can be built. Plan This is a part of the essay-writing process that is best carried out using plenty of scrap paper. Get used to the idea of shaping and re-shaping your ideas before you start writing, editing and rearranging your arguments as you give them more thought. Planning onscreen using a word-processor is possible, but its a fairly advanced technique, and it doesn’t allow as much freedom to move ideas around and see them in relation to each other. Analyse the question Make sure you understand what the question is asking for. What is it giving you the chance to write about? What is its central issue? Analyse any of its key terms and any instructions. If you are in any doubt, ask your tutor to explain what is required. Generate ideas You need to assemble ideas for the essay. One way is to take a sheet of paper and make a note of anything which might be relevant to your answer. These might be topics, ideas, observations, or instances from your study materials. Put down anything you think of at this stage. Decide on topics On another sheet of paper, extract from your brainstorm listings those topics and points of argument which are of greatest relevance to the question and its central issue. Throw out anything which cannot be directly related to the essay question. Put topics in order On a third sheet of paper, put these chosen topics in some logical sequence. At this stage you should be formulating a basic response to the question, even if it is provisional and 12 may later be changed. Try to arrange the points so that they form a persuasive and coherent argument. Arrange your evidence All the major points in your argument need to be supported by some sort of evidence. On any further sheets of paper, compile a list of brief quotations from other sources (together with page references) which will be offered as your evidence. Compile a reference list as you collect sources. Use a recognised referencing style such as the Harvard â€Å"author/date† method. Make necessary changes While you have been engaged in the first stages of planning, new ideas may have come to mind. Alternate evidence may have occurred to you, or the line of your argument may have shifted somewhat. Be prepared at this stage to rearrange your plan so that it incorporates any of these new materials or ideas. Try out different arrangements of your essay topics until you are sure they form the most convincing and logical sequence. Finalise essay plan The structure of most essay plans can be summarised as Introduction Arguments Conclusion. State your case as briefly and rapidly as possible, present the evidence for this case in the body of your essay, then sum up and try to lift the argument to a higher level in your conclusion. Your final plan should be something like a list of six to ten major points of argument. Each one of these points will be expanded to a paragraph of around 100-200 words minimum in length (never one sentence! ). Relevance At all stages of essay planning, and even when writing the essay, you should keep the question in mind. Keep asking yourself Is this evidence directly relevant to the topic I have been asked to discuss? If in doubt, be prepared to scrap plans and formulate new ones which is much easier than scrapping finished essays. At all times aim for clarity and logic in your argument From: clpd. bbk. ac. uk/students/essayplanning 13 Sample Essay Plan 1 Critically examine the view that voting behaviour in the United Kingdom during the last thirty years has been increasingly influenced by factors other than social class. 1. Introduction You first need to identify the view that is being questioned. This is the theory of dealignment, which claims that the class–party relationship has broken down. This view, and the question itself, assumes that voting behaviour more than thirty years ago was influenced mainly by social class. You may want to question this assumption. You will need, therefore, to take a historical approach to the question, looking at trends over time. You should say that you will look at the traditional view and that you will then consider the case for and against dealignment. 2. The class–party relationship. class– This section will look at the argument that there has been a strong relationship between class and party. The work of Butler and Stokes was a classic statement of this, showing that working-class voters supported the Labour Party and middle-class voters supported the Conservative Party. Butler and Stokes noted that this relationship was not perfect: there were ‘deviant’ voters who voted in the opposite way. You will get more credit if you can give examples: for example, the manual workers with ‘deferential’ attitudes. They also pointed to the tendency for the elderly and for women to be more Conservative than their class background would suggest. 3. Dealignment It has been suggested that a process of dealignment has been occurring since at least the 1970s. There are two aspects to this alleged dealignment- partisan dealignment and class dealignment- and you should define each of these. You will gain extra marks if you can show that this is a deep-seated trend and is not unique to Britain. Behind this argument is the claim that ‘issue voting’ is now more important than class commitment. People are seen as making rational choices about which party is most likely to pursue appropriate policies on issues that concern them. Voters are, therefore, more ‘instrumental’. This also leads, so Heath et al. have argued, to more ‘tactical’ voting and, therefore, to less predictability in elections. 4. The New Right and centre politics Some commentators (for example, Stuart Hall) see the decline of class voting as, in part, a consequence of the rise of ‘authoritarian populism’ during the 1980s. This move to the right undermined Labour support in Britain and saw Labour defeats in 1983, 1987, and 1992. Labour’s response to these changes was to move closer to the centre of the political divide in order to recapture the more instrumental, issueoriented voters. You could conclude your discussion by saying that New Labour won the election in 1997 because it no longer relied on the declining foundations of its traditional, class-based support. You should make the point that political change cannot be explained in terms of political factors alone. There have been a number of important social and economic changes in Britain, and these have affected the old class allegiances. Factors pointed to have been the rise in the employment of women, the declining manufacturing base, the increasing number of service-sector jobs, the decline in the trade-union movement, and the break-up of old communities. You could draw on various evidence of these factors and how they have undermined the significance of class. 14 6. Conclusion An examination of the evidence seems to indicate that there has been a change in voting behaviour and that this can usefully be seen as involving a decline in class alignment and a strengthening of factors other than class. You might also like to conclude, however, that class remains an important factor alongside these other factors and that class dealignment is not the same thing as the emergence of a classless society. 15 Sample Sample essay plan 2 Should the government leave house prices to market forces, or actively intervene to prevent a house price crash? Justify your answer. Evaluation might consider some of these questions: What does a house price crash actually mean? What is the case for leaving house prices to market forces? What is the case for some form of intervention? What are the options for intervention? What are the problems with such intervention? Will house prices crash as the question implies – this can and should be challenged in your answer A housing crash / market correction might be exactly what the arket needs after a ten year boom! The case for leaving house prices to market forces? Ultimately house prices are determined by what homebuyers are willing and able to pay for a property and also the number of properties (new and existing) made available for sale Demand is driven by Incomes Unemployment The cost of a mortgage The availability of mortgage finance (including the loans to income multiple) Expectations of future price movements Supply is driven by Costs of construction Availability of land for housing development and its price Expectations of future price movements The number of properties existing homeowners decide to sell at a given price case The case for leaving it to the market is that Eventually if prices rise too far, demand will fall off and prices will adjust Higher prices will stimulate an increase in new house-building which will help the market reach equilibrium Private sector agents are often better judges of what the market needs than the government There is no certainty that the market will crash – it might experience a slowdown over a number of years The case for government intervention is that The booming market has created an inequitable (unfair) allocation of resources Major problems for housing affordability / impact on mobility of labour A housing crash would create difficulties for the economy and risk causing a collapse in consumer spending / recession Options for intervention: 16 Interest rates n ot an option – these are set independently by the Bank of England! Changes in stamp duty e. g. ower stamp duty for the lower end of the housing market New schemes to promote part ownership – part rent to increase affordability Relaxation of planning controls to stimulate new house building Increase in investment spending in new social housing to give people more choice of housing types What are the problems with such intervention? Risk of government failure Ineffective policies – government policies might actually do very little given the power of market forces Time lags – it takes a long time for government policies to work, by which time the market might already have started to adjust or a major housing correction might have happened. 17