How to Write Brilliant Psychology Essays. Paul Dickerson

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СКАЧАТЬ on introductions

      Introductions often attract feedback from markers. Let’s look at some of the more common forms of feedback that directly and indirectly indicate that changes to the introduction would be a good idea. Some of the feedback will indicate quite precisely the aspect of your introduction that should be improved.

      The following feedback is often used in commenting on introductions:

       Include a statement of intent

       Signpost your essay

       Indicate how your essay will address the question

      These comments all indicate that your essay should overtly indicate how your essay will address the question. Your introduction needs to identify what will be covered in your essay. This statement of intent should convey a sense that you thought intelligently about what you included and the order in which you included it, rather than it appearing to be the result of unthinking passivity, such as simply following the content and order of a textbook, lecture notes or, much worse, your favourite psychology website.

       Outline how your essay will approach/address/answer the essay question

      This is getting at the same idea as the previous comments, but it does usefully highlight that you need to convey a sense of the relevance of what you plan to include for the essay title. A strong statement of intent conveys a sense of not only what will be included and when it will be included, but also why it is relevant for this particular essay.

       Set the context for the essay

       Don’t start abruptly

       Don’t start so generally

      These comments about the first paragraph in your essay indicate that as well as considering your statement of intent, your orientating sentence should be looked at. The first – or orientating – sentence in your essay is a challenge and is often easier to write after you have completed most, or perhaps all, of your essay. Use your orientating sentence to convey an awareness of the relevance of thinking about the domain that is indicated by the essay title. A well-written orientating sentence cues the reader into thinking about the specific aspects of psychology from which the essay topic is drawn. This can vary but might be thought of as the sort of subsection in a textbook in which you could imagine finding this essay title. For example, ‘Cognitive development in children has been a key concern within developmental psychology and a focus of substantial debate’ could set up a debate between different approaches to children’s cognitive development, while ‘Piaget’s stage theory of children’s cognitive development has been a major influence within developmental psychology while simultaneously being questioned in terms of its theoretical scope and its empirical basis’ sets up a more specific evaluation of Piaget’s contribution. Sometimes an additional sentence may be used to further specify the relevant focus of the essay. In the previous example, adding a sentence such as, ‘One aspect of Piaget’s work that has attracted considerable debate concerns his series of Conservation experiments’, identifies that a more specific focus on evaluating Piaget’s Conservation experiments will be pursued. Feedback comments such as these, when made in response to your introduction or first paragraph, can be a challenge to address, but looking at both your orientating sentence and statement of intent (unless another part of your essay is indicated by the comment) is wise. Do bear in mind that your orientating sentence and statement of intent can often be substantially improved if you edit them after you have finished you essay.

      Exercise

      Try to Wreck It! – The Intro

      The introduction below is not perfect, but it is fairly good. See how bad you can make it with the fewest changes and then compare your best effort to the online version.

      For this challenge you are allowed to:

       Change the order of the sentences.

       Swap an existing sentence for one of the alternative sentences below.

       Create your own on-topic, grammatically correct but otherwise lousy alternative sentences (see the alternative sentence pool for ideas).

      If you are to make it really bad in as few changes as possible, what are you going to target and why?

      Essay title:

      ‘To what extent do Onorato and Turner (2004) critique the claim by Gaertner, Sedikes and Graetz that self-schemas are ‘‘monuments of stability’’ (1999: 5)?’

      The introduction

      The notion of self-schemas has been particularly important in social psychology, drawing on the substantial body of research into schemas to provide an empirically informed perspective on the often-illusive topic of self. This essay will start by briefly outlining some key work on self-schemas before discussing the challenge provided by Onorato and Turner’s (2004) self-categorisation approach, in particular focusing on the argument that self-perception is variable and context-dependent. The essay will also consider some of the challenges to social identity and self-categorisation approaches developed within discursive psychology, which in turn suggest that these approaches themselves have, through focusing on cognitive aspects of self and identity, failed to grasp something of the fluidity of constructions of self.

      What makes this introduction good?

      For a three-sentence introduction this is reasonably strong, especially if the material referred to really is made relevant in the body of the essay. The introduction provides an informed orientating sentence. It outlines what the essay will cover and demonstrates an understanding of the key focus (Onorato and Turner’s criticism of Gaertner, Sedikes and Graetz’s claim that ‘self-schemas are “monuments of stability”’). It further indicates an awareness of other potentially relevant material against which this criticism can be evaluated, although in addressing this it will have to keep focusing on the precise essay title, making it clear how discursive approaches are relevant for evaluating Onarato and Turner’s critique of Gaertner et al.’s claim.

      Alternative sentence pool <and why they are not so great>

       Who am I? Who are you? What is self? Philosophers and psychologists have struggled with these issues through the ages. <Admittedly this is more than one sentence, but it reveals important weaknesses. Above all, it is far too vague. Being more specific is both better in itself and also enables relevant knowledge to be drawn in more easily. As it stands, can you even tell that the author of this knows anything about the topic at all?>

       The self is a key issue in psychology and has been the focus of much empirical study. <Again, too vague and no real psychological knowledge is evident. Anyone could write a sentence like this without knowing anything about psychology.>

       Gaertner, Sedikes and Graetz (1999) proved that self-schemas are ‘‘monuments of stability’’ (1999: 5), whereas Onorato and Turner (2004) proved that this was not true. <Psychology essays are typically much more concerned with evaluating different perspectives than with identifying what has been proved. This example is deliberately bad to vividly СКАЧАТЬ