Business Communication

Lecture 7
WRITING ACADEMIC ESSAYS
 ESSAY
Essays are freer forms of scientific contribution
and should be characterized by critical and
creative approaches, uncovering new
perspectives and fostering reflections on
relevant subjects about the field in readers.
 Contents

PART ONE:
Topic Selection and Analysis
The Research Question
Structure of a Research Paper
(Introduction,Body,Conclusion)
PART TWO:
Should you use the Words of Others?
What is Plagiarism?
Final Words
Sample Essay
 Topic Selection and Analysis
The first thing you will need to assume is that
your topic is likely to be too broad, that is, it will
require you to deal with too much information
for one essay. If you leave the topic broad, it will
be superficial. Picture it like this: You have two
lakes, one small but deep, the other large but
shallow.
 Cont

Narrow lake is like taking your broad topic

and choosing to deal with only one part of Wide but shallow lake is like a broad topic
it, but now in depth
 The Research Question
A research essay is intended to allow you to
answer a question or controversy related
to the topic you are studying.
 How to develop a proper research
question?
Narrow your topic as described in Topic Selection
and Analysis above.
Use reference sources or short introductions to
your topic in books to discover aspects of the
topic that are controversial or need investigation.
Develop a few possible research questions based
on what you find in reference sources. These
should be one sentence questions that are simple
and clear.
Choose any one of these questions to be the
research question for your essay.
 Cont Note
Take note that every research essay should have
only one research question. You do
not want to have an essay that states, "The
following paper will examine __________
and will also _____________ and will also
________________." You want to deal
with only one question in any research project.
 Cont.. Examples
"The history of industrial development in
Korea." You choose one aspect and narrow your
topic to "The history of the automobile industry
in Korea during the Asian Financial Crisis of the
late 1990s."Then you develop a research
question:
"Did the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s
bring harm or did it bring benefit to the
automobile industry in Korea?"
 Cont
The topic, "Euthanasia" (that is, helping very ill people to end their
lives). As you begin research, you discover that euthanasia is legal
under certain conditions in the Netherlands. So you narrow to
"Euthanasia in the Netherlands. "Also, from your reading you discover
the argument of some people that once euthanasia is legalized, this
will lead to the death of people who did not want to die (very elderly
people, the disabled, etc.) This is called a "slippery slope argument,"
which says that once your feet slip on a hillside, you will slide all the
way to the bottom of the hill. Similarly, the argument is that once you
allow certain people to kill other people, the killing will increase until
many people who didnt want to die are also killed. Thus your research
question could be: "What evidence is there, if any, from the
Netherlands euthanasia experience that legalizing euthanasia creates
a slippery slope?" Your research would investigate what is being done
with euthanasia now that it is legal in the Netherlands.
 Structure of a Research Paper
Introduction
The introduction serves two purposes. First, it
allows you to provide the reader with some
brief background information about the topic.
Second, it lets you state your research question.
Note that your research question must always
be in your introduction. It's best to make it the
last sentence of your introduction.
 Cont. The Body
The body of the research essay is the main part. It is
generally broken down into various headings that
deal with aspects of your topic. It is not easy to
decide what headings should be in the body or in
what order they should come. You must look at
your topic and ask yourself, "What issues must I
cover in order to answer my research question?"
This may mean that you need a section to describe
the controversy in depth, a section to answer the
arguments of someone who does not agree with
your position, and a section to make a strong case
for your position being true.
 Cont..
"Did the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s
bring harm or did it bring benefit to the
automobile industry in Korea?"
I. Introduction
II. Initial Effect on the Automobile Industry
III. Later Effect on the Automobile Industry
IV. Was the Effect Positive or Negative?
V. Conclusion
 Cont
"What evidence is there, if any, from the
Netherlands euthanasia experience that legalizing
euthanasia creates a slippery slope?"
I. Introduction
II. The Laws that Control Euthanasia in the
Netherlands
III. Actual use of Euthanasia Laws in the
Netherlands
IV. Is there evidence that Doctors are going beyond
the Controls of the Euthanasia Laws?
V. Conclusion
 Cont
The Conclusion
The conclusion summarizes your research and
answers your research question.
 How to start researching your essay

After analysing your question, you can begin

researching that question, gathering relevant
sources and extracting relevant ideas from those
sources. But, remember your purpose: it is
expected that your essay will answer the
question by providing a strong and persuasive
academic argument, that explores the central
issues raised in the literature, and is supported
by evidence from quality sources.
 1. Use course materials

Essay questions challenge you to select and apply some of the key ideas,
concepts, principles and theories in your course. For example,
Indigenous Australians and Australian Society has as one of its essay
questions:
Explain the role of the liberal welfare state in Indigenous Australian affairs
and evaluate the effects on Indigenous life worlds.
Search first within your course: the lectures, relevant readings or
recommended readings, even your course outline will provide an overview of
the key ideas of the course. While it is unusual to use lecture notes or course
outlines as sources in your essay, they are great places to gather a general
understanding of your topic. It is acceptable to use articles which may have
been copied explicitly (in full or in part) for your course, but reference the
original source not the course material.
 2. Identify starting points

It is rarely acceptable to limit your sources just to

those provided by the lecturer. A range of journals,
websites and readings divided into topics, not all
courses do this. It is expected that you will read
more widely to identify a range of different
positions, theoretical approaches or ways of
gathering evidence relevant to the question. It is
not sufficient to search the general internet, or just
Google it. You may use Wikipedia as a starting
point to gain some background information, but it is
neither reliable nor academically credible.
 3. Use search engines

Use a discipline-specific database search

engine that searches scholarly journals for
relevant articles.
Google is not an academically reliable search
engine, Google Scholar is, as it searches peer-
reviewed journals.
 4. Consult journal articles

Articles from respected journals - that is, the

journals that one might find in a university
library - provide access to the most recent
publications in an area.
 5. Select sources carefully

Select your sources carefully. Beware of being

overwhelmed by too much information and too
many readings - a simple search for
globalisation on Google Scholar, for instance,
returns 591,000 hits. You only need sufficient
sources to construct a strong argument within
the word limit given: too many other peoples
ideas will fill your essay and overwhelm your
argument; too few and you will not identify all
the central issues or perspectives.
 6. Be strategic in your reading
As a guide - use the rule of two. If your essay is 5,000 words long, divide
the first two numbers by two and that is the minimum number of sources
acceptable in constructing an essay. That is, for 5,000 words, find 25
sources minimum
However to identify ten relevant and useful sources for a 5,000 word
essay you may need to find 20 or 25 possible sources in your search.
There are ways to limit the time spent on reading these sources.
Read with purpose - never read anything without knowing the purpose for
which you are reading. Your analysis of your essay question generates
questions, and your reading is directed by these questions. For the an
essay example above, some questions to bring to the text might be:
What are the elements of a liberal welfare state?
Are there different positions on its effects on Indigenous people?In what
ways might these positions differ? And so on.
 Cont
SKIM - Avoid reading from the first word to the last.
Look at the table of contents and search the index for relevant sections (use
keywords such as Indigenous, welfare state, life worlds and so on).
For journal articles, start by reading the abstract - an abstract is the 150-250
words that precede a journal article that succinctly tells the reader the purpose,
the approach, the findings and the contribution of the article. With your key
questions or concepts in mind you can scan many sources quickly.
Use sub-headings - narrow your reading still further by checking out how many
sections/sub-headings the source is broken into - this will tell you how many main
ideas the text contains. Read the topic sentence (generally the first sentence) in
each paragraph - this will give you a sense of the line of argument/reasoning in
the text and assist in narrowing the sections you choose to read in depth. Also
read the introduction and conclusion in depth.
Take control of your argument - the purpose of these strategies is to give you
control over your sources. Your purpose is to write an essay that answers your
question(s), not to reproduce what another author says about their question/
problem/issue.
 Sample Essay
A major change that has occurred in the Western family is an increased
incidence in divorce. Whereas in the past, divorce was a relatively rare
occurrence, in recent times it has become quite commonplace. This
change is borne out clearly in census figures. For example thirty years
ago in Australia, only one marriage in ten ended in divorce; nowadays
the figure is more than one in three (Australian Bureau of Statistics,
1996: p.45). A consequence of this change has been a substantial
increase in the number of single parent families and the attendant
problems that this brings (Kilmartin, 1997).
An important issue for sociologists, and indeed for all of society, is why
these changes in marital patterns have occurred. In this essay I will
seek to critically examine a number of sociological explanations for the
'divorce phenomenon' and also consider the social policy implications
that each explanation carries with it. It will be argued that the best
explanations are to be found within a broad socio-economic
framework.
 Cont
One type of explanation for rising divorce has focused on changes in laws relating to
marriage. For example, Bilton, Bonnett and Jones (1987) argue that increased rates of
divorce do not necessarily indicate that families are now more unstable. It is possible,
they claim, that there has always been a degree of marital instability. They suggest
that changes in the law have been significant, because they have provided unhappily
married couples with 'access to a legal solution to pre-existent marital problems'
(p.301). Bilton et al. therefore believe that changes in divorce rates can be best
explained in terms of changes in the legal system. The problem with this type of
explanation however, is that it does not consider why these laws have changed in the
first place. It could be argued that reforms to family law, as well as the increased rate
of divorce that has accompanied them, are the product of more fundamental changes
in society.
Another type of explanation is one that focuses precisely on these broad societal
changes. For example, Nicky Hart (cited in Haralambos, 1995) argues that increases in
divorce and marital breakdown are the result of economic changes that have affected
the family. One example of these changes is the raised material aspirations of families,
which Hart suggests has put pressure on both spouses to become wage earners.
Women as a result have been forced to become both homemakers and economic
providers. According to Hart, the contradiction of these two roles has lead to conflict
and this is the main cause of marital breakdown. It would appear that Hart's
explanation cannot account for all cases of divorce - for example, marital breakdown is
liable to occur in families where only the husband is working. Nevertheless, her
approach, which is to relate changes in family relations to broader social forces, would
seem to be more probing than one that looks only at legislative change.
 Cont
The two explanations described above have very different implications for
social policy, especially in relation to how the problem of increasing marital
instability might be dealt with. Bilton et al. (1995) offer a legal explanation
and hence would see the solutions also being determined in this domain. If
rises in divorce are thought to be the consequence of liberal divorce laws, the
obvious way to stem this rise is to make them less obtainable. This approach,
one imagines, would lead to a reduction in divorce statistics; however, it
cannot really be held up as a genuine solution to the problems of marital
stress and breakdown in society. Indeed it would seem to be a solution
directed more at symptoms than addressing fundamental causes.
Furthermore, the experience of social workers, working in the area of family
welfare suggests that restricting a couple's access to divorce would in some
cases serve only to exacerbate existing marital problems (Johnson, 1981). In
those cases where violence is involved, the consequences could be tragic.
Apart from all this, returning to more restrictive divorce laws seems to be a
solution little favoured by Australians. (Harrison, 1990).
 Cont

Hart (cited in Haralambos, 1995), writing from a Marxist-feminist position, traces

marital conflict to changes in the capitalist economic system and their resultant effect
on the roles of men and women. It is difficult to know however, how such an analysis
might be translated into practical social policies. This is because the Hart program
would appear to require in the first place a radical restructuring of the economic
system. Whilst this may be desirable for some, it is not achievable in the present
political climate. Hart is right however, to suggest that much marital conflict can be
linked in some way to the economic circumstances of families. This is borne out in
many statistical surveys which show consistently that rates of divorce are higher
among socially disadvantaged families (McDonald, 1993). This situation suggests then
that social policies need to be geared to providing support and security for these types
of families. It is little cause for optimism however, that in recent years governments of
all persuasions have shown an increasing reluctance to fund social welfare programs
of this kind.
It is difficult to offer a comprehensive explanation for the growing trend of marital
breakdown; and it is even more difficult to find solutions that might ameliorate the
problems created by it. Clearly though, as I have argued in this essay, the most useful
answers are to be found not within a narrow legal framework, but within a broader
socio-economic one.
 Cont.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that, whilst we may
appear to be living in a time of increased family
instability, research suggests that historically, instability
may have been the norm rather than the exception. As
Bell and Zajdow (1997) point out, in the past, single
parent and step families were more common than is
assumed - although the disruptive influence then was not
divorce, but the premature death of one or both parents.
This situation suggests that in studying the modern
family, one needs to employ a historical perspective,
including the possibility of looking to the past in
searching for ways of dealing with problems in the
present.
 How to Write a Bibliography

A bibliography is a list of sources that were referenced to

write an academic paper, a journal article, a book, a
critique, an essay or any other type of academic writing.
A bibliography differs from a works cited page because a
bibliography includes any works that were referenced to
write the paper, not merely the works that were cited in
the paper. Bibliographies differ depending what style of
writing you are using. Some of the different styles of
writing include: the Modern Language Association style
of writing (also known as MLA), Chicago Style, and
American Psychological Association (also known as APA)
style.
Thanks