Essay Writing 1 for Students in the BA in Human Resource Management programme

Regional Writing Centre, ULPatricia Herron, Lawrence Cleary and Dr. Íde O’Sullivan

Game Plan—What do we want to accomplish today?

• How do we structure a business report/essays?

• Getting it from my head onto paper in a way that meets with my desires

• Sounding academic and being relevant • vocabulary

What does the Writing Centre do?

• We help students to establish a framework on which to build a way of approaching any occasion for writing.

• We work on writers, not on writing.• We look at processes, and ask

questions about writing strategies.

A Framework for Writing-strategy Development

• Writing Process• Writer-based Writing

• Prewriting• Assessing the Rhetorical Situation• Inventing• Planning• Gathering information

• Drafting• Getting your ideas down onto paper• Organising your ideas in a way that allows you to

realize your purpose

A Framework for Writing-strategy Development

• Reader-based Writing• Revision

• Global revision: structural/paragraph-external logic/inaccessible)

• Local revision: Editing and proofreading (paragraph-internal logic/sentence-level issues/accessible, but inappropriate or imprecise)

Research and Writing Strategies

• Cognitive—what we think• Metacognitive—what we do/plan• Afffective—what we feel• Social—how we involve others

Assessing the Rhetorical Situation

• Occasion• Topic• Audience• Purpose• Writer

Analysing the Assignment

• ‘Understanding organisational behaviour has never been more important for managers’ (Robbins, 2003:14).

• Explain why this is the case, outlining in your answer the challenges and oppor- tunities faced by managers, and the value of understanding organisational behaviour to a practicing manager.

Analysing the Assignment

• Let’s look at your assignment• Topic?• Aspect?• Scope?• Point of view?• Instruction?

The Importance of Prewriting

• What do we do before we write?• Assessing of the context into which we

write• Making a provisional plan and trying to

visualize the paper• Researching and note-taking as a strategy

against accidental plagiarism

Assessment Criteria

• What makes for a good essay at this academic level?• A clear organizing principle• Logical, coherent overall structure with a sound,

easy-to-follow conceptual framework• Well structured, cogent, coherent paragraphs• A stimulating rhythm controlled by suitable, but

variable sentence structures• Appropriate lexical choices• Intertextuality• Responsibility

Intertextuality

• Understanding and accurate reporting of the most current discourse on the topic

• Accurate reporting:• Quoting—the author’s words• Paraphrasing—a complete and accurate

rendition of the author’s thoughts• Summarising—a general, but accurate idea

of what the author said/ the gist• Referencing (parenthetically/in full)

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Rigour

• The academic project is not to be right, but to expose what is true—regardless of the consequences.

• Academic rigour requires that students look beyond what lies on the surface, considering inferences and evidence that is based on cultural assumptions that have no foundation in fact, but only in cultural consensus.

Critical Thinking

• Knowing without understanding• Critical analysis/evaluation of the work of

others• Strengths and weaknesses and justifications for

the evaluations• Similarities and differences in arguments or

methodologies, evidence or line of reasoning• The degree to which something known can be

generalized to other populations/situations• Degree of sophistication/complexity

Critical thinking means:

• Identifying the big players in a discourse on a particular subject

• Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of all of the various positions on a particular issue

• Being able to identify trends in thinking or occurrences based on available evidence

• Constructing logical answer frameworks that lead your audience through your thought process as you follow the evidence

• Selecting the best evidence• Selecting evidence that illustrates or demonstrates

your point or main argument

Drafting

• The best time to begin writing is now• Cover page with a working title• Reference page—As you read and take

notes, write parenthetical references in your notes and full references on a reference page. You can always delete sources that you do not refer to in your text.

• Drafting—beginning to give shape to the vision

Drafting

• The best time to begin writing is now• Cover page with a working title• Reference page—As you read and take

notes, write parenthetical references in your notes and full references on a reference page. You can always delete sources that you do not refer to in your text.

• Drafting—beginning to give shape to the vision

Drafting—A place to start

• What problems am I having with this paper?/with essay-writing in general?• Freewrite—tell us what it is about. Tell us

about the paper.• 5minutes, non-stop• Express complete thoughts (not bullets and

phrases, but sentences)• Do not edit• Private writing

Drafting

• Sometimes we freewrite/draft just to collect our thoughts.

• Sometimes we freewrite/draft just to clarify our thoughts, to distinguish what we know from what we only thought we knew.

• Sometimes, freewriting/drafting is a strategy that we use to begin the paper—jumping in at the deep end.

Methods of Development

• In the assignment that I began with, what is the relationship between the truth of the proposition and these present day challenges and opportunities?

• What is the relationship between these present-day circumstances and the value of understanding organizational behaviour?

• Can you say what these relationships are? Can you explain these relationships to yourself or others?

Methods of Development

• Given that you know that the truth of the proposition is dependent on management’s ability to skilfully match some aspect of their understanding of organizational behaviour to a particular present-day condition and that the value of that understanding is dependent on its ability to inform decisions that help the organisation survive or grow, how does this knowledge help you to develop the paper, your explanation…your ideas?

• Can you diagram the development of ideas in your paper?

Drafting and Global Issues

• When drafting, one might pause occasional-ly, to see if anything is developing—to see if the paper is taking any identifiable direction.

• It is at this time that we are looking for some sort of framework on which the paper (the argument) will hang…a point of order.

• Do not worry about tone or grammar, vocabulary or sentence structure, or punctuation.