And then I went and marked some examination papers. There were some really good ones, and some not so good! It’s not always easy to say what makes one essay better than another but one of the characteristics of a good essay that I always go on to my students about is cohesion. It’s not always easy to explain but I’ve found a webpage which makes a pretty good stab at it. Take a look at these examples of writing which focus on one aspect of cohesion:

Students can work alone and still be involved with interactive learning. This learning can happen when students decide what they want to learn.

While international students must meet minimum English language entry requirements, they are likely to need language advice and support in dealing with a new academic culture. This support is only useful if it can be made appropriate, convenient and ‘just-in-time’ for students.

In this paper I explore the idea that plagiarism can be understood as being embedded in Australian academic culture. Being culturally embedded explains why until recently plagiarism was rarely clearly discussed.

(Taken from http://www.latrobe.edu.au/learning/dae/writing/17wye_cohesion.html)

It’s good style: in each sentence I hope you can see how the writer introduces an issue, finishes a sentence, and then uses that issue to start the next sentence. This technique gives the text cohesion, so it hangs together well and is easy to read. Being cohesive is really important – for football teams too! Take a look at the page from La Trobe University on cohesion here.

This week heralds the start of exam time in our university.  Let me say one very important thing about exams in UK universities: an exam is not a memory test. That means that in our education system we do not value or respect the ability to memorise long pieces of text and reproduce them in an exam. In fact, rightly or wrongly, in our system we mark students down for this.  If the person marking your work thinks that you guessed the question in advance and prepared an essay beforehand and simply reproduced it in the exam room then you are likely to get a very low mark.

A colleague of mine was talking about his Business students and essay writing. He showed me what he thought was a good paragraph from an essay which he marked:

Many factors have contributed to the price reduction in the television industry. One of these is globalisation which enables easier distribution of products. This in turn lowers costs to enable cheaper selling prices. The cheaper the cost to produce televisions inevitably lowers the selling price of televisions and this has had a direct impact on customer expectations and feeds into even lower prices.

I looked at the paragraph and realised what the lecturer liked about it. Look again at the cause and effect put forward in the paragraph:

Globalisation

Easier distribution of products

Lower costs

Cheaper selling prices

Impact on customer expectations

Yet more lower prices

The paragraph is good because the writer has put forward an ARGUMENT.   He has put foward a list of causes and effects which show why something happens. It isn’t rocket science. But it is clear and straightforward and gets good marks.

Good luck in your exam everyone!

Cameron slammed over ‘omni-shambles’ Budget

Well, you might know the word ‘shambles‘  – but then again you might not because it is not that formal. A shambles is a mess, or confusion resulting from bad planning (here for the definition from Cambridge). ‘Omni’ – well, that’s a prefix meaning ‘all’ or ‘every’. So I was delighted to hear the new word omni-shambles to describe the chaos and confusion that the British Government has found itself in after its annual Budget. (I’m not being political – it’s just a great word to describe total and utter chaos!) It’s a brand new word which has been made using a prefix. How well do you know your prefixes and suffixes? If you are good at them then you will be able to build the words you need. Prefixes and suffixes are particularly well used in academic vocabulary. Here’s a link to one of my favourite Academic English websites from Andy Gillett: read about prefixes and suffixes from his UEFAP website site here.

 If you use these basic sentence patterns you can’t go far wrong. If you can put two short simple sentences together using a connecting word to make a longer sentences in which you use both patterns then you get something like this:

The rate of inflation increased quickly in 2008 but there was a dramatic slowdown in 2009.

which will get you a very good mark!

You need to practice phrases like ‘a dramatic increase’. There are lots of these with illustrations on this page from the Higher Colleges of Technology. This brings back happy memories because I spent a few years working at HCT in the United Arab Emirates and had a great time there. Improve your graph language with their page here.

When your teacher reads mistakes like these ones in your essays:

Inflation have been rising recently, not least because of the increasing price of oil.

This essay focus on the relationship between interest rates and inflation.

then he or she will groan, and your mark will start to drop. Help yourself and when you have finished your work then check it carefully for mistakes. You should underline the SUBJECT of the sentence:

Inflation

and ask yourself: is this subject singular or plural? Then look at the verb:

have

and ask yourself if this is the correct form of the verb. The sentences above should be:

Inflation has been rising recently, not least because of the rise in oil prices.

This essay focuses on the relationship between interest rates and inflation.

 I know it’s not always so easy! That’s why you need to think about it, read about it and do some exercises on it. I’ve just seen an excellent powerpoint on the sore thumb of grammar (yes, subject-verb agreement!)  on the Guide to Grammar and Writing website. Following the powerpoint there are exercises you can do to improve your understanding of this part of grammar. Get rid of your sore thumb by looking at the powerpoint and doing the exercises here.

The number of charity shops in the UK has been rising steadily over the past few years, you can now see charity shops everywhere you look in city centres.

This punctuation is incorrect! You can’t just take two short sentences and put a comma between them! The example above is what is called THE COMMA SPLICE!

For the sentence above you could join them together with a conjunction:

The number of charity shops in the UK has been rising steadily over the past few years and you can now see charity shops everywhere you look in city centres.

Or you could use a semicolon when the parts of the sentence are very closely related:

The number of charity shops in the UK has been rising steadily over the past few years; you can now see charity shops everywhere you look in city centres.

Or you could separate them into two sentences:

The number of charity shops in the UK has been rising steadily over the past few years. You can now see charity shops everywhere you look in city centres.

Take a look at the OWL’s powerpoint on the use of commas. It makes it clear and simple and you can find it here.

Many students will have to sit down and write essays in examinations over the next few months. One of my students asked me how best to prepare for this – what a difficult question! There are so many aspects to writing a good essay that it is impossible to cover them all but I’d like to emphasise one really important thing and that is planning. This is an essential first step. You are not ready to start writing until you have a plan. Imagine building a house without designing it first! What would it look like?! The plan is essential because you need something to follow. But that’s not all – if somebody gave you a plan do you think you could write a good essay from their plan? Well, I think not, or not a very good one. Why? Because if you took somebody else’s plan then you wouldn’t have gone through the framing process which is so important to good essay writing. Imagine trying to find your way around a new town without a map. Pretty hard. Now imagine that you have a map to examine before you go. You look at the map, you build a mental representation of the place, you see the big roads and where they meet and how all the streets tie in with each other. After this framing process you are ready to get out and see the sights. You will have the framework in place before you get out there. Alternatively, imagine you didn’t have a map. Or you didn’t have a map until you got out there. Then you would have to stop, scratch your head, turn the map round and round and try to make sense of it. You can be sure that everyone in the street would keep bumping into you and there would be nowhere to put the map down flat so you could see it properly. The link that I’m pointing to today is one I’ve mentioned before but there’s nothing wrong with revisiting useful sites. There’s several good pages about essay writing here with links for you to follow, and it begins with some ideas on essay planning. The Skills4Study.com site produced by Palgrave Study Guides is here.

Meanwhile, as everybody is talking about the fee increase at universities in the UK I am more interested than ever in finding good learning resources for free. I have been looking at some of the free courses available at The Open University in the UK. The fees here are going up too (boo!) but there are still some things that you can access without paying (hurray!). If you are an overseas student studying in the UK you should definitely be interested in these courses:

Am I ready to study in English?

How to be a critical reader

Paraphrasing text

Summarising text