Essay on Victorian Britain History

Writing an Essay

The Academic Essay

• The academic essay is composed of 3 parts: an introduction, the body, and a conclusion.

• The purpose of an essay is to put forth an argument in a clear and convincing manner.

• It is not to tell a story, nor is it to merely inform the reader.

• The argument will be based upon and supported by evidence. Rather like a lawyer in a courtroom, you will be putting forth a case by presenting evidence in a convincing manner.

Organization

The structure of the argumentative essay is held together by the following: • A clear, concise, and defined thesis

statement that occurs in the first paragraph of the essay.

• Clear and logical transitions between the introduction, body, and conclusion.

• Body paragraphs that include evidential support.

• Evidential support (whether factual, logical, or statistical) and properly cited.

• A conclusion that does not simply restate the thesis, but readdresses it in light of the evidence provided.

Evidence

Organization

ESSAY

Tone

Introduction

The introduction should set the scene by demonstrating the importance of the topic. But, more importantly, it should contain a clear thesis statement which addresses the original essay question. By the end of the first paragraph (which should not be overly long), I should have a clear idea what you intend to argue.

Avoid sentences like ‘In this essay I will argue that …’ Instead, make an assertive, declarative statement: ‘The introduction of the birth control pill was not a step forward in the liberation of women.’ Then follow that up by providing a clue to how you intend to prove that statement, which in turn provides a hint to the intended structure of the essay.

In short…

An introduction should include:

• A hook–grabs the reader’s interest and is relevant to the essay’s topic and tone.

• Try to avoid a question in formal writing.

• Important background information the reader must have concerning the issue.

• Helps establish context for the reader.

• Transition from the general to the specific (thesis).

The Thesis Statement

The thesis has 3 major parts: the subject (what you are writing about), the attitude (what you are saying about the subject), and the sequence (the order of the topics)

At the end of your introduction, the reader should find your thesis.

Main Body

In the main body of the essay, you will prove the statement made in your introduction. Each paragraph will build the case, usually by focussing on a very specific aspect of that case.

Paragraphs should be like mini-essays, in that they will contain a clear statement which is then supported by evidence, which is then analysed and conclusions are drawn.

By the end of the paragraph, you should feel that that particular topic has been dealt with adequately.

Evidence

Evidence

Organization

ESSAY

Tone

EVIDENCE The most important part of the academic essay is finding and using credible evidence to support your thesis. — Provide logical evidence to

support your opinions.

Evidence

Make sure you know the difference between

evidence and opinion.

Evidence is something that usually comes to us from sources contemporary to

the time period discussed – quotes, statistics, etc.

The opinion of a historian is not evidence.

Try to keep your quoting of historians to an absolute

minimum.

This should be your argument, not the cobbling together of other historians’

arguments.

You can quote a historian if you are trying to state a

point that you wish to refute or support.

You can also quote a historian if what he or she has written is particularly

profound.

But you should never quote a historian merely to prove

a point.

A word of caution about evidence…

Sometimes you want to support your opinion with research.

Sources like Wikipedia, Webster’s Dictionary, or the {insert name here} encyclopedia are not considered academic sources.

They are too general and have issues with timeliness, target audience, and credibility.

They are a great place to start research or find great links to other, credible sources.

You need as many sources as are necessary to make your argument, but you should have a good mix of

monographs, articles and primary sources. I am impressed by dogged research and when a student

finds sources that are new to me.

Stringing quotes together….Don’t do it!

It can be tempting to string together quotes to support an argument, feeling that the more quotes you include, the stronger your argument. It is important, however, to remember that you also need to interpret the quotes to the reader, and to explain their relevance, discuss their validity, and show how they relate to other evidence.

Quotations Continued

Quotations that are three lines or longer should be paragraphed and indented from the rest of the text. Also, these types of quotes do not require quotation marks. For example:

A good rule of thumb, before using quotes, is to ask yourself two questions: 1. Is it necessary for the argument being made? 2. If it is, can it be reworded or shortened without losing its functional purpose?

LET'S TALK SOURCES: The Good, the Bad, and the Ooh child, we need to talk

Types of Sources and Questions to ask before utilizing them in your research Primary Source Analysis

A primary source analysis requires you to devote your investigation to one or more historical documents (or non- textual artifacts). As you prepare a primary source analysis, make sure you can answer each of the following questions about your source(s):

• Who produced this source? • When and where was this source produced? • How does this source compare to others you have encountered? • What presuppositions or assumptions do you bring to the text?

Secondary Source Analysis

A secondary source analysis asks you to explore the discussions of other scholars. Quite often, these sorts of essays will ask you to engage with historiographical thinking—though that word won’t always be used (you’ve probably already committed historiography without knowing it!). The following questions can help guide your approach to your secondary sources:

• Who produced this source? • What is the author’s argument? • How is the source structured? • Why did the author write this? • Is there reliable evidence to backup the argument/claims being made?

For the Good and Bad exceptions exist • Before you utilize a source, ask yourself the following questions:

• WHO is writing the content? • Are they an expert? • Are they profiting from the info?

• WHAT is the piece about? • Is this their opinion or fact?

• WHERE is the information coming from? • An individual? (See above) • A school, government, museum, etc.

• WHERE2 is the evidence? • Are there reliable source citations to backup claims made?

When in doubt, the following webpages can be helpful: • Good vs. Bad Sources:

• https://www.sturgeoncomp.ca/documents/general/Good%20vs%20Bad%20Sources.pdf • The CRAAP Test

• https://libguides.cmich.edu/web_research/craap

If still in doubt, just ask me.

The Good

Peer Reviewed/Scholarly Journals

Non-Fiction Texts

• .edu • .gov • .org • .com (can still be credible, but you will have

to be a bit more careful when looking at these sources)

Websites that End with:

• Library Databases • Library Collection

Where can these be found?

The Bad • Personal Websites/Blogs

• These provide the opinion/views of the author and the information is not necessarily based on fact.

• Biased Websites • Many websites have an obvious bias or are geared toward misinformation.

• Some are rather easy to detect: • Fox News (Conservative) • CNN (Liberal) • The Onion (Satire)

• Others not so much: • http://www.MartinLutherKing.org

• Site is run by Stormfront, a Neo-Nazi white nationalist group. • http://www.dhmo.org

• A website about the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide (water). • Works of Fiction

• Fun to read, but not a suitable source for a research assignment. • How to avoid?

• Apply the CRAAP Test • Use common sense

Ooh Child…

Wikipedia: Content of any Wiki page can be altered. There is no way of

knowing for sure if the information is

completely correct or if it will be there on the

next visit.

Encyclopedia anything: Information is often dated and the scope of topics too

broad.

Websites meant for High schoolers e.g. Khan Academy and BBC Bitesize

History.com Quality of information is

substandard for a research paper and the

website is, on the whole, a content farm.

These sites are great for resource mining (i.e. use them as a road map

toward better source material) but on their own, they are a lackluster for an

academic paper.

Citations… For this course, footnotes are the citation vehicle of choice.

General Guidelines: • Your footnotes should be numbered consecutively throughout the

paper. Use your word processing program to insert footnotes and it will number them for you automatically.

• The footnote number should always be inserted after the punctuation. • The first time you cite a source, you will include a full citation. For all

subsequent references to that text, your footnote citation will be in abbreviated form. (See here)

• Cite authors’ names as they appear in the texts. Don’t replace first names with initials unless the names appear this way on the title page of the source. If no author is listed, organize the entry by the title.

The purpose of footnotes is to match a citation to a specific piece of information used in the text e.g. a quote, statistic, or information that is not common knowledge

Example:

Footnotes Basic format:

x. Author’s first name Last name, Title in Italics and in Headline Style (City of Publication: Publisher, Year), page number if relevant.

Subsequent references to the same text:

x. Last name, Title in Shortened Form, page number.

Note: If your second reference to a text comes immediately after the first, use “Ibid.” in place of the author’s name and the book title. Include the page number if it is different from that listed in the first reference.

Examples:

1. Kent Portney, Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003). 2. Ibid., 162. 3. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change (New York: Blackwell, 1989), 197. 4. Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003). 5. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 86-87.

Note: The second, third and fifth footnotes above cite direct quotes or material found on one or more specific pages, therefore the page numbers of the source are included.

Bibliograpy

Basic format:

Author’s last name, First name. Title. City: Publisher, Year.

Example: References

Appleman, Philip, William A. Madden, Michael Wolff, editors. 1859: Entering an Age of Crisis. Indiana University Press: 1959.

Aronson, Theo. A Family of Kings: The Descendants of Christian IX of Denmark. London: Thistle Publishing, 2014. Kindle Edition.

Ergang, Robert R. “Möser and the Rise of National Thought in Germany,” The Journal of Modern History 5, No. 2 (1933): 172-96. Accessed January 10, 2017, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1875339.

Everett, Oliver. “The Royal Library at Windsor Castle as Developed by Prince Albert and B.B. Woodward”, The Library, 7th ser., III, no. 1, (2002): 58-88. Accessed 25 June 2014, doi:10.1093/library/3.1.58.

For More Examples…

CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE: • https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html

WHEN TO CITE: • https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/understanding-and-avoiding-

plagiarism/warning-when-you-must-cite

HOW TO INSERT FOOTNOTES: • https://support.office.com/en-us/article/insert-footnotes-and-endnotes-61f3fb1a-

4717-414c-9a8f-015a5f3ff4cb

ESSAY TONE

TONE —Use a formal or academic voice

in the essay. — Past tense — Avoid colloquialisms or

conversational English.

—Edit your essay for conventions, such as grammar, mechanics, and style.

—Use third person: — The author, reader, audience, novel — NOT- I, we, you

Evidence

Organization

ESSAY

Tone

TONE

—Avoid emotional or ambiguous arguments

—Your FEELINGS can change. —Your position on the topic

should be the same, regardless of the mood you are in.

—In addition, YOU are the expert. Do not use words like, “kind of” and “sort of”.

Evidence

Organization

ESSAY

Tone

Developing the Body Paragraphs

• Transitions/Concluding Sentence:

• This is the last step in a body paragraph.

• Transitions help wrap up the paragraph’s point and move the reader to the next stage of the essay.

The Conclusion

• This paragraph ends the essay. • The first element in a conclusion is

traditionally a restatement of the thesis. You never copy the thesis exactly as it appears in the introduction, but you do want to remind your reader of the overall point of your essay.

• Your conclusion is a place to show the significance of your thesis – why your interpretation is important or unique.

• Do not introduce new evidence here!

GRADING POLICY Students must ensure that all assignments are typed or word-processed. Essays and Gobbet Exercises must be submitted via Canvas.

Essays – Each essay should answer a question chosen from the list provided in the Course Reader. Essays should be 1500 to 2000 words in length (footnotes are included, but bibliography is not included in the word count).

The bibliography must contain a minimum of six items and should normally include: works from the course reader, the set texts, and at least one primary source. Essays with a weak bibliography will be penalized. Please check with me for appropriate internet sources approved for the course. Essays without footnotes and a bibliography will earn an automatic fail mark.

The final word count includes footnotes but excludes the bibliography. Students need to adhere to the world limit for each assignment and each piece of written work is to be submitted with a clear indication of the word count.

GRADING POLICY CONTINUED

• 1 point will be deducted for pieces of coursework that are above (or below) 10% of the word limit e.g. 150 – 200 words. • 1 point will be deducted per additional 10% over (or under) the word

limit e.g. 150 – 200 words. • 10 points will be deducted from all late work submitted past the due

date and 5 points will be deducted per subsequent day. Late assignments will not be accepted after the 6th day and will receive a zero.

GRADING POLICY CONTINUED • Extensions – If you are unable to meet the assignment deadlines, due to

unforeseen circumstances, you MUST make a formal extension request via email. • Assignment extension requests should be submitted as early as possible (as soon as

you know that you will not be able to finish the assignment in time) but at the latest by 11:59 p.m. of the original due date of the assignment.

• Acceptable reasons for an extension are: • Medical or mental health grounds • Unforeseen work commitments, e.g. work not part of usual duties, or that is unexpected or

unavoidable • Other extenuating circumstances beyond the student's control, e.g. death in the family, victim of

crime. • Unacceptable reasons for an extension are:

• Inability to have an assignment word processed by the due date • Other assignments due on or about the due date • Disk or IT failure, unless publicly documented (Remember to back up your work and to back up

often) • Foreseeable work commitments

GRADING POLICY CONTINUED

• Supporting documentation required • You must provide a scanned copy of supporting documentation with your

application for an extension. • If you do not have the documentation at the time when you make your

application, you should include a note to this effect in your application. • You should forward your documentation as soon as possible.

• Please note: Repeated application for assignment extensions is an indication of not being able to cope with the workload.

Use Your Resources! • “How to” guides for writing

and formatting. • Layout • Style & Presentation • Citations

• Essay questions and gobbet exercise topics. • A bibliography list of useful

texts. • Webpage links to help you

succeed.

Canvas Modules Folder

Proofread!!!

IF YOU NEED HELP:

History Tutors:

https://history.fiu.edu/tutoring/p reparing-for-your-appointment/

Student Support Services (SSS):

https://studentaffairs.fiu.edu/aca demic-success/student-support- services/tutoring- services/index.php