Ms Parrot: Essay Chef
View the video, try the essay then exercises to test your knowledge! Watch the story that is whole or see parts of the story below. All of the videos have captions you could look at YouTube.
Download the transcript associated with the video or download the exercises in pdf format or as a expressed word document.
To see the video in the Chinese site youku please just click here.
To look at the person chapters associated with above video, you may either click the ‘PLAYLIST’ menu item into the above YouTube video and choose the chapter after that, or, you are able to click one of many pictures below and view the individual video on YouTube.
Essays help you discover more about an interest and write a reasoned analysis for the issues at issue, using a range of external sources to guide your role.
An essay is a highly structured written piece with follow a pattern that is typical
Writing a essay that is good be in comparison to baking a cake—if you don’t mix just the right ingredients within the right quantities or order, plus don’t proceed with the required processes, then your end result will not be what you wished for!
There’s absolutely no set model for an essay, nevertheless the English for Uni website presents one popular way to take action. The example that is following based around a 1000 word discussion essay. To read about essays in greater detail, download this word or pdf document.
It is important so that you can analyse your topic and title very carefully so that you can comprehend the specific goal of the question. To work on this, you need to break the question down. Most essay questions will contain these three elements:
Content/Topic words give the subject of this essay.
Limiting/Focus words provide a narrower scope when it comes to essay.
Directive or Instructional words tell you how to approach the essay.
Look at these essay that is sample from A) Economics and B) Nutrition:
In example B, answering the question fully involves looking closely at the directive word Discuss and analysing its exact meaning.
Discuss: Present various points and look at the different sides. A discussion is usually more than an explanation, as you need to provide state and evidence which argument is more persuasive.
So, in your essay entitled:
“Chocolate is a food” that is healthy. Discuss.”
you would need to:
• consider a number of points pertaining to the title
• balance your points between supporting and opposing positions
• consider which regarding the positions is considered the most persuasive and explain why
In addition, you have to think about the duration of your essay. In a 2000 word essay you can easily cover more points compared to a 1000 word one! This example is dependant on a 1000 word essay.
In relation to Content words your focus is clear: chocolate!
In terms of Limiting words, you need to considercarefully what food that is healthy means. a good way to|way that is good expand your vocabulary is always to glance at the Academic Word List (produced by Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand). The uefap website also offers very helpful lists of words present in particular subjects, such as for instance mathematics, health and business science.
Directive or Instructional words
There are a number of directive words, or instructional words as they are sometimes called, which tell you what to do in your essay. Some common words that are directive:
| Analyse | Look at something in depth, examining the details. |
|---|---|
| Argue | Give known reasons for why you agree or disagree with something and show that you understand different points of view. |
| Assess | Compare points that are different see if the argument or info is true or persuasive. |
| Compare | Show the similarities between two sets of data or arguments. ‘Compare’ often appears with ‘contrast’ in essay questions. |
| Contrast | Show the differences between two sets of data or arguments. ‘Contrast’ often appears with ‘compare’ in essay questions. |
| Criticise | Evaluate an argument or a text to see when it is good. ‘Criticise’ does not mean you should be negative. |
| Critique | Evaluate an argument or a text to see if it’s good. ‘Critique’ doesn’t mean you need to be negative. |
| Define | give an explanation for concept of a expressed word or a term, particularly in the context of the essay. You can make use of a dictionary definition if it is helpful, but remember that the word might be utilized in a certain way within the subject you will be studying. |
| Describe | Give information regarding something. |
| Discuss | consider the different sides of an argument and say which will be more convincing. Help your reader to know more about something by giving relevant details. |
| Evaluate | glance at the strengths and weaknesses of this material and give your final opinion from it. |
| Examine | go through the strengths and weaknesses of the material and present your final opinion of it. |
| Explain | Help your reader to comprehend more about something by providing relevant details. |
| Illustrate | Give examples to help make something clearer. |
| Interpret | Help your reader to comprehend more about something and provide your own perspective if required. |
| Justify | Give reasons to explain that which you think of an interest. |
| Outline | Give a broad explanation of something without a lot of details. |
| Prove | Show if something is true and demonstrate the method that you reached that conclusion. |
| Review | Glance at something in detail and give your perspective about it. |
| State | place your ideas or arguments clearly. |
| Summarise | Pull everything together and present it clearly without the need for detail that is too much. |
Brainstorming means producing ideas related to a theme. You can write the ideas down in any order.
The following is a possible brainstorm for the chocolate essay, done in the form of a mind map:
Remember that the focus that is centralthe essay question) has several boxes associated with it which represent the writer’s first ideas. Other boxes area then added. A brainstorm like this is organic; it does not necessarily stop growing. You could add, remove or reorganise it while you wish. If you want to put more system into the brainstorm, use a step-based model such as the following:
Step 1
Time yourself for the draft that is first of mind map
Set a fixed time for this drafting from your base topic/question and stick to it.
Step 2
Look critically at your draft
Which ideas can you develop or remove? Can there be a balance of ideas?
Step 3
Think about ordering
Which issues might you tackle first in your essay and why?
Step 4
Anticipate readers’ needs
Are there any words and/or phrases that may need explaining? If that’s the case, when could be the best time when you look at the essay to get this done?
Step 5
Move
Reflect upon your brainstorming. Once you are happy with your brainstorm you should use it to plan your essay.
Once you’ve got done some brainstorming, it is time for you to get researching!
Understand that an essay that is academic academic sources.
Finding what you need takes effort and time. The best place to begin (assuming you haven’t recently been given a prescribed reading list!) is to apply an academic database. If you should be not sure simple tips to use a database, then book a scheduled appointment along with your subject librarian at your institution.
Another option is by using an internet academic search engine such as Google Scholar. N.B. Make sure you are logged in the library at your educational institution, to be able to make use of the full database capacities associated with Google Scholar.
You ought to enter keywords to start with. For the essay that is chocolate among the first associations we looked at was chocolate and mood. When we enter these words into Google Scholar it will probably appear to be this:
This will take you to a webpage which lists a number of relevant articles, best resume writing service such as this:
The very first two articles have been cited 90 times and 103 times respectively, suggesting that they could be good sources for your essay. The links to your right indicate that you have access to the articles through your university website.
If you were to think an article looks promising, click the link and look at the abstract:
Browse the abstract and ask yourself if the content regarding the article is going to be relevant to your essay.
a) If yes, click the pdf. This may take you to the article that is full after that you can skim read quickly to choose when it is relevant.
b) If no, you then have an option. Either click the links to other related articles or return to Google Scholar and then choose another article to skim read.
If you don’t find what you are actually in search of, you will need to change your keywords search.
You think might be useful, make a note in your plan at the appropriate place when you have found what.
Perform some thing that is same all of the points that require academic references to support them.
Remember that throughout your research you may discover new issues and perspectives you hadn’t considered before, so that your original plan may be quite different from the one that is final!
After you have brainstormed your thinking and done some initial research, start putting them into a logical order within the essay planning process. Brainstorming allows you to see what you realize in regards to the topic. Researching provides you with more depth. Brainstorming, planning and researching are cyclical, which means each process helps the other processes and you also may want to do each process more often than once.
