PART SIX Essay Writing

Assessed Essays

Assessed essays are part of the examination for the degree as well as an integral part of the learning process. You will be expected to write regularly throughout your time in the Department. In preparing essays, consult your tutor if necessary about problems over the meaning of the question or reading material.
Assessed essays must be at least 2,500 words long and no longer than 3,500 words long. The Department treats word limits as precise limits. Penalties will be applied to over-length essays. Five marks will be deducted for every 100 words or part thereof over the word limit. Hence, an essay that is 3,501 words long will be penalised 5 marks. Those five marks can be restored via resubmission at the correct length only up to a maximum mark of 60.
Essays are not penalised for being under-length but it will obviously be harder to achieve the pass mark with an under-length essay.
dissertation Writing research The word limits exclude the title, coversheet, footnotes/endnotes and bibliography, tables, maps, diagrams and appendices. Appendices are only for reproducing documents, not for additional text written by you. Footnotes and endnotes should contain minimal amounts of text. This means the citation and, at most, one line of additional explanation per page only. Essays containing more that this will be counted as overlength and will be returned to the student to be resubmitted to the appropriate length. A guide to referencing and citation is included later in this handbook.
The word limits include all text, numbers, Harvard referencing in the body of the text and direct quotes.
A candidate may not do an assessed essay on the same topic as a seminar presentation – see below.
All assessed essays must be typed or word-processed. The University provides a number of 24-hour computer laboratories where word-processing and printing are available; see Part 9 - Support Facilities.
The assessed essays are the only form of assessment for the MSc/Dip award and as such word limits and deadlines will be strictly adhered to.

There are a number of different doctrines on the place of essay writing in your education. However, the following suggestions, if adopted, will meet most of the obligations placed upon you. Take every opportunity to discuss with your tutors how you are progressing.
Comments on essays should be about guiding you to think more deeply. In order to make it less likely that comments on essays have to deal with elementary issues, this handbook aims to provide you with guidance on relevant issues.
Writing an essay is a creative exercise that can be very rewarding. Learning how best to use them will not only improve your work; it will also enhance your job prospects. Through writing essays regularly, you should develop the important skills of judgement as to what is directly relevant and what is disputed on a topic, of synthesis in bringing together ideas and data from several sources, and of clarity of presentation in writing accurately and lucidly. Essays are critical to your learning; they provide structured opportunities to read in some depth on one part of a unit. They are central to our teaching.#p#分頁標題#e#
Each essay you write should be an argument which answers a precise question. Relevance is very important. Word limits for essays are insufficient for many details. Essays should not simply contain a summary of the notes you have taken.
Make sure that you plan each essay before you begin to write. Put all your notes on one side and then sketch an argument in rough. That discipline will enable you to decide what really matters, to prioritise various arguments, and to choose the best illustrations.
Think out a good opening sentence that will indicate the line of argument you are taking. The first paragraph is very important and should let the reader know how you intend to proceed without necessarily revealing your conclusions. A good first paragraph ought to define the problem you are tackling and ought to avoid simple statements such as 'The issue is a complicated one'.
Students sometimes believe - falsely - that uncritical summary is less risky than a more critical approach; that they cannot distinguish between good and bad or biased and unbiased books; that they ought not to disagree with the writings of their tutors; and that there are objective right answers. Although tutors have views, marks are awarded not according to whether or not you agree with the tutor, but according to how well you argue your position. Different tutors do have different agendas that they want you to address: this is not the same thing as having views they want to inculcate. Sitting on the fence and using words like 'perhaps' is no substitute for reasoned synthesis or choice.
An argument requires a proposition, a counter-proposition, evidence for both, and a reasoned synthesis or choice. Theory and evidence need to be fleshed out: simply writing 'Arms races cause wars - as was shown by World War One' is not enough. When you are discussing a point in an essay, go through the following five steps (which are laid out only briefly rather than to the extent which would be expected in an essay):

1. Offer a proposition, eg, 'The power of the United States is in decline'.
2. Provide supporting evidence, eg, 'It has lost ground in the international economic system, as shown by its recently-acquired trade and budget deficits'.
3. Consider the opposing argument, eg, 'The power of the United States is increasing'.
4. Provide supporting evidence, eg, 'The collapse of the Soviet Union and the success of the war against Iraq show that the United States is the only superpower'.
5. Provide a reasoned choice or synthesis, eg, 'On balance the United States is in decline because military power is less important now than economic power'. This then leads on logically to arguments about the relative utility of, and relationship between, economic and military power.

In this way arguments and essays progress with a sense of flow and direction. This approach is not the only one that is possible or acceptable and it is not necessarily the best. However, it is one that will stand you in good stead.#p#分頁標題#e#
Once you have written the essay according to your plan, you should always read it through. There will always be many improvements which you can make at this final stage. Check the spelling, punctuation, grammar, logic and consistency of argument. The Department has a Study Skills Adviser available for one timetabled hour (advertised on all noticeboards) during weeks 1-24 of the teaching year. This person is there to help you with writing problems involving grammar, syntax, essay construction and any other aspects of language or writing difficulty that you care to bring in, or that your Course Director feels you need help with. You may be asked by your Course Director to seek help, and the Adviser will be happy to give general advice on essay writing.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the unacknowledged inclusion in a student’s work of material derived from the published or unpublished work of another. This constitutes plagiarism whether it is intentional or unintentional. “Work” includes internet sources as well as printed material. Examples include:
Quoting another’s work “word for word” without placing the phrase(s), sentence(s) or paragraph(s) in quotation marks and providing a reference for the source.
Using statistics, tables, figures, formulae, data, diagrams, questionnaires, images, musical notation, computer code, etc., created by others without acknowledging and referencing the original source. This list is not intended to be exhaustive.
Summarising, or paraphrasing the work or ideas of another without acknowledging and referencing the original source. “Paraphrasing” means re-stating another author’s ideas, meaning or information in a student’s own words.
Copying the work of another student, with or without that student’s agreement.
Collaborating with another student, even where the initial collaboration is legitimate, e.g., joint project work, and then presenting the resulting work as one’s own. If students are unclear about the extent of collaboration which is permitted in joint work they should consult the relevant tutor.
Submitting, in whole or in part, work which has previously been submitted at the University of Bristol or elsewhere, without fully referencing the earlier work. This includes unacknowledged re-use of the student’s own submitted work.
Buying or commissioning an essay or other piece of work and presenting it as a student’s own.

There are rules to which you must keep, over and above the commonsensical requirements that all essays should be well presented, within the length stipulated, grammatically correct, and, above all, carefully structured to make a coherent and substantial argument.
The most critical rule is that the sources of all arguments, ideas and non-basic data which are not your own must be acknowledged. To do otherwise is plagiarism. We define plagiarism as the unacknowledged use of any phraseology, argument or definition which another has used. When in doubt, err on the side of caution and acknowledge more rather than less. Certainly, not only direct quotations have to be referenced: so do facts, ideas and arguments. As a rough guide, if you have to refer to your notes on the literature to write a section of your essay, it is a fairly safe bet that you need to reference what you are writing. Plagiarism is a serious academic offence and penalties will be applied by the Department in such cases. Copying any part of another student's essay or any other person’s work is an extreme form of plagiarism.#p#分頁標題#e#

There are two kinds of referencing system - the foot noting system and the Harvard system. You may choose either.

Referencing

The purpose of referencing is to show the reader what your sources were and to allow them to follow up and to check that they are satisfied with your handling of the sources. There are two kinds of referencing system - the footnoting/endnoting system and the Harvard system. You may choose either. There are various versions of each and the material below is a guideline of the kind of version you might adopt rather than a requirement.
The bibliography is a list of all the sources of material you have used, alphabetised by author’s surname or by organisation name. All books, articles and other sources (including lecture notes) used for the essay must be listed in a bibliography at the end of the essay. The habit of accurate referencing and careful note-taking (recording the exact titles of books and articles consulted, for example) is an important part of your academic training. Internet sources should be included in your bibliography.

Harvard Referencing
Harvard referencing is a system in which the reference in terms of author, year of publication and page number is put in the text: see any edition of the journal American Political Science Review. For example your essay might read:

Butterfield maintained that the international arena is characterised by a system of 'Hobbesian fear' (Butterfield 1951: p. 21).

If this is your version of, say, Garnett's description of Butterfield's work with Garnett's choice of quotation from it, your text must read:

Butterfield maintained that the international arena is characterised by a system of 'Hobbesian fear' (Butterfield, quoted in Garnett 1992: p. 83).

The article by Garnett then appears alphabetically by surname, first name and then year of publication in the bibliography as follows:

Garnett, John C. (1992), 'States, State-Centric Perspectives, and Interdependence Theory', in J. Baylis and N.J. Rengger (eds), Dilemmas of World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 39-85.

If you use two sources published by the same author in the same year, then attach lower case letters to the year in order to distinguish them. For example:

Jervis, Robert (1989a), 'Rational Deterrence: Theory and Evidence', World Politics, vol. 41, pp. 183-207.

Jervis, Robert (1989b), The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).

If the item is an article on a website without a named author, you would reference it as follows. The in-text reference would be: (ICG 2007: p. 3) and the bibliography entry would be:

ICG (International Crisis Group) (2007), Breakdown in the Balkans. http://wwww.icg.balkan_breakdown.

Note that simply having International Crisis Group and the url (http… and so on) is not enough.

Footnote/Endnote Referencing
The references in this system can appear either at the bottom of the page (footnotes) or at the end of the essay or dissertation (endnotes). For an example of this traditional referencing system, see any volume of the journal Review of International Studies.#p#分頁標題#e#

In the case of a book, provide the name of the author, the title of the book, the place or publication, the year of publication and the relevant page number(s) in the note. For example:

1. Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (London: Collins, 1951), p. 51.

In the case of an article, give the name of the author, the title of the article, the name of the journal, the volume number, the year of publication and the relevant page number(s) in the note. For example:

2. John Herz, 'Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma', World Politics, vol. 2, no. 3 (1950), pp. 157-59.

For subsequent references, you can abbreviate the format. Omit the initial of the author, abbreviate the title if it is long and omit the publication details. If you refer to the same item in the reference which follows immediately, you can simply write 'Ibid' and the page number. However, once you have referred to another item you must start again. For example:

4. Butterfield, History and Human Relations, p. 78.
5. Herz, 'Idealist Internationalism', p. 90.
6. Garnett, 'State-Centric Perspectives', p. 83.
7. Ibid, p. 84.
8. Herz, 'Idealist Internationalism', p. 91.
Miscellaneous Points on Referencing
Miscellaneous points to note on referencing are:
A common form of sloppy referencing is failure to identify by author and title which chapters have been used from edited volumes.
If you use multiple chapters from an edited book, each chapter must be listed separately in the bibliography by the name of the chapter author,
If there are multiple editions of a book, you must state which edition you are using immediately after the title.
If you are using a translation, you must state the name of the translator after the title in the bibliography and footnote/endnote.
In the text of your essay or dissertation, you must refer to the author of the chapter not the editor(s) of the book. In the example given above, the reference in the text appears as (Garnett 1992: p. 83), not (Baylis, Rengger 1993: p. 83).
If an item has no year of publication, insert ‘n.d.’ (meaning no date), where you would normally put the year.
If an item has not been published, put ‘Unpublished MS’ (meaning manuscript).
Provide the exact web page reference. This is not the same as the homepage reference. The reason for doing this is that not all websites have adequate indexes and it is very difficult to trace sources without the exact reference. If in doubt you should give more rather than less information. For example, in Harvard referencing bibliography Varshney, Ashutosh (1998) India's 12th National Elections, Asia Society. http://www.asiasociety.org/publications/update_indian_elections.html
References to newspaper articles can include or omit author name as you prefer.

Never use Wikipedia or MSN Encarta: these are not acceptable sources

Second-hand Summaries
Summarising someone else's summary of a source is not plagiarism if you make it clear that that is what you are doing. Nevertheless, when you can, avoid second-hand summary. For example, if you were trying to summarise neo-realist international relations theory in an essay, it is better if you have read Kenneth Waltz's neo-realist Theory of International Politics for yourself rather than relying on Garnett's summary of it. You are having to take Garnett's word for it that he has summarised accurately and you are having to hope that he has not left out for sake of brevity material which would alter your arguments. However, due to time pressure and if the book is one which you are not expected to buy, you may often have to rely on second-hand summaries.#p#分頁標題#e#
Second-hand summary must be identified by you as such. For example, if (in a hypothetical example) Garnett summarises Waltz's work, then your text can read:

Waltz argued that it was useful theoretically to assume that states are differentiated solely by the amount of power they possess.

Your footnote must read:
9. Waltz, summarised in John Garnett, 'States, State-Centric Perspectives, and Interdependence Theory', in John Baylis and N.J. Rengger (eds), Dilemmas of World Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 77.

If you are using the Harvard referencing system, then your text will look like this:

Waltz argued that it was useful theoretically to assume that states are differentiated solely by the amount of power they possess (Garnett 1992, p. 77).

If you are simply re-wording Garnett's summary but reference only Waltz or provide no reference to a source at all, you are committing the serious academic offence of plagiarism.
The same procedures are used for quotations. If Garnett has a quotation from Waltz that you want to use, you must indicate that you found the Waltz quotation in Garnett's chapter by using the phrase.

Paraphrasing and Avoiding Plagiarism
When you read a book you may feel that it makes the points so well that it is pointless or very difficult to put the points in your own words. Nevertheless, that is what you must do unless you simply put the material in your essay in quotation marks. Consider the following passage by Garnett:

Essentially, the environmentalist argument is that vertically structured sovereign states are poorly equipped for handling issues which simply did not exist when the state system developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What is more, the governments of those states are crippled by a traditional 'mind-set' which either keeps global issues off the agenda altogether, or allocates a low priority to them.

Some students might deal with this passage by simply stringing together chunks of Garnett's sentences with their own connecting words without putting Garnett's phrases in quotation marks. Such a passage in an essay might read as follows:

The environmentalist argument is that states are poorly equipped for handling these new issues and are crippled by a traditional mind-set which keeps global issues off the agenda or attaches a low priority to them (Garnett 1992, p. 69).

This is unacceptable because the student is passing off Garnett's phrases as his or her own even if the occasional word is changed. For this reason it is plagiarism, even if you do provide a footnote. An acceptable paraphrase of Garnett would read as follows:

Environmentalists believe that, as states are, as Garnett puts it, 'vertically structured' - by which he appears to mean that they divide the territory of the world into separate chunks - they are not designed to cope with shared problems such as pollution which often cross boundaries. Garnett adds that this structural problem is reinforced by a psychological or cultural barrier to taking environmental problems seriously (1992, p. 69).#p#分頁標題#e#

How to Use Reading Lists

The following false beliefs are sometimes held by students:
if it is not on the reading list it is not worth reading.
the items after the first six or seven on a reading list are just padding and not really worth reading.
they will be penalised for not using items on the reading list and for using items not on the reading list.
if they use something not on the reading list, they are taking the risk of using a 'bad' or 'biased' book.
sticking to the reading list is a way of playing safe.
there is 'the best book' and they are at a serious disadvantage if they don't have it.
if it is not up to date it is not worth reading.
items which are not on the part of the library shelf which corresponds directly to a particular subject are so tangential as to be not worth reading.

In reality, it is refreshing when students go beyond the reading list because it means that the tutor will not be marking yet another essay based on the same narrow range of familiar sources. Initiative in finding sources will be rewarded. Indeed, to do well you need to be different. Sticking to the reading list is not playing safe: it is risking being dull. There are books on the reading lists with which tutors disagree or see as deeply flawed, but which they see as valuable contributions and starting points for debate. Being up to date is of some value but the value of classic and ancient texts should not be forgotten.

How to Use the Library

Students sometimes say 'There are no books in the library'. What this actually means is that they cannot get hold of the items on a reading list for a particular class: when this happens they feel cheated, disorientated and uncertain.
If you want a particular book at a particular time you are unlikely to get it: this is the norm not the exception. Indeed, most students will be unable to lay their hands on any items from the reading list for a particular week. The simple reason is that there are more students taking a unit than there will be items listed for any particular seminar.
In fact, there are more than enough books in the library in the sense that you can almost always get your hands on plenty of relevant things to read on a topic. The exception is when you are asked to read up on a very narrowly circumscribed area such as the US decision to invade North Korea in 1950 or the dispute over Kashmir since 1989.

dissertation Writing research Here is a check list for dealing with pressure on library resources:
1. Browse along the bookshelves, the bound journals, the current journals and the new acquisitions display.
2. Check the computer to see if an item is on short loan if you cannot find it on the open shelves.
3. Cooperate with fellow students by sharing items that you have out on loan, sharing books you have bought and coordinating your photocopying so that you each photocopy a different article and then circulate them all.#p#分頁標題#e#
4. Use the subject search facility on the library computer. Don't be afraid to experiment with different keywords.
5. Learn how to use the on-line computer services as ways of tracing journal articles and other sources according to subject.
6. Follow up on the footnotes and bibliographies of the books and articles which you already have. The library may have those items even though they are not on reading lists.

The subject librarian for Politics is [email protected]. Do please email Paul for advice on using the library if you feel you need it.