Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates_SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS.pdf

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Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates

(Independent Study)

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

Tony Lynch and Kenneth Anderson

University of Edinburgh 2014

SAMPLE TRANSPORT ESSAYS

ESSAY INTRODUCTIONS

ACADEMIC USE OF PRONOUNS

THE CONTENTS PAGE

CITATION TECHNIQUES

PLAGIARISM

ABSTRACTS

NOUN CHAINS

CRITICISM IN ACADEMIC CULTURES

INTERPRETING DATA

Table 1. Mean TEAM subtest scores, by academic outcome

Study Task 11

DISCUSSING YOUR OWN DATA

Language Box: Discussing your findings

1 Locating the data – Present Simple

BIBLIOGRAPHIC PRESENTATION

SAMPLE INTERNET ESSAY 1 (student, 2004)

How Beneficial Is The Internet for Students on Master’s Degree Programmes?

References

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates (Independent Study) SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS Tony Lynch and Kenneth Anderson © English Language Teaching Centre University of Edinburgh 2014 page 1 1 SAMPLE TRANSPORT ESSAYS 2 ESSAY INTRODUCTIONS 3 ACADEMIC USE OF PRONOUNS 4 THE CONTENTS PAGE 5 CITATION TECHNIQUES 6 PLAGIARISM 7 ABSTRACTS 8 NOUN CHAINS 9 CRITICISM IN ACADEMIC CULTURES 10 INTERPRETING DATA 11 DISCUSSING YOUR OWN DATA 12 BIBLIOGRAPHIC PRESENTATION Commentary on the Study Tasks Sample Internet essay 1 (2004) Sample Internet essay 2 (2005) Sample Internet essay 2 (2009) 5 7 8 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 19 22 25 28 31

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Supplement 1 SAMPLE TRANSPORT ESSAYS Here are two students’ essays on transport policy, for you to evaluate. When you have had a chance to read and think about them, you can compare your evaluation with ours (in the Commentary on the Study Tasks on pages 22-24 of these Supplementary Materials). Essay 1 It has been pointed out that road transport policies in the developing world help the rich at the expense of the poor. How far is this also true in developed countries? Road transport is regarded as an integral and necessary element of infrastructure in all parts of the world. But its development is inevitably biased against the poorer sections of society, whether in the developed or developing countries. In considering the problems associated with the growth of road transport I will concentrate on the car, rather than on all petrol-driven road vehicles. This restriction is justifiable if we bear in mind that most road traffic is made up of cars. Jenkins (1994), for example, reported that they accounted for 76% of traffic volume in the USA and Italy, and over 80% in the UK. The ratio of cars to commercial vehicles is certainly lower in developing counties, but the car is still dominant; UN figures for 1993 indicate that the private/commercial vehicle ratio ranged from 5:1 in Ethiopia to 3:2 in Botswana and Ecuador. So the car is the main element in road transport, irrespective of a country’s level of economic development. There seem to be four areas in which (relatively) poor communities and individuals are disadvantaged by the growth of road transport networks: social, geographical, environmental and political. I will discuss these in turn. The social bias against the poor is found at the root of things: put simply, policy makers assume that most people are car owners. This socially weighted assumption has little basis in reality. Even in developed countries, car-owning households are in the minority. According to Jenkins (1994), figures from 1992 showed that 56% of British households were without a car; and that figure rises as high as 90% in developing countries (Eher 1995). Moreover, it should not be forgotten that not all those people who have a car in their family actually have access to it at any one time. Eher says that ‘six or seven out of every ten in Britain are dependent on other means of transport’ (Eher 1995: 163). So the in-built bias of planning projects towards car drivers, in terms of road building, the provision of parking spaces and the location of out- of-town shopping centres, is a bias against the car-less majority, which is predominantly the poor. 1

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials The second issue appears at first sight to be geographical, but in fact it is closely linked with the distribution of wealth. It is the fact that urban road developments tend to disrupt the poorer city districts rather than the areas where the better-off live. In order to make the commercial centres more accessible to cars, inner city land (cheaper, because it is residentially less desirable) is bought up, housing is destroyed and motorways are constructed. The people living in these areas may protest against such schemes, but their campaigns are rarely successful. In October 1995 the residents of Hackville and Sawston, two working class areas of Seattle, organised a campaign of local resistance. Yet it seems that the protesters found little sympathy from the other Settle residents: “there was no support for the campaign from those not directly affected by the freeway development” (Schreik 1995). The third point is environmental. Even the poorer residents whose homes survive inner city road plans then suffer the physical side-effects, in the form of pollution. Noise pollution comes as their houses are constantly shaken by the vibration and noise from passing traffic. Chemical pollution - especially from carbon monoxide and lead - in vehicle exhaust fumes represents a nuisance in the form of dirt but also a serious danger to the health and mental development of young children living in the affected areas. The final bias against the poor is political. In today’s society, transport is inseparably linked with business and industrial interests. Against the power of groups such as construction companies, car manufacturers and the petro-chemical industry, there is little chance for opposition from the inner city residents (who include a high proportion of pensioners who cannot afford to move away to the suburbs). Even the public transport systems that are intended to help the poor are often run-down and insufficiently subsidized. To sum up, it is the poorest communities that suffer most, in various ways, from policies that encourage road building. This is as true in developed countries as in the developing. I believe it is important that governments should take account of the needs of less well-off citizens, by adopting transport policies that restrict - rather than extend - the use of the private car. As things are, the minority benefits from road transport development at the expense of the majority. (746 words) References Eher M. (1995) ‘Taken for a ride?’. Traffic Update 23/2: 150-172. Jenkins C. (1994) ‘Conflict of interests in road policy’. Urban Planning Review 16/2: 40-64. Schreik W. (1995) ‘Seattle’s road plans run into trouble’. West Coast Investigator. October 17, 1995. 2

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Essay 2 It has been pointed out that road transport policies in the developing world help the rich at the expense of the poor. How far is this also true in developed countries? In every country, developed or developing, very few people are prepared to walk. Walking as a human activity has been replaced by various forms of transport, especially the car. Poorer people save to buy a car when they can; the rich have more than one. The number of cars has, in the space of two decades, grown to 170 million, compared with 36 million commercial vehicles - a ratio of approximately 5:1. Over the same period, the percentage increase for cars varied from 130% in the USA to 540% in Sweden (United Nations statistics, quoted by Jenkins 1994). With this increase in the number of private cars in the wealthier North, there is a growing demand for a high-quality and durable road network. The consequence is that the number of people using commercial vehicles has declined, which makes it difficult for the commercial vehicle owners to maintain them. As a result, there has been a cut in the number of services provided and an increase in fares for the public. The number of cars largely determines the width of the new roads (Jenkins 1994), and we now commonly see six-lane elevated highways such as the one described as “carving its way through the poorer parts of Seattle” (Schreik 1995). The construction of such highways takes place on the basis of a general agreement that the road should take a route which produces the maximum benefit at the minimum cost. This means that “roads tend to be built through deprived areas, where property is cheapest” (Jenkins 1994: 51). The proportion of the population that owns a car is relatively high in the developed world, where wealth is more equally distributed. In the developing world, on the other hand, car ownership patterns reflect wider inequalities: “in 3

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Sao Paulo, Brazil, there are more second and third cars owned by rich families than there are cars owned by all the poorer half of the city” (Eher 1995: 153). The use of the highways built with public funds is often restricted to cars and so to car owners. The poor, who are unable to buy their own car, have to bear the consequences. Poor families are deprived not only of a place to live but of the means to feed themselves. In addition, there is the problem of pollution: forced to walk to work (by rising public transport fares) the poor have to breathe air contaminated by traffic fumes. It can be seen, then, that road building mostly directly benefits the rich in the Third World, while it is the poor that pay the costs. With this in mind, it seems that “the construction of motorways is a modern parable, using public funds to make life easier for the rich and harder for the poor” (Eher 1995: 171). These policies carry a serious risk: the differences in effect on the better-off and worse-off in a developing economy could become a cause of dispute and conflict. It is vital that the interests of the majority are not ignored. (502 words) References Eher M. (1995) ‘Taken for a ride?’. Traffic Update 23/2: 150-172. Jenkins C. (1994) ‘Conflict of interests in road policy’. Urban Planning Review 16/2: 40-64. Schreik W. (1995) ‘Seattle’s road plans run into trouble’. West Coast Investigator. October 17, 1995. Study Task 1 Which of the essays do you think is better, and why? 4

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Supplement 2 ESSAY INTRODUCTIONS Study task 2 Below are three students’ introductions to the same essay, with the title Summarise the main advantages and disadvantages of using video equipment and materials in the language classroom. Which do you think is (1) the most effective, and (2) the least effective? Introduction 1 Video film has a high potential as a valid medium in the foreign language classroom. But as with any other teaching materials and media, the benefits of video as a teaching tool depend very much on how it is put to use in the foreign language classroom. Unfortunately many teachers still only make sure that it is used. Most teachers are not very creative in their use of video and in many classrooms it is not more than a ‘Friday afternoon treat’. However, video can definitely be put to more functions than that. The following will look at the disadvantages and advantages of using video in the classroom. Introduction 2 Video equipment and materials have come to play an increasingly prominent role in the L2 classroom over the last twenty years. Thus there has been a great increase in the number of ELT materials developed as an aid to language teaching. Likewise, some L2 teachers prefer to use ‘authentic’ TV materials. In any case, the use of video materials seems to be widespread in the L2 classroom, mainly due to its advantages. However, it also presents some limitations. Let’s outline its main advantages and disadvantages. 5

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Introduction 3 The 20th century is the era of technology. In the Western world, whatever activity we embark on and however simple it may be, we are bound to use technology. Nowadays almost everybody knows what a radio is, what a telephone is, what a TV set is. These are widespread technologies that need almost no explanation to anybody because they have existed for most of our century and because they are simple to use. On the other hand there are other technologies that, although already familiar to most people, require more explanation of their basic use and have not acquired the level of simplicity of the other previously mentioned technologies because they are more recent and also more complex. Video belongs to these technologies. Having appeared in the 70s, video is now present in a large number of households. Language schools are also benefiting from its advantages. Nevertheless, as happens with all technologies, they can be used adequately and inadequately. Video is no exception. This is why I am now going to analyse its advantages and disadvantages in the language classroom. 6

Academic Essay Writing for Postgraduates Supplementary Materials Supplement 3 ACADEMIC USE OF PRONOUNS You may have noticed that in some of those extracts used in this course, the writer has used the first person singular, ‘I’. This is increasingly common, but not in all academic fields; it is the norm in many humanities and social science subjects, for example, but much less so in science, engineering or medicine. One alternative is to use ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. The disadvantage of doing that is that it can be unclear precisely who is meant by ‘we’, because it can refer to any of the following: the present writer (= ‘I’)   all the authors of a collaborative paper   all rational adults the community of specialists in the field etc. So one advantage of ‘I’ is that it enables you to show clearly which ideas are your own. The very formal expression ‘the present writer/author’ is now extremely rare in British writing. Study Task 3 Look at the Introduction to an article in your special field. Is it by a single author? If so, has he/she used ‘I’, ‘we’, or the impersonal passive? If you are not sure whether you can use ‘I’ in your essays and projects, ask for advice from one of your degree course tutors. 7

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