Covering anything not covered already in the assignment brief
Yes! Here are two strong essays from an earlier version of the course, plus the marker notes. I have made redactions so you can’t see the student names. Example 1 is an essay on a set topic that we are not using this year. Example 2 is an essay on a topic the student came up with themselves, which was approved by me (i.e. this was the 2nd essay for a Masters student). Do not write an essay on either of these topics - neither are on our list of set topics, and for Masters students I won’t approve these as self-designed topics for assignment 2. The marks they got, plus the marker annotations, are at the end.
Yes it is - we will deduct marks if you go over the word limit.
No it doesn’t - we don’t want to penalise you for reading and citing lots of relevant work.
Yes it does - I never want to read a 1500 word essay with 5000 words of footnotes.
No, just pick something that is readable for us!
Yes that is a good idea - and (although it’s only a few words) you don’t have to include the question number and question wording when calculating your word count. Putting the full question at the top of your essay is a good idea for two reasons. Firstly, it removes any ambiguity for your marker as to what question you are attempting to answer - in extreme cases this ambiguity can be really hard for us to resolve, which can lead to a low mark. Secondly, it’s also a really good reminder to you that your essay should be answering a question, rather than taking an aimless ramble through the literature. Anecdotally, I have noticed that essays that don’t do a good job of answering the question and (and therefore receive a low mark) often don’t include the question at the top - putting the question right at the top is a simple trick that helps you focus on answering that question, and avoiding this pitfall.
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