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      In this chapter you will learn…

      The special case of student academic essays

      Academics often make the mistake of treating good academic writing as synonymous with good writing. There is much that is common across different forms of writing, especially if we narrow down to non-fiction writing. But it can be helpful to be aware of the special case of academic essay writing. A well-written newspaper article and an opening statement in an academic debate may share some similarities with a well-written student academic essay, but you will notice differences. We can think about the different audiences that they are addressing and the different formats they take. Crucially, though, they each do a different job. Until we get a really sharp, clear sense of the specific thing a good essay should do, we are quite likely to misfire, producing essays that, from the first paragraph, look journalistic or opinionated when what we are really aiming for is scholarly.

      The comparison above perhaps sets the scene that student academic essays are special – it is quite a niche type of writing, although the skills you learn in doing it are incredibly helpful. In particular, the careful planning and execution of an evidence-based argument can be very helpful, even if you never write an actual ‘academic essay’ again for the rest of your life. Being able to write in that way means that you can think, talk and read in that way, bringing a critical, evaluative eye to evidence, half-truths and mis-truths, a skill that has perhaps never been more important than now.

      What am I doing and for whom?

      It is perhaps worth reflecting on a couple of these issues in a little more detail – specifically, what level of knowledge should be assumed on the part of your reader, and what, actually, does an ‘introduction’ do?

      The knowledge that should be assumed on the part of the reader of your essay is a tricky one. On the one hand, you have probably been told the importance of defining your terms clearly, which suggests a limited reader knowledge. On the other hand, your principal reader is likely to be someone who has taught you psychology, or at the very least has studied it at postgraduate level. First, a caveat – do take into account the guidance on this that you may receive from your course or module tutor(s). Different essays are designed to test different things, so make use of the on-hand, proximal advice. With that in mind, a useful, if slightly cryptic, rule of thumb is to assume that your reader has sufficient knowledge to ask the question that is set in the essay title and that they require a display of knowledge that is relevant to that title. Your essay title should – normally – set the parameters of your essay and different titles do suggest different levels of reader (or essay title-setter) knowledge. This issue is addressed in detail in Chapter 4, where the focus is on how to genuinely address the essay title. For now, we can note that the title itself gives a sense of the parameters for framing our essay in the introduction.

      If our essay title refers to the multistore model of memory, then we will want our essay, from the introduction, to convey a scholarly understanding of that model, an understanding that is in the service of the essay, which forms a part of that essay rather than a dictionary definition, an encyclopaedia of psychology or Wikipedia entry. From the very beginning of our essay the reader should get a clear sense of why they are being told what they are being told. The reader should never ask, ‘why is this term being defined?’, ‘why is this being described?’ or ‘why is this perspective being referred to?’. The introduction, which outlines how your essay will address the title, conveys that rationale, so your reader does not need to ask all of those ‘why’ questions. Implicitly (‘This essay will first address…’) or explicitly (‘In order to better evaluate the strengths of …, the essay will first address …’), the introduction presents your rationale for what your essay covers. Your introduction can get your reader off to the best possible start in your essay by enabling them to get a sense of your scholarly mind at work.

      Ace your assignment What is being introduced to whom?